Zihuatanejo: Dinner for 20

Hello all. I will be spending Thanksgiving in Zihuatanejo and need dinner recs for 20. Having never been to Zihuatanejo I am hoping someone here can offer up some good advice. I am looking for somewhere that:

Offers delicious food
Is a good value
Is downtown or near Playa la Madera
Has a nice ambience and/or even better, a view of the bay

Thanks for any suggestions you have! We'll be there all week, so please share with me your thoughts for breakfast and lunch too!

Went there for the first time this year; spent two weeks in January at Hotel Irma on Playa Maderia. Lots and lots of good eats all over. Walk along the main section of Playa Maderia and eat any where along the beach. I can't remember all the places we ate so here are the most memorable. I'll try to look up the address information and post back later. There are great places to eat all over....

Breakfast? Hands down La Casa Cafe. You'll go back there every day just for the coffee. Grown and roasted locally, it's great! Owners are from Seattle area....they might have recommendations for dinner.

Next door to Casa Cafe is a little spot called De Donde Eres. We went there on day 3 and ate there about 6 more times. It had just opened up two days before we arrived. Menu changes daily. Neek and Sabrina are the proprietors; awesome people. Food is amazing. I had the best Caesar salad ever there.....*sigh* You could check with Neek and Sabrina to see if they would accommodate your party. It would be WELL worth it.....but don't expect traditional....She's Italian and he's from the South Pacific (island name escapes me....I'll add that too!)

There are a couple bakeries that are great too! One right on the other side of the canal from La Casa Cafe. Another downtown....both are wonderful.

Links:

La Casa Cafe: .http://amistadzihua.freeyellow.com/page1.html

ZihuaRob's board: http://www.zihuatanejo.net/
Check out the restaurant listings and message board.

Zihuatenaju/Ixtapa message board: http://www.zihuatanejo-ixtapa.com/messageboard/index.html
Lots and lots of stuff on the home page too!

Note - those two boards have a love/hate thing going on. Take some things with a grain of salt. Lot's of good information on everything on both of them.

Stay FAR FAR FAR away from Bandito's. We should have guessed it from the name....bad, bad, bad. One couple we were chatting with while waiting for our order to arrived summed it up like this "We like it because it's Americanized". Why go to Mexico!?!? Lots of people like Coconuts. We didn't go there because the prices were REALLY high (did I say REALLY high? REALLY high!). I'm sure it is good but I want street food; and it's everywhere.

Thanks dees_1! I've heard Zihuatanejo has some of the best eats in Mexico, particularly when it come to street/beach vendors. Which is perfect for the rest of our stay, but wouldn't be good for our large croud on Thanksgiving. Thanks for your recommendations...I will definatley be having breakfast at La Casa Cafe (are you able to buy coffee to bring home from there?)

You say De Donde Eres is not traditional Mexican...what kind of menu is it? Italian?

Thanks again!

Food in El Centro along the beach is great! You can't buy the coffee beans at La Casa Cafe but ask the owner and they'll tell you where they get their beans. I have that information at home and provide it here later. We brought home 3 bags of beans from that place....amazing!

De Donde Eres is hard to describe. Neek (who is from Fiji) cooks with a lot of different influences. Their menu changes every day, based on what they can get at the market. I can't really pin point what their menu focus is but there are Indian, Italian and island influences in their dishes. I know they like to make curries and various rice dishes. Seafood is prominent (duh, being right on the ocean!) as are vegetables. They try to have a vegetarian dish every day (I'm going back six months here!!!).

The other thing you can do is check out La Casa Cafe's website and see if they have an e-mail address. Send them a note and ask if they could talk to De Donde Eres about your group. If De Donde Eres can't accommodate you, maybe La Casa Cafe can make an alternative recommendation.

Hands down the best of many excellent meals I had in Zihua was at La Gula, on Calle Adelita # 8 right off of Playa Madera. Dinner is served on a beautiful terrace overlooking the beautiful landscape (not the water), and is creative and deliecious. Most memorable for me were 2 items: fresh mozzarala and banana rolled in breadcrumbs, lightly fried, and served over a fresh tomato/ basil salsa. And an ensalada de palmar: hearts of romaine, hearts of palm, and hearts of coconut served in a martini glass with a creamy dill dressing. Everything at La Gula is incredibly fresh and prepared from scratch daily by a well-trained and friendly chef/owner working in an open kitchen.