ENNA (Ennea Hotel)

What ENNA is

ENNA is the restaurant of Ennea, a nine-room boutique hotel in La Punta Zicatela, the sandy surf neighbourhood at the southern end of Puerto Escondido. The hotel was built by three travellers as a small retreat between an ecological reserve and the ocean, and its rooms are named with Greek numerals. The building’s centrepiece is a helical staircase that rises out of the garden, and several rooms are deliberately built without glass in the windows.

The restaurant is open to the public, not just to house guests, and it runs a full day: breakfast every morning, then lunch and dinner. The kitchen is open to the dining room, so you watch the plates being built.

The reason to come is the menu. It was designed by Rodolfo Castellanos, one of the best known chefs in Oaxaca, which means a restaurant in a nine-room hotel on a sand street serves food with the ambition of a city dining room. What it does not have is the stiffness that usually comes with that. When I filmed there in July 2026, what arrived at the table read more like very good home cooking, carefully plated.

Who cooks here

Rodolfo Castellanos was born in Oaxaca in 1980 and won the first season of Top Chef Mexico in 2016. In 2011 he opened Origen in Oaxaca city, a contemporary restaurant built on reinterpreting Oaxacan cooking, and it has been a reference point for food travellers to the state ever since. His style is described in his own material as protecting traditional ingredients and techniques while using contemporary and French method on top of them.

At ENNA he is the author of the menu rather than the cook on the line every service. The house kitchen executes it, with the Oaxacan Pacific as the supply chain: local produce, the day’s catch, Oaxacan flavours pushed toward the sea. The restaurant also hosts visiting chefs several times a year, including cooks from Michelin-starred kitchens in Rome, the Canary Islands and Valle de Guadalupe, sold as a set menu evening.

Awards and press

• Top Chef Mexico: Rodolfo Castellanos won season one in 2016, the first winner of the Mexican edition.
• Origen, Oaxaca: opened by Castellanos in 2011 and widely covered as a benchmark for contemporary Oaxacan cooking.
• Guest chef series: ENNA regularly hosts chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants abroad for one-off dinners. The guest evenings are separate ticketed menus, not the normal card.
• No Michelin Guide listing for ENNA. Do not book it expecting a starred restaurant.

How the menu works

ENNA is a la carte across three services, with the card changing around what is available locally.

• Breakfast, 8am to 12:45pm daily: the strongest value of the three. Avocado toast on house sourdough is the signature, alongside Mexican breakfast plates.
• Lunch, 2pm to 5pm: lighter plates, fresh pasta made in house, catch of the day.
• Dinner, 5pm to 10pm: the full menu, including the huachinango, the local red snapper, fresh pasta and a burger built on 100 percent Silver beef for anyone who wants it.
• Drinks: a short list, plus non-alcoholic options served properly. Coconut water arrives in a cut glass rather than a plastic cup.
• Guest chef nights: set menus at a fixed price, announced on the hotel’s Instagram.

What I ate

Two dishes carried the dinner. The first was a soup that tasted like something a grandmother would make, served plated like a piece of art, which is the clearest statement of what this kitchen is trying to do. The second was the huachinango, the red snapper, which was the best thing on the table and came surrounded with edible flowers. I drank coconut water. The whole dinner came to under fifty dollars, which was the part I could not quite believe at the time.

What it costs

ENNA is the cheapest way I found in Puerto Escondido to eat a menu written by a chef of this level. Prices below are what I paid and what current listings show.

Item	Price
Dinner, per person	Under 50 USD, roughly 900 MXN or less
Main courses	About 310 to 500 MXN, roughly 17 to 27 USD
Guest chef set menu	About 2,800 MXN, roughly 150 USD
Guest chef menu with wine pairing	About 3,500 MXN, roughly 190 USD
Drinks	Charged separately

The guest chef evenings are a different proposition from a normal dinner and should be treated as an event rather than a benchmark. Prices move with the season and the catch, so confirm the current card when you book.

How to book

Booking is not compulsory but it is sensible at dinner, because the dining room is small.

• OpenTable: search for Enna Restaurante, Brisas de Zicatela.
• WhatsApp or phone: +52 954 119 9028. The hotel also lists +52 954 163 8071 on WhatsApp.
• Instagram: @enneahotel.

Ask for a table where you can see the open kitchen if that interests you, and check whether a guest chef dinner is running on your date, because on those nights the normal menu is replaced.

Getting there

• Address: Calle Guanajuato s/n, La Punta Zicatela, Brisas de Zicatela 70934, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.
• Neighbourhood: La Punta, the surf end of town. Most hotels and hostels there are a few minutes on foot.
• From the centre of Puerto Escondido: about 15 to 20 minutes by taxi or colectivo.
• From Puerto Escondido airport: about 20 to 25 minutes by car.
• Parking: sand streets with informal street parking. Walking is easier.

Before you go

• Go for breakfast at least once. It runs every day including Tuesday, when lunch and dinner are closed.
• Closed Tuesdays for lunch and dinner. Check before you build an evening around it.
• Ask about guest chef nights. They are excellent, and they are a fixed menu at several times the normal price.
• Dress is beach casual. The food is the formal part, not the room.
• Bring cash as a backup. Connectivity in La Punta drops often enough to matter.
• Pair it with the neighbourhood. Chicama is the loud Peruvian option a few streets away, and Monte Alpán Bakery is the morning stop.
• Check the hours before you go. The hours on this page come from the venue’s public listings, which drift, so confirm on Google Maps or the venue’s own channels before a special trip.

Watch the visit

The reel above is the walk in through the staircase and the plates as they came, filmed in July 2026. For everywhere else I ate on this coast, open my map or browse the Puerto Escondido recommendations.