Food

What to eat in Mazatlán

This is a serious seafood town, and its food is the main reason the trip earns its keep. Sinaloan cooking leans on shrimp, fresh fish and chile, served plainly and generously.

The dishes to plan around

• Aguachile — raw shrimp cured in lime with chile, cucumber and onion. Sinaloa’s signature; hotter and more liquid than ceviche. This is the one to seek out.
• Ceviche and camarones — shrimp cooked every way, from breaded to grilled to zarandeado. Marlin ahumado (smoked marlin) turns up in tacos and empanadas.
• Pescado zarandeado — a whole fish butterflied and grilled over wood with chile and lime, meant for sharing.
• Fish and shrimp tacos — the everyday staple, best from stands, not restaurants.
• Chilorio and machaca — the meaty Sinaloan dishes for when you need a break from seafood.

Where to eat

• Mercado Pino Suárez — the central market for cheap, honest seafood and comida corrida. Approximate cost for a market lunch: low, often a few hundred pesos or less for two.
• Taco and mariscos stands off the malecón and near the port — where locals actually eat aguachile and fish tacos. Cheapest and often best.
• Plazuela Machado restaurants — the Centro’s atmospheric square, ringed with sit-down places. Lovely at night, pricier and more tourist-facing; you pay for the setting.
• Olas Altas seafood spots — long-running places along the old seafront with sea views and full plates of shrimp.

Approximate prices: street tacos and market plates are cheap; a sit-down seafood meal with drinks in the Centro runs mid-range. Prices are approximate — the site verifies specifics separately.

What a friend here would tell you: eat aguachile where the locals do, not where the view is best.