“As for your friendly restaurant reviewer, the stuffed avocado with shrimp was one appetizer that vanished quickly from my table. Delicioso!”
I realized as I was thinking of places to review this month that I like seafood. The last restaurant I reviewed was a seafood place and the restaurant review from April 1999 also profiled a seafood treasure. So I like seafood, sue me. And, I live in a great place for mariscos. It is for this reason, that the secret spot for this month is a local mariscos restaurant, once again.
MARISQUERIA LOS CUATES is a hidden gem and one that, if you like seafood as much as I do, you definitely should make the effort to stop by. If you are familiar with Zihuatanejo then you might have a chance finding the place. It is located near the post office and the still-being-constructed automatic car wash. Take a left at the Tienda el Cacahuate and veer to the left. If these above directions are Greek to you, then ask your friendly taxi driver.
The phone number of LOS CUATES is 554-7993. The restaurant is located right in the middle of Zihua and the breeze is very refreshing. As some of you are aware, the majority of restaurants of Zihua are open air, thatched roof buildings with plastic tables and chairs and an open kitchen with various colored buckets strung around the place. To those of you that are not familiar with this type of setting, do not despair! This is what eating in Mexico is all about. The place is clean and all the seafood is fresh from the mornings’ catches. As an appetizer on the house, you are served a very good seafood stock and non-greasy, crisp tortilla chips. The menu is plentiful and includes all the various sea life that we have in these waters. Actually, I was very impressed with the extensive menu and plentiful diverse dishes. Four to five different types of fish, shrimp, lobster, crayfish, crab, clams, oysters, octopus, abalone, cucarachas and shellfish are the choices you have. Once you decide which to order, you then need to decide how you would like your choice prepared. The preparation of all seafood is representative of the flavor of the Costa Grande.
Well, we sat there, sipping our beers, crunching the chips and slurping our soup all the while trying to decide which of these dishes to order. Since this visit was for all of our readers, we just had to order as much as we could from the menu (without appearing too greedy). I think that anything you order here will be good, if not excellent. As for your friendly restaurant reviewer, the stuffed avocado with shrimp was one appetizer that vanished quickly from my table. Delicioso! Then came the camaronillas (fried shrimp tacos), the shrimp brocheta (shish kebob), the huachinango frito con ajo (an entire fried red fish served with garlic), the filete de dorado al ajo (a fillet of mahi-mahi with garlic) and a plate of camarones empanizados (breaded shrimp). Yes, I was with some shrimp lovers. All of the above dishes were incredibly perfect. The only thing I should tell you is, when you order an entire fish, it comes out head, eyes and all. If the idea of a fish with its head being served to you for lunch is a bit hard too handle, then order the fish ‘sin cabeza’. A filete of course is a thick cut from the fish without bones. Our waitress, Judy, served us well and we were never without clean plates and the used ones were quickly removed to make room for all the food we had ordered. I must tell you that three of us tasted all the plates but could not finish them, though we tried.
I promise next month to discover a secret spot that has something other than seafood. But for now, find MARISQUERIA LOS CUATES, order your favorite kind of seafood, sit back, enjoy the breeze, and agree with me that good seafood done right can never be boring.
Buen Provecho
-December 2000
