Jungle Lodge Dining Room: "Fancy Buffet Dining" Top 5 Page for this destination Parque Nacional Tikal Restaurant Tip by Bwana_Brown

We found that the meal set-up at the Jungle Lodge pretty well required you to dine Buffet style in their main Dining Room. There was no other option, just pick what you wanted from the particular buffet being served and pay the set price. The tables were all professionally set up with the required crockery and cutlery and the waiters were attentive to all our needs (a little hand-shaking motion with a comment of 'Picante' got me the required hot sauce for breakfast!).

One afternoon we took a walk down to the other two hotels to see if we could order something from their restaurants, but no luck in either case. Only later did we discover that there is a small 'restaurant' area at the entrance to the car park area, and close to the Visitor's Centre (which we had bypassed completely when our van dropped us off directly at our hotel).

Favorite Dish: Our evening buffet meal consisted of a bowl of very tasty soup, chicken breast in red sauce, very crisp carrots/beans Julienne, pasta with sauce parmesan, rice and bun (90 Q or US$12 each) as well as a bottle of cold white wine from Mendoza, Argentina (160 Q or US$21). The wine was a bit expensive, but it was actually quite difficult to get anything reasonable at all for wine in the far reaches of Belize, so we both quite enjoyed this particular bottle! We noticed that one of the tour groups being served consisted of the same crew of professional bird-watchers we had seen more than a week before while we were staying at the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary in Belize. Near the end of the meal, the lights began to go erratically dim before going completely dark - the type of thing that would have had me up and out of my chair in pre-retirement days when my job was keeping the power on! One of the bird-watching group then pulled out a spotlight for some secondary illumination off the ceiling until the waiters came around to each table with candles for a more romantic finish to the meal !

For breakfast, the chef whipped us up nice vegetable omellets (with ham, onion, tomato, red pepper, mushrooms and cheese) to go with our fruit, juice, toast and coffee (60 Q or US$8 each). Overall, I thought the dining room did a great job of it!

Address: Jungle Lodge, Tikal National Park, Guatemala
Comparison: about average
Price: US$11-20
Rating: 4
Theme: Eclectic/International