It's 8 PM on a Wednesday, and Calle 23 A smells like cheese and woodsmoke. Antica Roma is filling up. Table by table, the way it does every night. Couples settling in. A glass of sangria, so red it looks like it could stain linen, getting poured at the table nearest the kitchen. Then the fettuccine starts coming out, plate after plate, steady as clockwork. The kitchen at this Los Pinos restaurant doesn't stop moving until close to midnight.
Antica Roma sits at Calle 23 A No. 350, between calles 34 and 36, in the residential quiet of the Los Pinos colonia. It has a 4.7 rating from more than 2,000 reviews, and it's one of those Mérida restaurants that locals treat as settled. The debate isn't whether to go but what to order. The fettuccine has the most devoted following, though the sangria runs a close second. Prices land between MX$100 and 200 per plate, which keeps the place accessible for a weeknight dinner that nobody planned. Open daily from 1 PM to 11:30 PM (11 PM Sundays), it caters to Mérida's late-dining rhythm. Reviewers keep returning to two words: romantic and accessible. The kind of place where dinner stretches past three hours and nobody minds.
Fifteen minutes north, on Calle 27 in San Esteban, Due Torri takes a different approach. This is a smaller restaurant, with around 680 reviews and a 4.6 rating, but what it lacks in volume it makes up for in precision. The oven is what everyone talks about. It shows up in review after review, referenced the way people talk about a favorite bartender or a lucky parking spot, with affection that borders on superstition. The lasagna, Due Torri's signature, comes out of that oven with the top layer of cheese bubbled and golden-brown at the edges, each layer underneath holding its shape on the plate. The pasta, the ragu, the béchamel, the final crust of browned cheese: they stay distinct, and when your fork breaks through, you hear a faint crack before the steam rises. Comfort food that someone took seriously.
The carpaccio at Due Torri has its own following. It's the appetizer that slows the meal down, thin-sliced and dressed with oil, the kind of opener that makes you pause before picking up your fork. Music plays throughout the evening, another detail reviewers consistently mention, filling the room without competing for attention. Due Torri sits at Calle 27 No. 349-A, between residential blocks where you could walk right past without noticing the entrance. Open from 1:30 PM on weekdays (1 PM Sundays) until 11 PM, with prices in the $$ range, it runs on the same philosophy as Antica Roma: good Italian food at prices that don't punish you for eating out twice a week.
Back on Calle 23 A, the sangria glasses are refilling and the fettuccine plates keep coming. Antica Roma won't close for another two hours. Nobody looks ready to leave. Mérida's Italian restaurants don't compete with the city's Yucatecan food scene for attention, and the regulars at these two places prefer it that way. Antica Roma and Due Torri have both figured out the same thing: keep prices reasonable and the kitchen open late. The food does the rest. In a city with well over 500 places to eat, both fill up on a random Wednesday. That says more than any star rating could.
