Italdo Puts Tulum Back on Mexico's National Bakery Ballot for MexBest 2026

Fabrizio Pellegrini opened Italdo in La Veleta in 2018 with a sourdough starter and his family's slow methods. Eight years later, the bakery is Tulum's only name among 25 MexBest 2026 contenders.

Voting is open now at readerschoice.mex-best.mx, where the national bakery ballot places Italdo next to some of the most decorated ovens in the country. Reader's Choice is the one MexBest prize the public decides, and the winners will be announced during the awards in Mazatlán, October 5 to 7.

The only Tulum bakery on the MexBest 2026 ballot

MexBest, the hospitality awards built by the editorial team behind MexBest.mx, splits its recognitions in two. A traveling jury of critics and industry figures hands out most categories after months of visits. During the 2025 cycle, that jury reported working through 156 restaurants, 100 hotels, 50 bars, and 30 bakeries in more than 28 cities before settling its shortlists. Reader's Choice skips the jury entirely. Anyone can vote, and in 2026 the open ballot covers five categories, with taquerías joining restaurants, hotels, bars, and bakeries for the first time.

The bakery list runs to 25 names from seven cities. Mexico City placed 16 of them, including Panadería Rosetta and Odette, two of the capital's best-known names. Guadalajara holds three spots, Mérida two, and Monterrey, Oaxaca, and San José del Cabo one each. Italdo carries the last one, the only entry from Quintana Roo and the only one baking on the Caribbean side of the country.

Up against the last two public-vote champions

The field is heavy. Karmele, the Guadalajara pastry shop that won the Reader's Choice bakery prize in 2025, returns to the ballot. So does Rin Tin Tin, the same city's winner from 2024. Both arrive with national followings and a home crowd that has already proven it votes.

Italdo's counterweight is habit. The almond croissants disappear before noon, the chilaquiles come crowned with quail eggs, and the terrace fills with the same faces at the same hours. Beating two former champions would take every regular, every past visitor who still thinks about that breakfast, and a fair number of strangers convinced by a photograph.

Eight years of slow bread in La Veleta

Pellegrini, Pilly to his regulars, grew up in a family of Italian bakers and arrived in Mexico, by his own account, with little more than a starter. He built Italdo Café Bistro around the slowest parts of the trade. Long fermentation. Stone-ground flour. Croissants laminated by hand through the humid nights, at least in the early years, when he shaped every one himself.

The kitchen still runs on that patience. The egg croissant and the serrano ham croissant anchor the mornings, the red and green chilaquiles rest on hand-cut tortillas, and the coffee program pulls beans from Chiapas and Veracruz. A vegan carrot cake has built a following among people who normally skip anything labeled vegan. The terrace does the rest of the work: laptops in the corners, locals greeting the staff by name, and travelers who came once on a recommendation and rearranged their mornings after that.

"Bread is alive," Pellegrini often says, a line this newspaper heard from him during last year's campaign. "You have to feel it. You have to wait for it. And when it's ready, you don't rush it. You listen."

That first campaign ended with the trophy going to Karmele. Italdo went back to its ovens. A second consecutive year on a national list of 25 is its own kind of result, and it keeps Tulum in a conversation usually dominated by the capital.

Where and how to cast a vote

The mechanics take under a minute. Open readerschoice.mex-best.mx, select the Panaderías tab, and scroll past the Mexico City block until Italdo appears under Tulum. A dropdown also filters the page by state, with Quintana Roo on the list. One tap on Votar registers the choice.

MexBest has not published a closing date on the 2026 ballot page. Last year the public vote closed on August 2, roughly three weeks before the winners were read out in Guadalajara. With this year's ceremony set for early October, voters appear to have more room, though the organizers can shut the window whenever they decide.

The Mazatlán edition is the seventh in the awards' history, presented by Lexus, and the first held on the Pacific coast. Mireya Sosa Osuna, Sinaloa's tourism secretary, said in early August that the October gathering will bring together more than 300 hospitality leaders from Mexico and abroad.

In La Veleta, none of that changes the schedule. The ovens fire before sunrise and the starter gets fed, the same as every week since 2018. The one new date is in Mazatlán, where a winner's name gets read out loud between October 5 and 7. Last year that name belonged to someone else. Tulum has just under two months to change the ending.

Does Italdo get your MexBest vote this year, and which other Tulum kitchen deserves a spot on a national ballot? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.