Now that Mexican restaurants bespatter the local landscape like salsa on your favorite shirt, what makes this one different? Seafood: shrimp, snapper, octopus, oysters, wonderfully, authentically presented. This is the cuisine of Nayarit, the fish-famous Mexican coastal state wedged between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. It’s essentially a beach shack, with nautical décor, plain tables, bottled water, and Mexican sodas. As in those simple seaside eateries, there’s the sense that this isn’t for turistas. That sense is confirmed by tables filled with Spanish-speakers and by a menu entirely in Spanish.
Said menu offers a spicy, massively portioned tour of the best of Nayarit’s considerable seafood repertoire, including a complimentary bowl of ceviche with tostadas. The best appetizers are “cocktails,” goblets brimming with a scarlet tomato-herb broth generously loaded with shrimp, octopus, or (your best bet) coctel vuelve a la vida. With the exception of some fajitas, main courses are exclusively maritime. A whole snapper is roasted and covered with a sauce of red onions, tomatoes, and chilies. Snapper and shrimp are both served zarandeados—the term for a kind of smoke-style grilling—with a thick slathering of a garlic–chili–soy sauce mayonnaise. The selection tastes like a leisurely seaside dinner, complex yet happily unembellished and exploiting every ingredient.
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Garlic, butter, and ketchup make a mildly spicy diabla sauce for shrimp. That other taste in the dish is Huichol sauce, a fragrant mix of cascabel peppers, vinegar, and salt. It’s a Nayarit specialty that flavors much of the food. Another shrimp presentation incorporates a creamy sauce that’s fragrant with cilantro. Oh, and cucarachas refers to a style of cooking; shellfish with a piquant burnt-red, lime-spiked marinade benefit from it. Crab legs look as if they’re still trying to crawl out of a massive tureen. They’re messy and worth all the trouble of stripping the meat from the shells.
Again, this is a bit of beachfront shackery. “Napkins” come on a roll on the table. Oscar Sanchez is wailing about somebody’s corazon on the sound system. Service is excellent, but the pace is relaxed. It’s a place for taking one’s time. It’s also the only restaurant in the area serving one of Mexico’s premier cuisines—and doing it splendidly.
