Labna

Description:

• Coming for a meal at Labná is like a very special trip to a Yucatecan home, a place that serves delicious Mayan food and treats you like a friend. Specialties include a sublime lime soup, poc chuc (marinated, barbecue-style pork), chicken or pork pibil (sweet and spicy barbecue sauce served over shredded meat wrapped in banana leaves), and appetizers such as papadzules (tortillas stuffed with boiled eggs in a pumpkin-seed sauce). The Labná Special is a sampler of four typically Yucatecan main courses, including poc chuc, while another specialty of the house is baked suckling pig, served with guacamole. The refreshing Yucatecan beverage, agua de chaya -- a blend of sweetened water and the leaf of the chaya plant, abundant in the area, to which sweet Xtabentun liquor (a type of anise) can be added for an extra kick -- is also served here. The vaulted ceiling dining room is decorated with a mural of a pre-Hispanic Yucatacan scene, as well as with black-and-white photographs of Mérida, the capital of the Yucatán, dating from the 1900s. A local trio plays weekend afternoons.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Highly Recommended 2010