La Chaya Maya, Merida 07-2019

During the long day of seeing Chichen Itza in the morning and then squeezing in Uxmal in the mid-late afternoon, there was a brief opportunity to find somewhere to eat in Merida. My friend/driver had a recommendation and so we ended up at this restaurant for classic Yucatan food.

It was definitely a large and full and busy restaurant, even with queues in the mid-afternoon as we were leaving. In a couple of areas, some ladies are constantly making the perfect fresh corn tortillas for each of our eating pleasure with the table salsa.

I discovered chaya is a kind of leaf. I wasn't exactly sure what, but Google now tells me a type of spinach. Which makes sense because the food (and chaya drink) did have a spinach flavour but less bitter and more savoury.

- Crema de chaya 71pesos - a thick green, slightly spinachy soup. Very creamy and cheesy. Delicious;
- Mucbil pollo 109pesos - if you read the Spanish text, it says the dreams of a Yucateo is to eat this dish at any time of the year. That may or may not be true, but I can tell you that the dish has very hard, thick crust which is really really difficult and not that pleasant to eat. However inside soft savoury meat and some tomato. It went very well with salsa and hot sauce.

It was nice to have some traditional Yucatan food. The flavours were nice overall and I'm glad I tried a more dishes in their cuisine.