Casa Gaviota - Esmeralda K

Every time I come to Tulum this is one of my first stops!! Erik and his staff are always friendly and will do anything to make sure you feel at home and have and amazing time. This is a must in Tulum!!

Had lunch here on our first day in Tulum, we were the only ones in the bar which is always a worry but then it was early. We were recommended shrimp taco platter for two which seemed expensive at 400 but it was a lot of food! The only beer they done was corona in a can but the cocktail menu looked good so we will be back to sample those. Good service, same 4 songs seemed to play over and over though which got a bit annoying!

This place is a tourist trap. We had a reservation at the place next door, but when we got of the taxi they pretended to be this restaurant. I asked if they had the reservation on my name, they said: ‘yes, welcome Alex, we were waiting for you’. We did not know this and they insisted that we had a drink. In the mean time we contacted a friend from Tulum and he said that we were at the wrong place. So before the drinks came we felt scammed and wanted to leave. They tried to blackmail us by calling the police if we would not pay a certain amount. Unfortunately we were forced to pay and then had to leave. DO NOT GO HERE

We sat down at this restaurant looking forward to more traditional Mexican dishes. Once we sat down and ordered our drinks we were notified that they only had beef and octopus left. All Dishes with pork, chicken, shrimp or anything else were not available. We later found out that they were also out of avocados and guacamole. A little disappointed but hungry, we ordered dinner anyway. Everything was on the little slow side but we immediately noticed that there was only one waiter servicing the entire downstairs and upstairs tables what must have been 30 tables or more. We received our nachos which we gladly accepted before our main dish. After finishing the nachos and drinks we realized that it had been over 45mins and we still hadn’t gotten our main dish. We then noticed that the table of 4 that sat down 30mins after us all get their food and at that point I had to say something. No options and we were totally forgotten. The worst part was that the manager blamed the waiter for not placing the order when he clearly placed the order for the nachos and drinks we ordered everything at the same time. Additionally the poor waiter was running up and down the stairs waiting on too many tables for one person. The manager should have made sure there was more staff during the busiest week of the year. Moving forward, I will not support a business that treats their employees and customers that way.

Nice Mexican food – pretty standard stuff but well executed and a nice atmosphere. We were looking for a “go to” place for our week here and this looked like it was it until we came to pay…. We got our (handwritten) bill and it had three figures on – the net cost of the food as advertised, then 15% added for the Propina (tip), then another number with no explanation. When we questioned this there was a bit of discussion between the waiters and eventually they decided it was the IVA tax – it was 16%. So, no issues with paying a tip (nice of them to calculate it at 15% but all Tulum seems to do this) but the IVA should be included in the advertised prices….and they’d calculated it on the advertised prices plus the tip as well! A bit of a debate didn’t really get us very far so we gave up and paid up. Oh, and we had to ask for our change as well – this seems common in Tulum – I’ve only ever seen this in NYC so maybe some of the Americanisms have carried over. As we were finishing our drinks another member of staff came over and asked us how much we had paid in total then went off and had a discussion with the waiters. I suspect the waiters had bumped up the bill and he’d found out but we didn’t hear any more. When we left we heard the waiters laughing amongst themselves as they said goodbye…….we laughed every other night that we walked past the place and went elsewhere. Talking to the owners at our hotel about it afterwards they seemed quite disappointed by this but said it did happen – apparently it’s called Gringo Tax…..make your own mind up.