Travel Diary II: Finest Playa Mujeres (A Review)
"Life Done Beautifully" the theme of The Finest Playa Mujeres by The Excellence Group.
& in our opinion, life was done beautifully throughout our stay :)
Ratings:
Food: 🌟🌟🌟.5/5 Room: 🌟🌟🌟🌟/5 Service: 🌟🌟🌟/5 Pools: 🌟🌟🌟/5 Beach: 🌟🌟/5 Activities & Entertainment: 🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
Design: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
Overall: 🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
Read on to find our review of The Finest ^-^.
Loves (<3)
Our Favourite Restaurant: Le Petit Plasir
Description: Le Petit Plaisir is a French restaurant that delivers classic fare from traditional French cuisine. All of the plates are delivered with great care and decorated as if cooking itself is a form of art.
Hits: Appetizer: Country duck breast terrine, peach compote, raisins and spice syrup & the soups (only 3 on the menu and all 3 were divine),
Main: Beef tenderloin finished in a flamed Cognac, onion confit with Port wine and potato mousseline, Grilled beef tenderloin with mushroom and ceps sauce or green peppercorn sauce along with sautéed cambray potatoes We also tried several other appetizers and mains but none were as good as the above. We went to Le Petit Plasir 3 nights in a row and pretty much ordered the same thing.
Miss:
Raw beef tartare with French fries - the French Fries are to die for, but the raw beef tartare really tasted like a raw hamburger pattie :S
Grilled scallops with pumpkin cream and green oil reduction - was good but for some reason all Mexican scallops are more soft and not stringy and chewy like the scallops we were use to. But, other than the texture, the flavours are great :)!
Tomatoe and tuna tartare with “Espelette pepper” - wouldn't say this is the best tuna tartare I've ever had, mediocre dish.
Shout outs to: Fredy, the best server ever!! Make sure you ask to sit in Fredy's section :)
Foie gras - appetizer
Tomato & tuna tartare w/ Espelette pepper - appetizer
Beef tenderloin finished in a flamed Cognac, onion confit with Port wine and potato mousseline (in mini Le Creuset pots) - main
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Our Favourite Cocktail: Fire & Fire at the main Bar (the red martini shown in picture above)
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Our Favourite Drink: Custom drink at The Sweet Shoppe - ask for the hazelnut lattee w/ extra hazelnuts, coconut ice-cream and nutella. Remember to tip :) Also, don't forget the awesome hazelnut ice-cream and coocnut ice-cream with REAL coconut bits!
Shown from right to left: raspberry & pistachio cake, 4 hazelnut ice-craems
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Our Rooms: the rooms at The Finest are exactly like the photos on the website. The rooms are motion sensored, so when you open the closet or the bathroom door or walk into the shower, the lights turn on automatically (Side note: if you stand still for a long time, blow drying your hair or doing your make up, the lights sometimes turn off, it was pretty funny because we had to wave our hands dramatically to get the lights to turn on again). There is also a button right beside the bed that turns on or off all of the lights in the room, which I found quite amusing. The rooms are spacious with a modern, minimalist design. AND don't forget 24 hour room service <3<3<3
View from the porch
View from the hallway
Room Service @ 10:30am Breakfast From right to left: Steaks & Eggs, Coffee, Fresh Papaya Smoothie, Fresh Watermelon Smoothie, 2 Sunny-Side up Eggs, Ham & Sausages, Scrambled Eggs & Ham & French Toast
Room Service @ 3:30pm Mid-Afternoon Snack? From right to left: 2 garden salads, basket of bread, grilled chicken breast & mashed potatoes, french fries w/ gravy, grilled pork chops w/ garden salad, cream of seafood soup & fresh fruit platter
Coffee Break on the porch :)
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Our Daily Must-Go: The Market Kitchen
The Market Kitchen is where you can dress casually and enjoy dishes from literally around the globe, buffet style :P! Very modern interior and huge selection of fruits (PAPAYAS), vegetables, bread and meat. We went here almost everyday for breakfast, lunch and sometimes even dinner if we're still hungry or just for dessert.
Huge salad selection with a variety of different nuts and seeds (pistachios, almonds, peanuts, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, seasame seeds, chia seeds etc.), salad dressings and vegetables. Made to order stir-fries and fresh fish salads.
Seen in picture: self-made salad, mixed fish salad w/ cilantro and purple onions, made-to-order stirfry fish
From left to right: self-made salad, fruit platter (papaya, watermelon, pineapple), more self-made salad
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Our Favourite Show: The Urban Show
There's a show every night at The Finest. Some of them are a lot better than others (in our opinion), but I think some of the other ones are geared for the older generation (e.g. The Elegance Show showcased all the different types of ballroom dancing, which my grandma would of loved ^-^). Our favourite was The Urban Show which consisted of break dancing, beat boxing, krumping and other street dance performances. Overall, the shows were all good, we stayed up to watch most of them.
Likes (^^)
Duke's Lobster & Seafood: An outdoor terrace restaurant with a view of the beach. Lots of lobster, shrimp, scallop and fish dishes. The White wine marinated lobster risotto with Parmesan cheese and Grilled lobster with triple sauce ( fine herb butter sauce, red “mojo” sauce and saffron sauce) were both good. Except the portions were really small so the boys weren't full (I was though :P). Is it weird to order two entrees at an all-inclusive resort?? We ended up going to The Sweet Shoppe after for some coconut ice-cream :)
Lobster and asparagus salad with orange vinaigrette and garden herbs
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Lizo: Lizo is the Mexican restaurant of The Finest, serving international dishes, authentic Mexican and Southern Tex-Mex specialties. The dishes were good, but what made this restaurant super special was our server, Luis. He was VERY friendly, and always happy and he even brought us a try of different Mexican salsa to try with out tortilla chips (which was a great experience, BEWARE of the green salsa.. super spicy). I think we spent the longest time in this restaurant overall and enjoyed ourselves very much. This would of totally made it into our LOVE category, but we decided to choose only 1 restaurant to feature. But LIZO is definitely second to Le Petit Plasir.
Shrimp and scallop broth with epazote and mini cob corns
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Brass Steakhouse: This was a very popular restaurant, there was always a huge line-up at the door, ~ a 1-2 hour wait because The Finest had a no reservation policy. But despite the wait, the food was mediocre, the steaks were a bit bland and the grill marks were quite burnt, you could taste that it was burnt even though the inside was medium rare, which was good. We all ordered a different steak, but they all ended up tasting the similar.
Left to right: Moijto, Cranberry Juice, Pineapple Juice, Martini
Grilled beef tenderlion w/ sauteed vegetables
Tomato "pisto" soup with marjoram and lemon oil
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Insieme Trattoria (Italian Restaurant): Choose from a variety of antipasti, salads, homemade pastas and wood-oven pizzas while over-looking the main pool. When we had lunch it was during the Name that Song contest, so it was great entertainment :)
Smoked salmon with candied lemon and rucola “focaccia” - didn't really enjoy this, maybe because it came last and we were all really full, but we found the focaccia a bit soggy from the smoked salmon and sauce
Traditional beef lasagna with vegetables and mozzarella cheese
From top left to bottom right: “Arrostiti” tuna with grilled bell peppers, garlic and parsley, Traditional beef lasagna w/ vegetables & mozzarella cheese, smoked salmon w/ candied lemon & rucola focaccia, Squid stew with “Calabresa” chorizo sausage & Queen Pizza (Tomato sauce, fresh tomato, mushroom mix, sweet ham, mozzarella cheese and oregano)
Improvements
The Beach: Not really under the control of the resort, but the beach wasn't the prettiest beach in Mexico. There was a lot of seaweed and tiny rocks around the shoreline of the beach, so it wasn't very nice to swim in compared to the Playa Norte beach on the Island of Women (Isla Mujeres) < but to be fair, this is rated the 2nd prettiest beach in all of Mexico. We sorta knew this before we booked the resort, thanks to the comments on Trip Advisor, but this being our first trip, we didn't know if we were going to spend that much time at the beach since there's a lot of other things we could do. But, we did :P We found ourselves lounging, reading, floating around the beach almost every day, and even if you don't, your pictures will turn out a lot prettier. So, note to self for next trip to Mexico, pick the beach first and find an all-inclusive resort that borders on that particular beach.
You can see the layer of green that accumulates around the shoreline of the beach. But overall, still very pretty :)
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Front Desk Service: The front desk was a hit and miss depending which representative you got. Make sure you know what you want or do your research before you speak to them because they don't always tell you the right information. Sometimes it'll be just whatever they could tell you to make you go away the fastest. When we went on our DIY Isla Mujeres Trip, the concierge told us we didn't need any big bills since vendors outside the resort will have change. No..., they don't, and even if they did, they'll probably say they don't so you'll over pay them. Which is understandable since many of them work all day in very hot and humid conditions, but at the same time I don't appreciate being lied to or misinformed. But, I must give credit to the Concierge that helped us on the last day we were there, he went out of his way to contact our travel agent to check our pick-up time for the airport.
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The Juice Bar: A great idea, but very bad recipes or baristas? I'm not sure if the specific baristas that served me everytime I went there was just really cheap? Or the recipes were just written like that. The pre-made smoothies in the machines were good, but were almost always melted by the time I got there, since the machinese were outside all day, so I usually opted for the menu. But, when they make it from scratch, there's always too much water or ice. The one time I asked for a papaya smoothie, it was literally 4 pieces of papaya and the rest was ice and water :S.
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Shoji: This has got to be the worst sushi I've ever had in my whole entire life (No exaggeration). A "green dragon" roll was made up of 65% rice, a little bit of carrot, mayonaise, avacado and fake crab. For the "green" effect instead of using avacados, they used kiwi... The "rainbow" roll was made up of different colour dyed rice paper with some black seasame sprinkled on top, filled with strawberry jam, different types of fruits (kiwi, strawberry, mango etc.). We ordered a few rice and noodle dishes like the Shrimp “Pad Thai”, Burnt pasta with spices and shrimps and they were okay... but VERY salty. We actually went there to try the Teppanyaki stations, but they just sat us down in the main restaurant. We then asked the hostess and she said you have to book the Teppanyaki station at 5pm, an hour before the restaurant opens. But, it doesn't say this anywhere in the booklets or newsletters (However, it does say that the restaurants do NOT take reservations) and the concierge never told us :S So, note to self, if it's something different, ask if there are special requirements.
Thank you for reading our review :) We hope this helps you with your decision!
Don't forget to check out the photography section for more "better quality" photos :P These photos were all shot on my Samsung Galaxy S2 phone :P << super old
Much love, xoxo Bear & Bun
Disclaimer: This review is not sponsored, all opinions are our own.
