Dal Baffo – Could this be the best Italian and the most pet friendly restaurant in Merida?

I had my human look up what Dal Baffo means. I’m a bilingual dog, but that doesn’t stretch to Italian. It kind of means House of the Moustache. I didn’t see many fuzzy moustaches around, but I saw a lot of saucy ones. You know the kind where humans like food so much they get it all around their mouth and because they don’t have long tongues like us dogs do, they can’t clean it up without a napkin? Yep. Those kinds of moustaches. So, that’s what I think it means.

My humans first told me about Dal Baffo at about the time they had to start wearing their muzzles so that they didn’t get sick or make other humans sick. When that happened, they told me that we would have to stop going out and trying pet friendly restaurants because it wasn’t safe.

Luckily for them, vaccinations came along and things are much safer for everyone. They still are very conscious that other people might get very sick if they catch this horrible virus, so they do wear their masks. They can’t do that when they are eating though, so I had fun watching all the human faces get all saucy and moustachy as the humans said things like ‘Oh my Dogess!’ (they didn’t say that, but that’s my interpretation) ‘This is so furrkin delicious!’ (They didn’t say that either, but interpretations and all that. I’m sure you know what they were saying. Jajaja)

This is their royal welcome. They treat all dogs like royalty at Dal Baffo.

It was a fun night because my humans had guests, who had come all the way from Belize. Their visitors were picking up Little Hazel. You probably wonder who Little Hazel is. Little Hazel is a stuffed toy replica of a real dog in Belize named Hazel. It’s all quite bizarre, but I’ve been taking care of Little Hazel for a while because of this virus and now she’s finally going home.

Let’s get back to Dal Baffo. So, when I arrived, I was treated like the royalty I believe I should have been. They have a specially marked section on the patio marked as Pet Friendly and they had a bowl of cold, fresh water waiting for me. Every time they came around, they checked to see if it was full and topped it up with more water. All of the staff came to greet me and even though the beautiful chef and owner, Flavia, couldn’t touch me because she was cooking, she came and smiled at me with her beautiful face and made my tail wag.

The wait staff knew a lot about the foods and wines that were on the menu and told my humans all about the special cheese they provided, which was a very fancy cheese and none of my humans remembered anything about it, but they liked it very much. I think it is because of the wines that my humans don’t remember much except that they loved the food.

Still haven’t seen the buffalo.
Photo credit: Dal Baffo

Feed this to your humans and they will make weird noises.
Photo credit: Dal Baffo

I’m not very good with human food unless it is tacos, so I’ll describe what I think they had. They have some photos (they didn’t even remember to take photos of the food because they ate it) that they got with kind permission from Dal Baffo. They definitely had lasagna and my humans both agreed it is the best they’ve had. They’ve been to Italy, so they think they are experts (they are not!). Their friends had a pasta and buffalo mozzarella dish (I tried to look behind the restaurant to see where they kept the buffalos but I couldn’t see any) and a fish ravioli that was black because squids inked it. I think that’s like a tattoo, but I’m not sure. Anyway, it was in a lobster sauce and was, according to one of my humans who tasted it, ‘delicate and rich’.

Inked pasta. Like tattoos?
Photo credit: Dal Baffo

They were too full for dessert but have promised that they will be taking me there many times because this is one of their new favourite places. It’s mine too. Everyone was so nice there and I felt truly welcome. I give Dal Baffo 4 paws and a wag of the tail because it is not only pet friendly, but human friendly too and that’s what makes a restaurant extra special.

Dal Baffo Ristorante Italiano

Av Aleman 73

Felipe Carrillo Puerto

97208 Mérida

+52 999 434 4131
EMAIL