Don Emilione Restaurant

"Dinner with the Don"

     OK. It's used to often and you have heard it before and it loses something from over use. But, I have to say it again. "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse." And, at Don Emilione Restaurant it is true.
You are on vacation in a small town on the Mexican Caribbean Coast. It is tropical, peaceful, and cosmopolitan and has many places to eat good food. But, your time is limited and you want to make the most of your moments of pleasure. So, where do you go for a sumptuous food experience in Playa del Carmen? The offer is very easy: Don Emilione Restaurant.
     We had dinner with the Don and he put on a feast that was close to indescribable in quality and flavor. We started with drinks and appetizers of mushrooms sautéed with garlic and guajillo sauce, spinach and cheese empanadas and seafood tostadas. You may say that that is a meal. Well, we say you only live once (as far as we know) and remember your time in Playa del Carmen is limited, so mangia, mangia.
     The soup course was a delectably light seafood soup of shrimp, calamari and cucumber. The main course was rib-eye steak in a tarragon/mushroom sauce and a fillet mignon in a rich red wine mushroom sauce with sautéed vegetables and garlic potatoes. The dessert was a white chocolate cheesecake topped with a chilled fudge frosting. The Don Emilione menu is a broad strong mix of Mexican classics with numerous seafood and/or meat dishes to the point that it would easily classify as a Mexican Caribbean style surf and turf restaurant. There are also pastas and salads on the menu, but the variety of seafood and meat dishes are absolutely incredible. The Don told us that he wants to change the menu a bit. We only hope he doesn't change it too much.
     Feeling as if we were too close to heaven we gladly accepted the Don's call to the bar. After all, this is a moveable feast. We moved to the lit glass block bar with high stools that is stocked to the nines with top shelf quality brands. (This isn't an all-inclusive resort bar. This is the real deal.) Don Emilione also keeps a well-stocked wine cellar with French, Californian, Italian and Spanish brands. We had a sampling of the house mixed drink specialties. First the Bahama Mama went down smoothly. Then the bartender mixed up his Don Emilione cocktail special that lit up the lights. Next, to refresh the palette, we had mango strawberry daiquiris that did the trick.
     Finally, as a "digestivo" (digestive) as they say in Mexico, we had a few tequilas to top off a great evening with the sounds of the piano player tinkling jazz in the background. We thanked the Don for a remarkable time and floated down the street well aware that in Don Emilione we had just enjoyed one of the top restaurants in Playa del Carmen. Indeed, life is beautiful. Enjoy.

     Don Emilione Restaurant is also open for breakfast and serves deli style sandwiches from 10 PM to 5 PM.
      Don Emilione restaurant is located on 5th Avenue North #7, between Avenida Juarez and Calle 2.

Don Emilione Restaurant Grades
Atmosphere: A | Food: A+ | Service: A+ | Music: B

MEXICO CITY - President
     Vicente Fox has unveiled new policies that mark the most explicit admission to date that an 80-year-old land reform a program that came to symbolize the 1910-1917 Revolution, and one that caused endless headaches for people trying to buy land in Mexico - was finished.
     Fox announced a six-year farm policy Monday aimed at clearing up problems in land titles, and his administration declared an end to an agrarian reform program that handed out millions of acres since 1917. "The time came, as it had to, to declare an end to the handing out of land," Agricultural Reform Secretary Maria Herrera Tello said. With most arable land already doled out - and peasant farmers increasingly slashing into protected forests - she said it was time to recognize that "the land does not expand by presidential decree."
     After landless peons rose up in arms in the Revolution, the new government rewarded them with small, often communal farms scattered like a patchwork over much of Mexico. Many of the farms were barely viable, and the same land was often handed out twice, creating community conflicts that persist to this day.
     "History and experience showed us that land reform, by itself, did not solve rural problems or lead to development," Herrera Tello said. "The shadow of poverty fell over rural Mexico, as the mark of an era that had to end."
     Some here say that Fox never much liked the agrarian reform. Fox's grandfather, an Irish-American immigrant who bought a ranch in northern Mexico, apparently had to maneuver hard to keep his property from being doled out to landless peasants at the height of the program in the 1930s. But Fox said the new policy which aims to clear up land title problems, rather than hand out parcels - was driven by reality.
     "As all of us who have worked the land know, the starting point is to achieve legal assurances for land titles ," Fox told a ceremony at the presidential residence in Mexico City.
Fox said that only about half of Mexico's approximately 250 million acres of rural properties had clear titles, a situation that has led to land disputes and difficulties for farmers in getting production loans.
     "This will allow us certainty and confidence in planning our production, and allow us to give our children a secure future when they legally inherit the land,"Fox said. The confusion over rural property - much of which is communally owned, unclearly marked and the subject of dispute - has caused headaches for both Mexicans and Americans.
     In the most recent case, dozens of U.S. homeowners were evicted from their beachside community in Punta Banda, Baja California, 100 miles south of the U .S .- Mexico border. The communal farm that purportedly owned the property gave longterm leases to the foreigners to build homes there - but it turned out the farmers didn't have titleto the land, and a court decided it belonged to a Mexican company. The new owners offered to negotiate new lease terms with some of the residents, at a higher price.
     In 1991, former president Carlos Salinas announced he was ending the land handouts, and enacted reforms to allow individuals farmers title to pieces of the communal farms. There has been talk ever since of disbanding the Agrarian Reform Secretariat, which spends its time now sorting out land disputes.
     Briefly, in 1994, the government returned to its old ways, promising to dole out land again, after landless Indians joined the leftist Zapatista uprising in Chiapas and began taking over thousands of acres of private ranches and plantations there.
     Those promises proved largely empty. But farmers continue to stage protests in front of government offices in Mexico City - the most recent in December demanding they be given a piece of the decades-old dream: free land.

For more informaition on buying land in Mexico:
Purchasing Property in Mexico
 Buying Property in Mexico:
 (Articles in Adobe Acrobat)

 1. Buying Land in Mexico

 2. Ejido versus Private Land

 3. Land Trusts or Fideicomiso

 4. Market Update

 5. Buyer Be Aware

 6. US Financing

 7. Subdivisions in Sonora

 8. Texas Realtors & Mexico

 9. Closed Deal

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