Sayulita is a hidden gem along Mexico’s pacific coast just north of Puerto Vallarta. The city has seen a significant rise in development and tourism over the last decade or more, with a recent influx of residents who moved there during the pandemic.
Here are some of my favorite spots which should help streamline your culinary adventures.
I spent a lot of time at Sayulita Public House because the Champion’s League, NHL and NBA playoffs were all on at the same time and I wanted a sports bar with good food. This spot offered much more, like knowledgeable bartenders with legit mixology skills, a diverse premium tequila and mezcal program, and tasty, creatively plated American gastropub fare with local twists when possible. For instance, a tuna melt featuring fresh ahi with jalapeno, and fish and chips with breaded local dorado and patatas bravas style seasoned potato wedges.
The Public House is also a great place to get advice about where to go and what to do in Sayulita from both the staff and the locals sitting at the end of the street level bar. After a few tequila cocktails and yelling at the Knicks on television, I started asking about some of the best places to eat in town, and multiple people recommended Italian or pasta spots, which I thought was odd, considering I’m in a Mexican surf town.
It turns out the Italian food in Sayulita is surprisingly good with La Rustica, Trattoria Toscana and Marcolino Pasta y Vino all being solid options. But one stood above the rest, and delivered one of the best dishes I had the entire trip.
Zingaro could easily pass for a trendy Italian restaurant in Soho, NY, Beverly Hills or Chicago in design, service, and food quality. The small tasting menu has about nine dishes to choose from, and also offers three and four course options. Do yourself a favor and get the four, you want to taste as much as possible.
I let the suave, not quite hipster floor manager, (who I also think owns the place) pick for me, which is the way to go. I wouldn’t have ordered a few of the dishes he chose, and I would have brought the dishes out in a different order then he did, and of course he was right, so you’re in good hands with this guy.
Let me describe a few of my favorites, which should give you an idea of just how serious this place takes its food.
The first was a dark red beetroot pasta adorned with a few pine nuts sitting on top of a bright green pesto. The color contrast and plating technique make this dish a stunner, but the surprise comes from the pesto, which tastes surprisingly smokey. This turbo charges the earthy beet flavors while still retaining the familiar high green notes of a proper pesto, with the pine nuts providing some needed crunch to the texture. This would be a good pasta dish anywhere in the world.
The second dish was pasta alla gricia, one of the oldest Roman pasta dishes on record — it pre-dates Italy importing/cultivating tomatoes — and has only four ingredients: pasta, guanciale, pecorino romano and ground black pepper. Those four ingredients combined to make one of the most enjoyably complex combinations of flavors and textures I’ve tasted in a long time. The dish is plated with huge tubes of pepper flecked rigatoni stacked like a log pile and just begging to be removed one piece at a time with the slide of a single fork sliver, like some sort of edible pasta jenga.
The flavor starts with a sharp saltiness from the pecorino that fades into a creamy umami bomb of guanciale playing off an impossibly wide array of peppery flavors. To achieve this, they use four different kinds of pepper (one is aged in house), and three different grinds of coarseness, impressive. I was not expecting this level of detail and execution with the food on this trip, and Zingaro is not the only restaurant in town operating at this high level. In fact, it was the chef from Suenos Creative Cuisine and Cocktails that told me to go there, as I was finishing up my first dinner at his place.
Suenos Creative Cuisine is one of the nicest dining rooms in Sayulita with elegant, cushy art deco banquettes, a gorgeous bar up front and a more casual space with another bar in the back.
The menu has an extensive section of small plates, from simple, local concepts, like daily changing homemade bread and butter and house made charcuterie, to more adventurous international preparations like a coconut fried chicken bao with spicy cucumber Gochujang emulsion. Very intriguing.
I let the chef pick a few dishes with the caveat that I was going to a second dinner a few hours later, so lighter is better. First up, the daily homemade bread which was a charcoal pita with basil, garlic, rosemary confit followed by an equally delicious and visually alarming heirloom tomato and devil cucumber salad. It looks like the tomatoes are being attacked by alien cucumbers that resemble ninja throwing stars.
Apparently, the devil cucumber is nearly impossible to work with, and pictures of this dish impressed and confused chefs across town for the rest of my trip.
For the main, it was simply grilled, properly seasoned swordfish with a swordfish skin chicharron on top providing some flair and crunch to the dish. Proof that this talented chef, working with a broad spectrum of flavors and ingredients, has the rare skill of knowing when to edit yourself in favor of letting fresh local ingredients be the star of the plate.
Kahlo is another great option for elevated authentic Mexican cuisine with a modern twist and a great wine list with many options available by the glass. There is a serious looking pizza oven in the back and yes, the pizza is good, but it was the shrimp Kahlo, which is 4 huge local shrimp swathed in a clingy, bright red “spicy house adobo” set over their version of mashed potatoes. These (mashed potatoes) were actually oven warmed tortillas broken down into something that looks like polenta but tastes like mashed potatoes with hints of charred corn from the influence of the oven. The staff is knowledgeable about their wines and the Sauvignon Blanc from Guadalupe was a wonderful pairing with the spicy shrimp.
For traditional cuisine around town, my favorite taco spots are Mary’s for fish tacos (honorable mention for The Real Fish Taco), Yeikame for steak tacos on some deliciously dark blue corn tortillas, and Naty’s for Marlin tacos.
Many locals recommended El Rinconcito for shrimp and fish tacos during the day (apparently it becomes a different business at night), but I never made it. Most taco spots in Sayulita have an almost Sichuan style black chili oil and selection of local sauces on the table. Use the black chili oil on everything, figure out your favorite local sauce, and you’re guaranteed to see it at other spots around town.
If you’re in the mood for a slightly gimmicky but unique local street dish, try the Itacate Burrito at, you guessed it, El Itacate. It’s a burrito with a shell made entirely of mozzarella cheese instead of a tortilla (like an Italian frico), filled with steak and grilled veggies, and yes, it’s as good as it sounds. Take out the steak and this would be a fantastic veggie burrito as well. For Al Pastor, the quality in Sayulita is good across the board, but a couple of my favorites are Tacos El Ivan or Tacos al Pastor Diaz late night.
If I could improve one thing, it would be the integration of Mexican wines onto more lists across town. I appreciate the availability of well-known international producers and varietals, but more often than not, if it grows with it, it goes with it, and I want to drink more Mexican wine with my Mexican food in Mexico.