February 18, 2018 Breakfast – Sunday Food Market at Zocalo, Lunch – Roses and Chocolate, Dinner – La Negrita

February 18, 2018 Breakfast – Sunday Food Market at Zocalo,  Lunch – Roses and Chocolate,  Dinner – La Negrita

We started by going to the food stalls that surround the Zocalo on Sundays.  We picked one where were a number of persons eating near the Cathedral.  We wanted to try regional dishes we had not had before.  I ordered Caldo de Lima and Suzette ordered two Kibbah.

My soup was clear with lime, cilantro, and roasted turkey in it served with a small pile of fried tortillas.  Suzette’s Kibbah were long shells of bulgur wheat twisted into two tails at their ends and filled with cabbage and served with a light tomato sauce.  I also ordered a coke.  Suzette bought a Starbuck’s coffee at the Starbuck’s connected to our hotel.

Suzette did not like her Kibbah because it was dry grain and left to shop the merchandise vendors around the plaza while I finished breakfast.  I put the uneaten Kibbah into the bowl of caldo and both were better for it.  The soup softened the Kibbah and the Kibbah gave the soup needed body.

After breakfast we walked across the square to Casa Montejo and enjoyed the furnishings in the Banamex collection and a temporary show of the couture by Beatriz Russek, a Mexican fashion designer, that adapts traditional clothing techniques to modern clothing.

We then decided to see the Regional Museum of Anthropology on 60th street at 41st.  We parked and walked to the Museum which is housed in one of the great mansions built during the henequen boom at the beginning of the 20th century.

The exhibit was pieces of Mexia culture, which is what we call the Aztecs, who settled in the Central Valley of Mexico in the 14th century and built Tenouchtitlan that became Mexico City.
After viewing the exhibit while walking back To the car we stopped at an exhibit on chocolate sponsored by a cacao plantation in the State of Tabasco.  They make chocolate without any fat with honey in many different flavors.  We were impressed with the quality and bought an oregano flavored bar for $10.00.

Suzette wanted a drink and so we stopped at the Roses and chocolate Restaurant at the corner of 41st where we had parked our car.

We asked for the drink menu and Suzette ordered a sangria.  I saw a large jug filled with a green drink served to the next table and asked for a food menu.  When I was handed the food menu It became clear that this was a really good restaurant attracted to a boutique hotel.  It was selected the best boutique hotel restaurant in World in 2015 according to the menu  and when we checked its ranking among Mérida restaurants, found it ranked number 21 out of 747 restaurants in Mérida.  We ordered a jug of Hoya Santa and kiwi water, which was delicious; very clean tasting with a hint of sweetness from the kiwi fruit.  Suzette wanted to experiment and ordered a shot of tequila and a few slices of lime and made herself a marguerita, which tasted wonderful.

I noticed a duck breast dish with corn and sausage with a raisin sauce, so we ordered that.

The dish was a complete revelation.  It was beautifully executed to Mexican-French fusion perfection.  The duck at Recova was poached.  On one side of the plate was a duck breast seared to medium rare, laid on a bed of corn kernels that had been sautéed with small squares of onion or shallot.  Beside the duck breast was a long pile of an  oz. of deconstructed sausage that was essentially a dry sauce and on the other side of the plate was a smear of dark Demi-glacé raisin sauce.

This was a totally successful dish.
It made me feel like Mexican food had finally reached the world standard for excellence. I loved the restaurant.

After lunch we decided to go to the big Mayan Museum located near the edge of town next to Costco.  Literally, you drive to Costco, make a u turn (because the museum was too cheap to make their own turn signal probably) and enter the museum’s underground parking lot from the frontage road.  The Mayan Museum is a large modern museum with contemporary exhibits.  I enjoyed it when we found something of interest like where the large meteorite struck that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The display and the attendant described that the test for meteorites is to find if there is any iridium in the stone.  Because Iridium is the scarcest element in the earth’s crust at .001 part per million (ppm), but in meteorites it occurs at 5 ppm.  Testing for presence of iridium is how a rock can be determined to be of extra-terrestrial origin.

The Alvarez hypothesis is based on the dark iridium rich layer of clay dated at 66 million years and hypothesizing that the impact of the large Chicxulub crater on and off the Yucatan Peninsula created the extinction event for the terrestrial dinosaurs. See Chicxulub crater.

There were five or six pieces of core in the museum.  Mérida is located within the impact zone of the crater although the core which is approximately 100 miles across is now 3000 feet below Mérida.  The Publication of the evidence of this event is recent, dating back to only 1980.  So the exhibit was pretty exciting.

I must admit that in found the historic exhibits of ancestral Mayan cultures less exciting.  The ceramics and painted plaster murals were interesting but most of the carved limestone Stella were so badly worn as to be indecipherable.

Although there were many labels in English, we were not particularly interested in the Mayans cosmogony.   Of course the Jaina ceramics were lovely, as were the utilitarian objects made of jade and obsidium.

We left the museum at 4:30 and returned to the hotel to rest for a couple of hours.

Then at 7:30 we decided to walk to the best rated bar in Merida, which had an Afro-Cuban band on Sundays, La Negrita.  When we arrived the bar and dance floor was packed, but there were tables open in the side room.  We ordered a liter of sangria for 65 pesos, but it was very sweet and not particularly alcoholic.  So, Suzette ordered a Bohemia and we decided to split the Sunday special of six tacos, 2 each of cochinita pibil, egg emollata, and one other type for 60 pesos. I also ordered a Bohemia beer.  The crowd was mostly 20 to 30 year olds; more affluent, educated and younger than the hard core drinkers at Las Vigas.  After an hour we left and as we walked home stopped at a shop that had quality designed shoes and cotton blouses.  Suzette bought a pair of shoes made from jute and a lovely cotton blouse for $50.00.

I passed on the guayaberas shirts made from 100% cotton and Italian linen for $30 to $40 each, because I am happy with the wonderful rayon and cotton shirts I have bought at Goodwill for $5.00 each.

We returned to the hotel and were in bed by 9:30 after another full day of activity and interesting food in Mérida.

Bon Appetit