We were wandering through an old, mostly boarded up outside mall looking for a place to have breakfast. The Mayan architecture was beautiful but unfortunately the whole place looked like it had seen better days. Like so many other things in Cancun, it was the victim of being poorly built and maintained. The weather was blustery and dark clouds threatened overhead. We knew we were going to need to seek shelter soon. Then we turned a corner and to our relief, we found this very romantic, cozy little restaurant hidden in a small breezeway that could provide us much needed shelter from the weather. I suddenly felt like we had stepped into a very romantic movie scene.
We were barely seated before the blustery weather turned into a fool on tropical storm. Gusty winds blew the torrential downpour in one end of the breezeway, lightening sporadically lit up our tiny shelter and thunder roared like cannons. Fortunately, we were seated just far enough from the raging storm as to not be too affected by it and the employees worked ceaselessly to sweep the water away before it invaded the area beneath our feet. The ambience was perfect.
The day may have been harsh and threatening but the sweet, welcoming people that worked at Ninfa's were not. They were warm and welcoming and were very patient even with us dumb gringos that could not speak any Spanish. A tip to people traveling to other countries: Try to learn something more than la cuenta por favor (the bill please).
Fortunately, another customer came by to get a cup of their amazing coffee and was kind enough interpreted for us. Believe me, I am a big coffee drinker and this was the only place I found a decent cup of coffee while in Mexico and that includes Starbucks. Anyway, at this point, our waitress and a couple of other people working there were trying to ask me what kind of meat I wanted on my omelet but I thought they were telling me about all of the meats they were going to put on my eggs and so I kept repeating gracias. I even repeated muchos gracias like an ignorant gringo but, unfortunately the word "muchos" did not improve the situation. I had downloaded a language interpreter to my phone but my phone stopped working the moment I arrived in Mexico. It was very fortunate that this young man just happened to appear like a super hero through the raging storm.
I ordered a ham omelet and coffee and Ida ordered a vegetable omelet and a cappuccino. Everything was really good. Our breakfast was served with both toast, which seemed like it was made from homemade bread, and tortillas.
I will treasure memories of our food, the atmosphere, and the hospitality of the workers forever. read more