Student chefs open a pop-up restaurant with the globe-hopping menu
Mérida, Yucatán — The city’s newest restaurant is open, but you’ll have to act fast to catch it. It closes for good on May 25.
With a Mediterranean menu, which includes tajine, moussaka and pasta carbonara, the Orbe restaurant opened on the UVM campus.
The Universidad del Valle de Mexico’s Mérida campus is on the Mérida-Progreso highway, just north of the Periférico. (Map here.)
Operated by Gastronomy students of their next-to-last semester, the restaurant’s theme is “a trip around the world.”
Rodrigo Paredes Carrillo, the manager, says their dishes are representative of four of the world’s most important cuisines: Mediterranean, Latin American, Eastern and Mexican.
The inauguration of the venue presided by Rodrigo himself, accompanied by the provost, Mauro Visconti Aragón, who congratulated the 12 young people who are participating in the project; and Natalia Hernández Juárez, executive chef at the university.
Gastronomy students are responsible for a real-life restaurant project in their eighth semester.
This week’s menu, you can find tapas, couscous, kibbes and flatbread, tajine and shawarma. And for dessert there will be cheese board, tiramisu and macarons.
From May 7 to 11, a menu of Latin American food will include Peruvian ceviche, Argentine empanadas and arepas, with desserts such as bread pudding, Uruguayan chaja (cheesecake) and alfajores, which are delicate cookies from South America, held together with creamy Dulce de Leche.
Students will rotate from the front to the back of the house.
He added that it is a very exciting challenge. “With this work team we have, the challenge of being the best restaurant becomes easier.”
The restaurant caters mostly to the campus but is also open to the public.
The restaurant will be open from Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. On Fridays at 7, Orbe nights offer tasting dinners.
A guard at the front gate will direct you to the right building. Call 981-100-7870 or visit their Facebook page.
Yucatán Magazine has the inside scoop on living here. Sign up to get our top headlines delivered to your inbox every week.