With a free day today, I made sure to get away from the
confines of the resort and head into town. I thus started at Parque Las Palapas, a bit of a town square with some food stalls. I wasn't very hungry yet though, so I kept going, passing a few restaurants before eventually landing at Emara, a little place serving Yucatan street food across from Mercado 28 (Av. Xel Ha, Sm 27,
998-884-3904). I picked up a
panucho on the left and an
empanada on the right.
The better of the two was the
empanada on the right. Unlike the heavy
pastry-based ones in Argentina, this was much thinner. And in my case, it was filled with
lechón con chicharrón, something my taxi driver suggested that I get. That's not to say that there was anything wrong with the
panucho on the left (basically, the tortilla is filled with black beans), but I just couldn't figure out what the big deal was about the
cochinita pibil topping on top.
See,
cochinita pibil is a Mayan slow roasted pork from the area, and my friends in
Mexico City have talked about it a lot. I've had it before, but it never blew me away. Maybe I just never had a good rendition of it, and thus figured it best to give it another try while I was here. And yet I still couldn't figure out what was so good about it, as it wasn't particularly fatty nor spicy. In that sense, it was just a lot of lean shredded protein. It still went down easily once I garnished it with some salsa and onions though.
