Seafood Christmas lunch in Campeche (Gulf of Mexico)

Campeche is a very beautiful town in Mexico. If you have ever seen the TV show Gilmore Girls and like the feel of fictional town Stars Hollow, this would be the real-life alternative to it! The only down-side of Campeche for us was the shortage of places to eat!

Gilmore Girl's town: Stars Hollow

There are less restaurants in the town center and, on Christmas Eve, without a reservation, it was almost impossible for us to eat something. Half the restaurants were closed, some had more people than they could handle, and others didn’t even allow us to wait, because we didn’t reserve a table beforehand!

We even tried the town-square cafe that after making us wait for more than half an hour to bring the menu, mentioned that they only had ham and cheese sandwiches. The waiter mentioned this as he was running away from our table (he was some rude man who was all over the place!) so we could never place the order of what would have been the most over-priced sandwiches ever.

Long story short: we ended up eating a hot dog  from convenience store OXXO that, quite surprisingly, was buzzing with people on Christmas Eve!

View of Campeche's town square, from Restaurante Casa Vieja de la Arcada

So, for Christmas lunch, we wanted our revenge and headed to Casa Vieja de la Arcada, a restaurant right in the town square, overlooking the gardens and the cathedral.

Campeche is a sea-side town with waters of the Gulf of Mexico and its typical dishes are based on seafood. And so seafood we feasted on!

Arroz con gambas

I had “Arroz con gambas”, which was a tomatoey rice cooked with plenty of shrimps, with a decorative side of avocado slices and fried banana. Very nicely prepared on the spot, which is so necessary to enjoy rice dishes at its best, before they start feeling like a block of cement.

Filete de pescado a la Mexicana

Ashray had fish “a la Mexicana” (Mexican-style). It is very common to see dishes “a la Mexicana”, could be fish or meat, and this means that basically the steak or fish fillete will include ingredients with all 3 colors of the Mexican flag: capsicum for green, onions for white, and tomato for red.

This meal was a much needed food fix for us. So, thumbs up for Casa Vieja de la Arcada! Good food as it’s meant to be!