After exposure most of our lives to the cheese-drenched, sweaty sour cream encrusted “Mexican” fare of the northeast, one of the things we immediately loved most about Mexico was the food. You’re hard pressed to find a vat of mock-guac or anything named a “Fiesta Bowl” for miles around. What we loved was the simplicity of food here…take the best chicken you’ve ever had, squeeze some lime on it, and pile it in a corn tortilla that someone’s grandmother made just that morning. It will be one of the best things you have ever had.

That being said, we still carry a bit of New York with us in our hearts, and one of the things we miss most about our old lives was the breadth of food options, with good ingredients combining in startling, delicious, if not fussy ways. So with our two business partners in town, we had to try Trotter’s.

Trotter’s is the latest creation of the Trotter family, already a Merida legacy for their Pancho’s and La Tratto restaurants. One is a tongue-in-cheek Mexican celebration, where the waiters wear two foot sombreros and cork-filled bandoleros, and everything is done with a wink and a nod. While we appreciate the scenery of Pancho’s, the food there is more of an afterthought. La Tratto, the South Beach-style italian restaurant, is a gringo favorite here in Merida as well. But with Trotter’s, the formula is perfected.

The first thing that confronts you when you walk in the door, is that you are standing in the middle of a truly beautiful restaurant space. There is a sunken dining area, which leads outside to a back patio. The lighting is soft, twinkling, and it is clear great attention has been given (as it is in all Trotter family restaurants) to the atmosphere that is such a large part of what makes a restaurant a destination.

We took our seats outside at 11:30 at night, and spent a solid half an hour gazing at the menu. I drank a perfectly respectable vodka martini (a rare find in Merida), and then the four of us assaulted the appetizer section of the menu. The red snapper carpaccio was brilliant; thin slices of fish, cooked only in the acidity of the sauce, served with bread bits. The pate rustica was unlike anything our partners had ever encountered…a sensual whip of goat cheese, shrimp, lobster, and blossom squash, served with cheesy toast points. While not my favorite dish, it was enough to immediately see that we were in for an evening of eating unlike any we have enjoyed in quite some time.

The attentive staff (I want to say that we had three different waiters, each anticipating our every need) cleared those dishes for the next round of appetizers. I discovered that, in fact, the tuna tartare was my perfect food, invented just for me. This was when I started really thinking about the meal, and what was making the food so special. It is that, in a land of quality basics, it was so refreshing to enjoy a dish that was greater than the sum of its parts. It was not the tuna, the dill, it was the combination of these ingredients into an entirely new food that really started getting me excited about what was (still) to come.

The only moderately underwhelming starter was, for me, the beef wellington. Though glamorous in presentation (shrink a normal beef wellington, slice it, starter!), the inclusion of cheese, chopped up bits of beef, and what can only be described as a Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup-vibe were a little off-putting, considering what had led up to it. It wasn’t BAD, by any stretch of the imagination. But if Philly Steak and Cheese Hot Pockets were available here in the Yucatan, no one would likely bother with this particular appetizer.

By now, thoroughly exhausted by what had passed through our minds and mouths, the salads arrived. Nothing particularly exciting, here, though for a “house salad,” there was a little bit more going on than I had expected. The lettuce was bright, not at all bitter, and the surprise inclusion of fistfuls of sesame seeds was, at least, interesting.

With each new plate that came, our awe of Trotter’s grew. Our dinner partners had a Red Snapper dish, and the Kobe beef burger, each delicious. I now completely believe in the Kobe beef system; as it turns out, massaging your cows with sake and letting them drink beer really does make an enormous difference in the quality of the dish. This ain’t your mama’s meatloaf…ground beef has never felt more at home as a part of fine dining.

Jillian enjoyed some kind of Chilean Sea Bass affair, which was delicious and distinctly different from the other fish dish on the table, but I was too engrossed in what I had chosen to notice much else. A new dish, their beef tenderloin medallions, rolled in espresso and served with lightly batter-fried asparagus spears and a piping hot ramican of broccoli au gratin had led me to ignore my dinner mates. In this dish, again, your mouth is surprised, and delighted by the unexpected collision of separate ingredients into an entirely new food. The meat was cooked perfectly rare, and the strong coffee that hit your tongue first changed the rest of your chew. The broccoli au gratin was equally perfect and in fact, by the end of the evening, Jillian was offering me $40 for just one more bite (when she wasn’t too busy stealing bites right out from under me).

A fine glass of port and the check followed. While expensive by Yucatecan restaurant standards, it was in line with what you would expect to pay for a far inferior, less sophisticated meal anywhere in the States.

If it’s not clear by my somewhat pornographic descriptions of the evening, we loved this restaurant. While I have no doubt we will still hit our favorite dollar taco stand here in Progreso at least several times per week, it is a relief to learn that, when the mood strikes us, the complex flavors of home are still available to us here in the Yucatan. Go to Trotter’s. Run.

Circuito Colonias between Calle 60 and Prolongación Montejo (next to the Renault dealership).
Reservations: 927.2310.