Cancun Restaurants and Dining

(Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico)

Cancun has plenty to offer even the most serious foodies and boasts an extensive combination of restaurants, bars and nightclubs. This means that it is easy to spend many memorable, late nights when dining out around Cancun.

Restaurants in Cancun feature not only Mexican fare with endless guacamole and tacos, but many other exotic cuisines, such as Chinese, Italian, Spanish and Thai. Therefore, tourists looking for less spicy food without the chillies will find plenty to enjoy.

What to Eat

Mexican restaurants in Cancun serve freshly caught seafood and take advantage of its coastal setting next to the Caribbean Sea. Therefore those with a taste for seafood can expect to find many tasty dishes and specialities to sample, prepared with shellfish, shrimp, lobster, soft-shell crab, oysters, octopus and yellowfin tuna, such as fish ceviche (a seafood salad marinated in citrus flavours).

'Surf and turf' dishes are always popular with tourists, where steaks are accompanied by a variety of seafood, usually shrimps and lobster. Salads, pasta dishes and poultry are also staple parts of menus within Cancun, and even crocodile fajitas are beginning to make an appearance on some restaurant menus.

Where to Eat

The best variety of budget restaurants within Cancun is located in the downtown district and generally away from the city's main resort areas. Downtown Cancun features a much wider choice of reasonably priced restaurants and eateries than the Zona Hotelera. Although many good dining venues are located within this Hotel Zone, their prices are known to reflect their extremely convenient location and not always the actual quality of the food itself.

Restaurants within downtown Cancun are concentrated along both the Avenida Tulum and the Avenida Coba, where deli-style dining venues are especially notable. Fine dining is also on the cards along the Boulevard Kukulcan - in particular around the Flamingo Mall), and along the Calle Margaritas - close to the Parque las Palapas.

Within Cancun's hotel zone, many of the best restaurants and dining opportunities lie within the hotel resorts close to the Boulevard Kukulcan, especially around the Kukulcan Plaza and the Flamingo Plaza. In particular, lookout for the excellent restaurants within the Hyatt Cancun Caribe, the Hotel Krystal Cancun and the Marriott Cancun Resort, all of which are located off the Boulevard Kukulcan. The Ritz-Carlton Cancun on Retorno del Rey also boasts a good restaurant offering fine dining.

Further restaurants and eateries around the Hotel Zone of Cancun lie along the Avenida Sunyaxchen, the Paseo Kukulkan, within the Plaza Kukulcan shopping center and at La Isla Mall, where both the Planet Hollywood and the Interactive Aquarium Cancun attraction have become popular dining spots. Families staying in Cancun also enjoy dining at the Rainforest Café restaurant, which is located on the Plaza Forum by the Sea and known for its jungle-style setting and lifelike animatronic animals.