La Pigua — Restaurant in Campeche

This is a special restaurant - from the gorgeous setting (built to emulate a Mayan house), to superb service, and of course great food. While this could be a dress up place, I was casually dressed as were other diners. I ate here twice in one week. It’s known for it’s Octopus for a good reason. It was delicious. I also had the Pan du Cazon which is a local specialty made of baby shark.

I had a once in a lifetime experience here as I was invited into the kitchen and helped prepare my second meal there. The kitchen is very clean and professional. The space is small (as are all commercial kitchens) and the staff were very warm and friendly. Arrangements had been made for me to attend at the market with a guide as my Spanish is poor. We shopped for ingredients from a list provided and then was shown in La Pigua how to make the shark dish. The chef was really nice, patient and knowledgeable. I learned how to make the multi step sauce, cook the shark in 2 stages and how to make tortillas. I fear my tortilla skills are poor and much of the kitchen was laughing with me at my initial efforts! Plated professionally, my dish looked amazing and tasted amazing too!

I highly recommend this restaurant. It’s won many awards over the years for good reason. It’s considered one of the top 3 seafood restaurants in the COUNTRY! Its reputation is justified. My meals were memorable even the one I did not help cook. While it costs a bit more than some places in Campeche, the experience, professional service and great food are worth the small premium. Friends in Merida tell me they sometimes make the 2 1/2 hour drive just...

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. This place was recommended by everyone. Don’t get the seafood cocktail. They drench the beautiful seafood in canned tomato sauce and/or juice without doing anything to it. You get this nasty canned tomato taste that overpowers the seafood.

The guacamole appetizer was fine, but they don’t give you enough chips. I ordered the whole fish which was pretty good. Not great, but good. My wife got the coconut shrimp. Decent, but not great. We got there a little over an hour before closing after a torrential downpour. My perception was that they didn’t want to be there, and we did feel somewhat underdressed because we were on a road trip with no dressy clothes since it’s so hot in the Yucatán. We were the only ones in the restaurant. Maybe we ordered the wrong items. For USD it was not very expensive, but for the Yucatan it was pretty pricey. I could have eaten two meals that were just as good somewhere else. Not worth the price...

Beautiful restaurant inside but that's where it pretty much went south. We had a difficult time ordering it seemed as if the waiter was in a hurry, not sure if he really listened to to is order individually. The stonecrab soup was served in an acorn squash which was odd. It was definitely too sweet tasting and the squash was raw, uncooked. We ordered 2 shrimp and pasta dishes with seperate sauces: one came with 12 shrimp the other 3. When we asked the waiter why the discrepancy he said one dish had shrimp that were larger than the other when they were pretty much the same size. The catch of the day was marginal, the vegetables and potato were served cold. After pointing out the issues they apologized and gave us a complimentary slice of coconut cake which was recently unfrozen, the texture was horrible and you could barely taste the coconut. I think there are far better seafood restaurants to choose from...