Rey David - Fresh Authentic Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Playa del Carmen

I write reviews of restaurants and buffets in Las Vegas for a living, so I'm quite picky with my meals. Playa was a vacation for me and I very rarely, if ever, write about any food outside Vegas, until today.

There are a lot of Italian restaurants in Playa del Carmen. Mainly because there are a lot of Italian expats that moved here. However, few if any are worth the time or money. This however, is the exception.

All I'm going to say is - This is the best Italian food in Playa del Carmen period. No exceptions. Nothing else even comes close.

I should clarify, I mean pasta, not pizza. For pizza, the bast place is a couple blocks away on calle 26. But for pasta, this is the place. Fresh, plentiful, flavorful, and affordable. The perfect combination.

For pizza though, go to the place on calle 26 between 5th and 10th next to the Bio-organico. That is...

My better half and I decided on this restaurant for 2 reasons.

The restaurant we planned on going to was fully booked. The reviews were great!

Unfortunately, our experience was not as wonderful as we'd hoped for the following reasons:

a) The value/quality ratio was definitely off. b) The food itself left much to desire. In fact, every dish seemed, for lack of a better word, off! c) We asked for the bill and waited, at the very least, 20 minutes for it. d) Shortly after, both my partner and I felt sick.

The reason I am giving them 2 stars instead of 1 is because the staff was very nice.

All in all... I would not recommend this restaurant. You can get much better value at other local...

This place is more like a 3.6 but I rounded down cause its current 4.6 rating is way too high. The lasagna is the most mentioned dish in reviews so I ordered that. It tasted good enough but the noodles were overcooked. Had the tiramisu ice cream for dessert. I like the novelty of it but the tiramisu part was hard and icy so that wasn't good. They would be better off serving regular temperature tiramusu with ice cream on the side or mashing it up right before serving, cold stone style. The waitress asked me three times to write them a TripAdvisor reviewer so I think that explains the artificially high rating, as people are probably feeling pressured to give 5 stars while the waitress is...