Best of Tulum

These are roundups rather than reviews: for each one we picked a handful of places we would send a friend to, and left out everything we would not. Where a famous name is missing from a list, that is usually deliberate.

Tulum’s restaurant scene splits roughly by geography, and the split matters more than any ranking. The beach road is where the internationally known names are, with the prices to match. Tulum Centro is where you eat well for a third of that, and where most of the best tacos are. La Veleta and Aldea Zama in between have quietly become the most interesting cooking in town, because that is where the people who work in the beach-road kitchens actually live.

A note on prices, since it causes more upset than anything else here. Beach-road restaurants frequently price in dollars, add service automatically, and run a different menu in high season. None of that is a scam, but it does mean a dinner can cost four times what the same meal costs twenty minutes inland. The neighbourhood guides below are organised so you can decide which of those you are in the mood for.