Local fare at Carboncitos

After a nice morning at the beach and an incredible cooking class, we motivated to get off property for dinner. While it was running later and we wouldn't get into Playa del Carmen until around 9pm, we wanted to make the drive to enjoy a walk in town rather than spend a ton of money in the hotels again. And while we would need to get up around 6:20am the next day to get ready for diving, we thought a local style dinner at Carboncitos would be a quick dining hit we would enjoy. So we headed into Playa and found a 24 hour parking lot, parked the car and walked into town. The city has developed incredibly since we were last here about 6 or 7 years ago. "5th Avenue" has taken over as a major tourist stretch of stores, restaurants and bars, extending from the main pier up to around 20th Street. But there is well rounded quality to it compared to the behemoth clubs in Cancun for example. Many bars have live bands playing latin music or rock covers from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Carboncitos is located on 4th Street between 5th and 10th Aves. It is a small and unassuming place that makes dressed down, fantastic flavored Mexican entrees, focused around pastor, or marinated pork. We ended up getting una mesa para dos right in the front, just on the street, which was great for watching people passing by. We started with a salsa wheel (orden de totopos y salsas), an assortment of 6 different freshly made salsas, of varying degrees of heat. I also couldn't resist ordering the cheese crisp (chicharron de queso), which was more than I expected upon arrival! It was a fried piece of cheese, but is wasn't really greasy/ oily at all. It was a nice mild cheese, which I used to alternate scooping up salsa instead of the taco chips.

At this point, I could tell we were settling into being away on vacation. We laughed about silly things Layla has been doing around the house, entertaining my parents coming into town the weekend after we return, enjoying our time with friends watching the Superbowl and discussing the various things we wanted to do for the rest of our trip and afterward.

For dinner, I had chilanguito tacos, which were made of the pastor pork, poblano peppers and melted cheese and sauteed onions throughout. With the soft tortillas, this made for a great taco dinner that hit the spot with me. Nicole had the special alambre de camaron, fresh grilled shrimp with crispy bacon, onion, pepper and cheese with Mexican style rice. These were relatively heavy dishes we were dealing with here, but the flavors were off the charts. Finishing up a couple margaritas, we were ready to head back to the car and get some shut-eye before our big day of diving in Cozumel.