Charly's Vegan Tacos "CVT" — Restaurant in Tulum

Massively overrated. I don’t understand all the reviews raving about the food - guessing others haven’t tried other taquerias (vegan or not). Flavours are bland. Some of the tacos are spicy, but lack an actual flavour. Guac was pretty bland and disappointing. We had better in a resort in Playa (which I never thought I’d say!) The setting is nice and the ambiance is a win. Be aware it’s cash only. There’s a cash machine right out front, but it’s USD only, which is useless for a place that charges in pesos. Also that cash machine charges an $8 USD transaction fee. Head a couple mins down the road to Rosa for a peso machine with a more reasonable fee (116 pesos). Overall, insanely disappointing and wouldn’t recommend/go again. Much better places in Tulum - including vegan places.

Edit: they gave the bill with the USD price and price in pesos. The USD price was easily several dollars more than the cost in pesos. Paired with USD ATM out front, these guys are clearly running a good gig for themselves, but not for paying...

The flavors at Charly’s were really delicious like most reviews show. The staff was very friendly and the salsa/pickle bar was all very good.

I am not a vegan so take this part with whatever grain of salt you need... My only issue with the menu is how much seitan is used. My hope was that they were using more local veggies and flavors to create something really great, but I don’t necessarily understand replacing meat with compressed gluten. Charly’s boasts on their menu ‘the best vegan tacos of LA’ and the seitan to me kind of shows they are LA tacos in tulum.

But regardless of that, they really do know what they are doing with flavor, everything was all very good (although I do think it was a bit pricy).

If you are vegan I highly recommend Charly’s. If you are intrigued in trying the best seitan has to offer, I recommend it. If you are a meat eater, I would maybe take a pass.

Side note: cocktail was one of the best I had in tulum. So worth a stop for the guacamole and...

PSA - Not a standalone restaurant, part of the all-inclusive offering at a hotel, so it's private for hotel guests

Rating 5 stars for visibility and because the waiter was very nice. We saw Charly's on google maps and because the photos include a menu with prices we assumed this was somewhere we could go and buy food. We walked down the beach and found it tucked behind the beach sun loungers at the Aia resort, however we were pretty quickly approached and informed (politely) that Charly's is one of the all inclusive restaurants at the resort and it's not possible to buy food there. The waiter was confused when we pointed out that there are menu photos on google, but as these are quite old I think they relate to the physical location in Tulum rather than the truck in playa.

So - looks nice and I'm sure it is, but there are no reviews highlighting that this is not an option unless you're staying at the resort, so I'm just trying to help others not make the...