A Shark Walks Into a Restaurant: Welcome to Bites of Belize

Somebody had to do it. Belize has two cities, a handful of towns, more than two hundred villages, and exactly no honest map of where to eat in them. The big travel sites cover San Pedro and Placencia, wave vaguely at the rest of the country, and occasionally list a restaurant that has been closed since the last hurricane. We thought we could do better. So we are doing it, town by town, plate by plate.

This is Bites of Belize: a guide to eating in the whole country. Not the resort strip. The country.

What you'll find here

Right now the guide holds hundreds of places to eat across dozens of towns and villages, from Corozal Bay down to Punta Gorda. Beach bars where your table is the beach. Chinese kitchens in sugar-cane country. A dumpling house in a village on the Mopan River, which we did not expect either. Fry jack windows, rice-and-beans institutions, one pizzeria on the Philip Goldson Highway that we are very much looking forward to.

Every listing is a real place. When we cannot prove a place exists, we do not list it. When a place closes, we say so instead of quietly letting you drive forty minutes to a locked door. When a place shuts down for the green season, we tell you when it plans to be back. Our rule for what belongs here is simple: if you can walk in off the street and pay for a meal, it counts.

What we mean by honest

Nobody paid to be listed. Nobody can pay to be listed. There are no sponsored posts, no boosted rankings, and no five-star packages, because the whole point of this site is that you can trust it. We write about places after we verify them, and the write-ups roll out steadily. A town we have not finished eating through wears a little sign that says so. We would rather show you an honest sign than a fake review.

Poke around

Start with the map. Every dot is a town with verified places to eat, and the second tab shows everywhere we have not reached yet, which is our to-do list, hanging out in public. If you want the census-nerd version, the full town table lists every municipality in the country. Browse by cuisine if you already know you want ceviche.

Help us eat

Know a spot we missed? A cook in your village who sells out of stew chicken by noon? Tell us about it and we will check it out before it goes up. Been somewhere great? Add your photos on the restaurant's page and we will publish the good ones with your name on them.

As for the shark on our badge: he eats fry jacks, he does not take bribes, and he is very hungry. Welcome to Bites of Belize. Go slow.