Happy new year! I hope yours is off to a great start.
We spent the
first week of January on the white sand beaches of the
Mayan Riviera, at the
Excellence Riviera Cancun resort. This resort is the most amazing, immaculate resort we've ever been to, far exceeding our expectations. I'm going to break our trip down into two posts, one about the food, and one about the property.
There is just so much to say about the food ...
Food in the Room
The
mini fridge is stocked daily with all the
high-end bevvies you could want, as well as
Snickers,
Oreos,
M&Ms, and
Lays chips. There is no extra charge for anything.
Room service is included at no extra charge, and is available 24/7. There is a very extensive breakfast, lunch/dinner, and late night menu. We took advantage of it quite a few times.
We loved the
bagel with lox or
French toast for breakfast. Christopher was a big fan of the
clubhouse any time during the day, and I thought the
quesadillas were a perfect late night snack.
If you're not out of bed yet in the morning, you can even have the food placed in a
lock box that the server can unlock from outside your room, put the food in, and then you access from inside the room;
you don't even have to see anyone if you don't want to.
Restaurants
There are
over 10 restaurants at this resort,
none of which require reservations. We
never had to wait to get into any of them, and you may visit any of them
as many times as you want. They all have very extensive menus that are displayed outside of the restaurant to peruse at your leisure.
Also, this resort caters to whatever your dietary needs might be. All restaurants indicated the
gluten-free dishes with a symbol (including the buffet, which also served up gluten-free bread), as well as
heart-healthy dishes,
vegetarian fare, etc. (See image below - this was typical of all the restaurants on the property):
The hostesses, servers, and even front desk staff (when you check in), ask about allergies/ food restrictions that you may have, and they provide consistent, top-quality service.
Spice is the
Asian restaurant, serving up dishes such as sushi, pad Thai, curries, spiced duck, fried rice, soups, etc. We shared a few rolls, some soup, and a lobster stir fry with huge chunks of perfectly cooked lobster.
Chez Isabelle is the
French restaurant, and it was so good, we went back twice. On
New Years Eve we enjoyed the special multi-course menu, both having bacon wrapped steaks as our main.
We were impressed that the
steaks tasted like at home - and it's hard to compare to Western Canadian beef. The second time we visited this restaurant I had the
duck confit, and was blown away.
The
Lobster House is open for
breakfast,
lunch or
dinner, and has a separate, extensive menu for each. The breakfast menu has typical dishes like eggs benedict, pancakes, etc., and then the lunch menu offers up a variety of salads, soups, and seafood dishes. We liked the
fish tacos.
At dinner time, the menu includes soup, salads, appetizers, and a variety of seafood and meat dishes. You can order
steak and lobster every day if you want to. We enjoyed lobster one day, mine steamed, and Christopher's grilled. There are a variety of different
infused butters to choose from for dipping, and numerous
side choices. There is no extra charge for lobster, like there tends to be at other resorts.
The Grill is the
steak house, and it has everything you'd expect from a steak house.
It is open for
lunch and
dinner. Christopher had a
reuben sandwich, and I had
braised short rib for lunch one day.
There is a
Mexican restaurant,
Agave, which we thought was surprisingly
not great. It was the only one we weren't impressed with, but we might have just had bad luck with what we ordered.
Barcelona is the
Mediterranean-inspired buffet, open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The selection at each meal was impressive, and we especially loved the wide range of
fresh-made juices (with no added sugar or anything). We had fresh
beet juice, and
potent green juice every day.
There are roses on each table in the buffet. No detail is left out at this resort. Also, all the food tasted fresh, and of high quality. Everything was properly chilled, heated, etc. The
infused salts (at lunch and dinner) and
sugars (at breakfast) were over the top - pretty cool. I'm not a big dessert person, but the selections went on and on and on.
One of the
two Italian restaurants,
Oregano, is open for lunch or dinner, with separate menus for each.
It's also connected to the buffet at lunch, so you can go in between both to grab food, and/or order pizza or pasta off of the lunch menu.
 |
| So many choices of marinated veggies, cheeses, olive oils/ balsamics, and everything else. |
There were about eight varieties of hummus, numerous delicious
focaccia breads, from blue cheese to olive etc. Everything was
excellent.
This restaurant was so good, we often grabbed the various
marinated vegetables, and other Mediterranean goodies for a snack, and had to go back twice for the
lasagna.
The other
Italian restaurant was open for dinner and had a variety of antipasti, soups/ salads, pizzas, and pasta dishes.
Flavor Market is a
Spanish tapas restaurant open for dinner.
Our absolute
favourite restaurant was
Basmati, an incredible
Indian restaurant.
We were absolutely
blown away with this restaurant, and made sure to enjoy
two dinners here. Next time we visit this resort, we might just only eat at the Indian restaurant; it's as good as at home, and for each meal we had, we would have easily paid over $100 at home for it (and wouldn't have been disappointed). The menu includes
all the dishes you'd expect, with various appetizer, vegetarian, meat, rice, and naan choices.
I miss
Basmati already. Mmmmmm!
For those looking to
catch a game on the big screen, the
Sports Bar is a great place for bevvies and
snacky food, and it's open late.
Other Food
If
all that is not enough, there is a beautiful
coffee shop where the baristas prepare any coffee drink you desire, sandwiches, yogurt parfaits, pastries, and fresh juices.
There are also
daily coconuts:
Ice cream:
Crepes:
And fabulous
wood fired pizzas thrown into a
to-go box for you to enjoy wherever you like:
As you can probably tell, one week isn't enough to enjoy all the food choices this resort has to offer. It's rare for resort food to be as good as the restaurants at home, but there were so many dishes at
Excellence Riviera Cancun that we'd pay for again and again. We won't even get started on the incredible high-end beverage selection ...
How was your new years eve? What did you do? What about New Years Day? Is 2017 off to a good start for you?
