After spending a couple of hours walking around the magnificent ruins of Uxmal, and before hanging out to the kick ass Cenote San Ignacio, we stopped in a small town for some lunch. Honestly, I have absolutely no idea what the town is called. It’s just a cute little town in the Yucatan. While driving through it we saw the sign for Cocina Economica and decided that cheap food in a hole-in-the-wall in the middle of nowhere sounded just about right. Mayra surely fit the bill.
Typically, cocina economica places only serve a couple of different items a day. It depends on what they can get their hands on to serve up at a cheap price. Seeing that cocina economica literally means “economical food”, how could we go wrong? If we didn’t like it we’d only be out about $2-3 per person.
When the lady described the day’s menu to us about the only word we could pick up with our limited knowledge of Spanish was “pollo”. Ok, chicken it is! Turns out we each got a big plate of chicken fajitas. An old woman diligently whipped up our plates in a room about the size of a coat closet. I think the chickens were probably slaughtered that day as it actually tasted really damn good. Simple enough, it was just chopped up chicken cooked with onions, tomatoes, and green peppers. A big heaping pile of smooth refried beans, a small salad, a wedge of lime, and some warm tortillas rounded out the grub.
I do have to say, it far exceeded my expectations. The food was fresh, cooked properly, not overly seasoned, and there was more than enough to fill you up. I still can’t believe we got plates like that for no more than $3 a person. Too bad cheap food in the States consists of McDonald’s shitty dollar menu made up of artificial, processed food. I’ll take a $3 fresh chicken fajita plate any day!
Dan Bites 