I Famosi Italian Restaurant

Some friends of ours had recommended an Italian place near Plaza Las Americas way back in early February, and last weekend Jorge and I decided to try it out.

I Famosi is a small restaurant on Acanceh Street (behind Sports City, for all my Cancun friends). Their menu is pretty extensive, with lots of unique pastas and a wide variety of pizzas.

To start, they brought out a bread basket with a tomato dipping sauce. I could only have 1 bite because of the diet (had to save room for pizza), but it was delicious!

Jorge ordered an eggplant pasta and I had the Riccotini pizza, which was amazing. With my diet I’m only allowed thin-crust pizzas, and this one fit the bill.

When they brought the check out, the waiter mentioned that they weren’t charging us for Jorge’s meal since they gave him the wrong pasta, even though Jorge liked it so much he ate it anyway. I thought that was a really nice gesture.

We couldn’t finish a lot of it, and we ended up taking enough home for lunch the next day. (2 meals for the price of 1!)

Out total was around $120 pesos (my pizza, a water and Jorge’s Sprite). With Jorge’s discounted pasta added in, it would have been a little over $200 pesos. Not bad for a romantic evening!

Show Me Your … Parrot Eating a Tomato??

Today on Show Me Your… I’ll be killing two birds with one post 🙂

The Drama Mama asked to see my fave hangout in Cancun, and my bff from elementary school, Catie, asked to see my favorite food since moving to Cancun. So, today’s post will be about one of me & Jorge’s new fave restaurant in Cancun, “Va Que Va”.

Va Que Va  is a seafood restaurant located in downtown Cancun. Since it’s soooo far out of the way (on the opposite side of Cancun from the Hotel Zone) you’ll never see tourists here. It’s located in an average neighborhood, but you have to drive through quite a few sketchy neighborhoods to get there. It’s worth it though! Here’s why…

The entrance, hiding the restaurant from the street with foliage.

va que va!

4 out of 5 guys at my table drank micheladas

Jorge drank 2 of these! (gross?) Micheladas are basically beer mixed with Maggi steak sauce, worcestershire sauce, tabasco sauce, and lime juice, with salt and sometimes chili powder on the rim. Very popular in Mexico! Here at Va Que Va, they cost about $3 USD each for a liter. For $4 USD, you can get it with a skewer of shrimp in it.

I ordered a shrimp ceviche ($5 USD... that's the SMALL size!) and a frozen lime-ade.

4 of the guys split a platter for about $20 USD, which I believe included 4 kinds of shrimp and fried fish filet (you can pick and choose what you want the platter to include)

A parrot eating a tomato. Why not?

Why, hello there!

A mariachi band showed up...

...and spent the next half hour serenading the table next to ours.

We discovered this restaurant a few months ago and LOVE it. It’s always packed around lunchtime (1 – 3 pm here in Mexico). I think it’s impressive that I have seen no publicity whatsoever for this place, and yet it’s huge and fills up quickly. Just word-of-mouth, I guess.

Show Me Your Front Door, Neighborhood and Car

For today’s Show Me Your (fill-in-the-blank), I’ll be taking up three requests.

Tiffany from Incredibly Fierce, Leslie Limon from Motherhood in Mexico, and Kathryn from She Don’t Make False Claims each asked to see something, so here goes:

Tiffany asked to see the view from my front door…

Lovely view of a tiny front yard and some potholes. I will say that my window faces out onto this same view, and it's nice to hear the birds singing from that tree out front. 🙂

 Leslie Limon asked to see my neighborhood:

Here's my street...

I'm right next to a middle school, and the kids hanging out on the balconies sure do scream a lot. (This was my fiance's middle school, btw!) Man those potholes look especially nasty after a night of rain, don't they?

Some lovely grafitti (No, we don't have gangs and delincuents in my hood. It's from those lame middle schoolers... hence the crappy quality and lack of imagination.)

This just happens to be one of my fave streets in the hood because of the cute houses and pretty yards, and I usually end up walking down it at least once a day.

I found some of the elusive canteloupe bugambilias I referred to the other day in a previous post.

pretty!!

These seem to be a cross between the "neon canteloupe" bugambilias (still can't find those) and the fuschia bugambilias

This is my favorite tree in Cancun! We don't have many big trees around here (something I miss about Virginia), so this is a fun substitute.

The trunk of my fave tree

I am DYING to get into this garden. It has eluded me for 2 years now. Doesn't it look like it has amazing stuff inside?? There are huge flower trees, some cute white buildings, and huge bushes in there. Let me in!

another view... *sigh* someday it will be mine

Kathryn asked to see my car. I have no car. So what do I use? THESE!!

My taxista let me take a picture of him this morning!! Our taxis are white with green stripes down the side. They charge around 2 or 3 USD to take you anywhere downtown. ("Tips are appreciate" HAHAHA)

So there you go… that’s pretty much what I see every morning on my way to work. 🙂