The Marbella seafood restaurant is not an exclusive brand to Cancun. Actually its best version (read “branch”) is in Puerto Morelos, a quaint beach town just 20 minutes South of Cancun.
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting both branches, and by far (way, way far), the one in Puerto Morelos exceeds the one in Cancun. Let me start by saying that this one is indeed beachfront, even with tables on the sand, where you can just get up from your table, take a swim and go right back to eating. The building is a wooden structure in an Organic Modern style, with reeds lamps, local hardwood tables and chairs and wooden planks as steps to their staircases. Even the floors on the dining rooms are made of hardwood.
Needless to say, the Marbella restaurant is gorgeous! And the food is on pair with its beauty. Delicious, extremely fresh but… not cheap.
This restaurant has a sui generis menu, scratched with chalk on a chalkboard, where they show you the price of the seafood by the pound (actually, kilograms, since this is Mexico). Then you can ask for the items on the menu, in any way you’d like to, since no actual dishes are on the menu. For instance, the kilogram of grouper fish was $770 Mexican pesos, and I asked for a 1 kilogram fish, in a style called “spciy fish”, where they take off the meat off the fishbones, bread it, fry it in chunks, bathe it in a spicy Thai sauce and then also fry the fish skeleton and serve it to you. I could have asked for the fish fried, or sauteed or in a butter sauce or a garlic sauce, or any way I could come up with, and they would’ve cooked it to my liking, for the same price.
Same goes for shrimp, lobster (which I thought was extremely expensive), octopus, etc.
My companion had a shrimp cocktail that was heavenly, almost as good as my fish, and the best part was the array of sauces they put on our table: an entire tray filled with all kinds of Mexican sauces, from sweet to mouth-burning-spicy, along with fried tortilla chips.
Cocktails are quite good, and they don’t skimp on the amount of alcohol they put in it. Prices range from $220 to $270 Mexican pesos, so about $13 to $15USD. Soft drinks are $50 Mexican pesos.
The service is almost as good as the food and the view: the hostess was extremely accommodating, giving us free range so I could pick the best table in the place. I even changed tables for a better view after ordering my drink, and they obliged with a smile! The waiters were on top of the ball, discreetly asking if I wanted something else but without intruding in our conversation. They even suggested several ways to have our fish, but I was addamant on having the Spicy Fish, so we politely declined. They explained about the kinds of fish they had that day, and suggested that we came back earlier in the day (they open at 12 noon), to have their highly coveted Rubia fish.
All this, with the best views of the Caribbean Sea, which like I mentioned, I started out enjoying from their top floor but quickly moved to a lower level table. So if you ask me, yes, the short 20 minute drive from Cancun to Puerto Morelos is well worth it, to have a delicious dinner at Marbella Seafood Restaurant. Speaking of driving, there is complimentary valet parking right outside the restaurant, which you can trust (I left my very expensive sunglasses in the car, and they were right there when I got my car back).
Would I go back? Heck yes! I just need to get paid at the end of the month and I’ll definitely go back. If you go, ask for the Spicy Fish, you won’t regret it, and no, it’s not to spicy.
For the delicious food, the outstanding service and the beautiful views, despite not being the cheapest seafood option in town, I give the Marbella Seafood Restaurant a whopping 5 star review!
