Craft beer at Vidanta Nuevo Vallarta: no draft IPA, 140 pesos a bottle, and shrimp tacos at Salum
A bottle of IPA at HUAMA Cervecería, the beer trailer at Salum inside Vidanta Nuevo Vallarta, was 140 pesos on 13 July 2026. The Corona we drink in our room costs 33. That gap is most of this story; the rest is that we went for the draft, again, and there was none, again.
It was our eighth day at the resort. We walked to Salum, the food-truck market by the beach, with two errands: something to eat with the evening’s beer, and the draft IPA we have never once managed to drink there. However many times we have stayed here, whenever we have walked over, the tap has been dry. Our last try had been two and a half years before. This time, surely.
What we bought to go from nine kitchens across the resort is in a longer post. This one stays with the beer, and with what we carried home when the beer did not happen.
Why an IPA is worth the walk here
The Mexican beers we drink are lagers. Corona, Dos Equis, Modelo: lagers, all of them. IPA, which the two of us love, we almost never see.
In the room it is Corona, 33 pesos each; the ones we drank that evening came out of 48 we had bought the day before. The resort shop’s shelf prices are in our supermarket post.
A little after noon, beer turned up at our room for nothing: two Corona Extra and two Pacifico Clara, 355 ml each, with a bag of tostadas (thin, crisp-baked corn rounds), a dip and a bar of 62% cacao chocolate. A second delivery later in the day brought chocolate with nuts. We don’t know why. The day before had been a birthday; maybe that was it.
The walk to Salum
Salum is a bit far from our room. The path heads toward the beach, past Café del Lago, onto a wooden boardwalk with mangroves beside it, by a fountain pond where water birds gather, and past a pool with the sea beyond it. Just walking, we were sweating.
According to Vidanta’s own page, Salum is not one restaurant. It is twelve food trucks and stands along the beach, laid out like a market. There are tables on the sand facing the water.
HUAMA Cervecería, on paper
The beer trailer has a turtle-shaped sign reading HUAMA CERVECERÍA, and TRADITIONAL MEXICAN BEER on its side. The menu board is headed CERVEZA MEXICANA ARTESANAL, Mexican craft beer, and lists the styles: LAGER, ALE, PORTER, and INDIA PALE ALE. There is a line for CERVEZA ARTESANAL MEXICANA DE BARRIL, Mexican craft beer on draft. Down at the bottom: DEGUSTACIÓN DE CERVEZA, BEER FLIGHT, with a QR code.
On the sign alone, it is everything we want.
What happened at the counter
Nobody was there. Nothing had changed in two and a half years. A row of tap handles was there, as it had been last time, when nothing came out of them either. For a moment, it did not look good.
After a while, someone from the staff came over. Draft IPA, please.
Bottles only. Again.
And the bottle was 140 pesos. At 33 a Corona, that is four Coronas with change left over.
“You can drink IPA in Japan these days. Shall we leave it?” said my wife, and there was nothing to argue with. We did not buy one. A draft IPA two and a half years in the waiting will have to wait for another trip.
What we took home
We had given up on the IPA, not on the food. Waves N’ Tacos is a taco truck in the same Salum, AUTÉNTICA TAQUERÍA under its name. The board had tacos on the left: al pastor, carne asada, chorizo, rajas poblanas, champiñones (mushroom), pollo a las brasas, rib eye, campechano, costra de asada, and Olvidado de Camarón, the shrimp one. On the right, TACOS ÁRABES Y QUESADILLAS: quesadilla natural, quesadilla de asada, árabe de pastor, árabe vegano, gringa. Then sides: cebollitas asadas, salsa mexicana, chicharrón de queso, guacamole. There was no price on it anywhere.
After some dithering we ordered just two things: two shrimp tacos and a beef quesadilla, to go.
Two Taco Olvidado de Camarón, 190 pesos (95 each), and Quesadillas con Carne Asada, 110. Total 300 pesos, with US$18.75 printed underneath. That was the whole day’s spending. The day before, the birthday, had come to 4,415.50 pesos.
Back in the room, with Corona
We walked back the way we came, past the pond and its fountain, showered off the sweat, and opened a Corona.
The free tostadas went first, with the dip: cream cheese, dried tomato and something else we couldn’t place, a Western sort of flavor. On a crisp corn chip, with beer, it works. There were about five, and then there weren’t.
Then the shrimp tacos, warmed in the microwave. They are simple, shrimp and onion more or less, but the corn tortilla was well toasted and fragrant, and the shrimp were well seasoned. Simple, and good.
Two salsas came with them, a red and a green. The red one is really hot, sweat-from-the-nose hot, and it is also what makes the taco taste properly Mexican. The two of us said “good” over and over and otherwise ate without a word. The beer went down fast.
The beef quesadilla, also microwaved, had melting cheese, plenty of finely cut beef, and avocado inside. Good as well. Tacos here are good wherever you buy them. It is Mexico.
The pizza question, settled for now
The first beer was gone in no time, so a second Corona Extra, and from the freezer the large Pizza Extravaganza we had bought at Balche three days earlier, 385 pesos. “The pizza’s as good as ever,” said my wife, and it was. Pizza saves the two of us.
One slice each with the beer and we were fairly full. The room was cool that day, and it was comfortable. A third beer, sipped on its own, doing nothing much.
We still wanted a little more to drink, and had room for a little more food. So, the other frozen pizza: the Pizza Giovanni from room service six days before, 315 pesos. One slice, microwaved, and the fourth beer.
“This one’s better after all.” We agreed on that. Three days earlier, with the same two side by side, the verdict had been too close to call. This time we landed on the same answer. Balche’s is good too; the Giovanni is just better.
“Why is this so good?”
“Cheese in Mexico is good, isn’t it.”
“It is. The cheese is good.”
The fourth beer went slowly after that.
Was the bottled IPA worth 140 pesos?
For us, no. It was more than four Coronas, and we can drink IPA in Japan these days. What we wanted was the draft, and on our visit HUAMA did not have it, as before.
If you love IPA and you are staying at Vidanta Nuevo Vallarta, the bottle is there, and whether 140 pesos is fine is your call. We will try for the draft another time. The walk still got us what we had gone for in the first place: something good to eat with the beer.
Practical bits
- Where: Salum is the beachside market at Vidanta Nuevo Vallarta. Vidanta’s page (checked July 2026) describes it as twelve food trucks and stands. HUAMA Cervecería and Waves N’ Tacos are both inside it.
- Walking: from our room it was a bit far and a sweaty walk in July. We didn’t time it.
- Draft IPA at HUAMA: not available on 13 July 2026, nor on our previous visit two and a half years before. Bottled IPA was 140 pesos on 13 July 2026.
- At the trailer: nobody at the counter when we arrived; a staff member came after a while. The board offers a beer flight; we didn’t try it. HUAMA’s hours and how it takes payment, we didn’t check.
- Waves N’ Tacos prices: none on the board on our visit. Ours: two shrimp tacos 190 pesos, a carne asada quesadilla 110 (13 July 2026). The receipt says taxes included and prints a US dollar figure under the pesos; the tip was not included. We put it on the room bill.
- Hours: Vidanta’s Salum page gave Waves N’ Tacos 17:00 to 22:45 when checked in August 2026, yet our receipt is stamped 3:29 p.m. on 13 July 2026.
- English: HUAMA’s board has English lines (MEXICAN CRAFT BEER, BEER FLIGHT), and “draft IPA, please” got a clear answer. The Waves N’ Tacos board has small English lines under some of the Spanish dish names.
- Takeout: the tacos came in a cardboard box with the two salsas and reheated in the room microwave.
- For scale: our Corona was 33 pesos each, July 2026.
The 785-peso Malbec, the priciest of the reds we bought, stayed shut again that night.
Facts checked 2026-10-07. Prices, hours and menus are what we saw on our visit; they change. Nothing here was sponsored or comped.
