Tag Archives: food

Cimaco Gourmet Restaurant: Something Different, with A/C

Greg and I have wanted to go to the restaurant in Cimaco, the department store in the Gran Plaza, ever since it opened. We figure that up there on the second floor, with all those windows and that terrace, it must be a pretty good view. And as we are quickly approaching the heat of summer, the air conditioning didn’t sound bad, either.

The interior is modern and fresh—they call it European style—and the views are spacious. We were delighted to find a menu offering a selection of foods we don’t regularly find in Mazatlán, including loads of great salads and international main dishes. Cimaco Gourmet has a pizza oven, and on Tuesdays if you buy a large pizza you get a small one free. They also offer a variety of custom, non-alcoholic drinks, served in cool Mason jars, and have a respectable wine selection and full bar.

Cimaco Gourmet is open from breakfast (I believe they said 8 am) through 11 pm, and the terrace will be especially inviting on a summer evening. The restaurant has a full bakery on site. While we didn’t try any bread, pie, cake or pastries, I will say they looked really good! Again, quite international, not just the traditional Mexican baked goods. By the way, the department store sells its bread half price after 8 pm, and it has quite a few bread options with Splenda instead of sugar.

Click on any photo below to view it larger or see a slideshow.

The menu
The menu
Restaurant interior
View from the restaurant
Pizza special on Tuesday
I loved how they serve the special drinks, this one a pineapple horchata
My salad
Greg’s pita sandwich
They deliver
Children’s play room with babysitting service
Cool furniture in the bathroom/lounge

The store has a children’s play area right next to the restaurant, with supervision. You can pay to leave kids or grandkids there while you shop anywhere in the mall, and your first hour is free if shopping at Cimaco.

Greg and I found Cimaco Gourmet a welcome addition to the restaurant scene here in town. When you’re looking for something different, for a bit of space so you don’t have to sit on top of someone else, or when you’re looking for some good air conditioning and a view, check it out and let us know what you think.

¡First Annual GumboFest A Complete Success!

P1270023A most gorgeous, sunny yet not humid day; a historic setting; a view to die for; the joy of partying with some of the most entertaining people in Mazatlán; all the oysters, peel-n-eat shrimp, salad and gumbo (of course cake and ice cream, too!) anyone could possibly consume; plus beer and soft drinks—such was Mazatlán’s first annual GumboFest! The event was put on by Gustavo’s Kitchen and Amigos de Mazatlán, in an attempt to build community support for saving and restoring the Casa del Marino and Fuerte 31 de Marzo, and to teach us all a bit about local history. Click on any photo to view it larger or see a slideshow.

One of my favorite parts of the afternoon was that each table was covered with brown butcher paper, and the peel-n-eat-shrimp were theatrically dumped on each table from a bucket at the top of a ladder. Great touch and very fun! (Please try to ignore that fun-loving woman screaming at the end of the video below…) It looked to me that about 200 people attended, and Judith, Gustavo and Gustavo Senior tell me that the event was such a success that they plan to hold it again next year. How often do you get good gumbo in Mexico??!! Call us lucky!

View of the crowd
Those handsome local historians 😉
Enjoying the shrimp
Judith, Mark and me
Enjoying the shrimp

A trio played live music, including both Latin and jazz, the children from the Salvation Army Home performed folkloric dancing, and Antonio Lerma and Nicolás Vidales told us, in English, the history of the battle with the French that took place here, dispelling some myths in the process. Gustavo Sr’s wife, Silvia Lorda, and the inimitable Rubye Hinton both graced us with their singing.

Folkloric dancing by children from the Salvation Army Home
Folkloric dancing by children from the Salvation Army Home
Antonio Lerma dispels some myths
Rubye regales us, to everyone’s delight
I didn’t realize that Silvia had such a terrific voice!
Rubye regales us, to everyone’s delight
Fabián, a new and very talented young friend
Alonzo and his incredible equipment, a wonderful new addition to our city
Folkloric dancing by children from the Salvation Army Home

AngelTouchFilms published a wonderful short (30 second) video about GumboFest, with terrific New Orleans jazz, me eating an oyster, and loads of other smiling happy people. Enjoy it, below!

Congratulations to everyone involved! Can’t wait for next year!

Palapa Mariscos Los Porteños

IMG_0868 Lots of changes these days amongst the palapas on the malecon. Many of the changes were precipitated by the storms during the summer of 2014 while other changes are just natural turnover and expansion. One of the more intriguing changes for us is the addition of Palapa Mariscos Los Porteños. Why is this intriguing to us? Well Los Porteños is one of the better known Bandas of Mazatlán (click here for video). It is an interesting concept to have the owner of a banda group open a palapa with the same name. One of the other welcome changes along the malecon is more banda music beyond the strolling musicians. More palapas are welcoming bandas to play at their restaurant, including of course, Mariscos Los Porteños. The day we ate there the band playing featured various members of local bandas. They were getting in practice time and played very well together. Their vocalist lacked a microphone, so he would sing at your table with the band remaining stationary at the end of the restaurant. A nice touch. Songs were 100 pesos each, but spread among 12 guys, that’s not a bad deal. We negotiated four for 300. IMG_0884 IMG_0908 We found Palapa Los Porteños to be excellent as far as palapas go. First, it is new, which means it is clean and a little more modern than others. It is larger than some as well with ample beach seating under umbrellas or seating under palapas. The kitchen is fast and efficient and the servers friendly and dedicated to your satisfaction. The palapa is well built with attractive supporting beams. The kitchen pick up area features a matching wood face that is unique to Mazatlán palapas. It has a very unique and deceiving floor which you can check out in the photos.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We have long kept a tradition of dining at a palapa each Friday. Originally this was to celebrate Danny surviving another week of school, but now just a chance to remember why we live where we do and celebrate the end of a work week. We have kept a list of palapas in order north to south with our likes and dislikes and relevant comments, but it is sorely in need of updating. After the commotion of Semana Santa, I am committed to getting this done and will publish it for everyone to use and comment upon. Until then, take off your sandals, order a cold beer and some fish or shrimp and enjoy Mariscos Los Porteños. You will find more or less across from the Sands Hotel. Coming south from the acuario, it is the second palapa. Across the street are things like Qualitas Insurance and the Mara Gymnasium, Scorpio V and the road to the bus station. Provecho!

Update: The band contacted me and gave me the website for the restaurant.

Private Estate Bottling Tour in Tequila

P1250141

My favorite Reserva de la Familia’s collector box

 

My favorite tour in the quaint pueblo of Tequila, Jalisco, is of Herraduras. The hacienda is beautiful, and the people are very welcoming and down-to-earth. I’ve generally avoided Cuervo, because I see it as such a machine. We have friends who love it, however, and they recently took us with them on a private bottling tour there. I HIGHLY recommend it!

Firstly and most importantly, every person on the tour gets a bottle of La Reserva de la Familia. This is INCREDIBLY smooth and easy-drinking tequila, leaving no hangover, and comes in an annual collector’s box designed by the artist-winner of their annual contest. We paid LESS THAN THE PRICE BELOW for a six-hour day that included a tour of the fields, the hacienda and gardens, a tasting, snacks, and our private bottling!

P1250136

First let me show you what our day included, and then I’ll give you the scoop about what I learned about how to get the best deal.

We started by getting into a van to drive out to the fields. Below are some photos of the demonstration we had there, where Ismael, one of Cuervo’s long-time jimadores, demonstrated to us how they uproot and trim a blue agave. Most of the hacienda tours will include something like this.

Click on any photo to enlarge it or to view a slideshow.

Ismael, the jimador
Trimming the blue agave
Trimming the blue agave
Ismael with a piña he’s just uprooted and trimmed
Inside the piña, or blue agave
Skin cream made from the blue agave, 50 pesos a jar
Our group
Our group and Ismael
Closeup of Ismael, one of the faces of Cuervo
Saddle blanket
View of the agave fields
Had to pose with Ismael
Love the rock walls
View of the agave fields

Next, we went back to the hacienda (not as old as Herradura, and we definitely felt it was more for show than to get work done in), and had a tour and explanation of the distilling process. In a group of about 30 people (it was a puente weekend), we saw the ovens, the tanks, the barrels. We sampled the leftover agave after it’s finished baking—it was good! Nice and sweet, sort of like sucking sugarcane. We also did a tasting of various tequilas out of the barrels. Again, most tours at most haciendas include something like this, and to me, Cuervo is not the prettiest hacienda.

Greg sampling directly from the barrel, lol
La Rojeña, the name of Cuervo’s hacienda
The reception area
Tops of the tanks, at garden level
A portion of the classic car collection
Names of the jimadores’ tools
The ovens
The agave after it’s been baked
A couple of the kinds of barrel tasting we did
The tequilas available for sampling
A beautiful and very huge mural in the hallway of the hacienda

From here we broke off from the group tour and went down into the cellar, where we would have a private tasting of Reserva de la Familia. Now we became about ten or twelve people. Again, it was a puente weekend; I believe that on a regular weekend we would have been fewer people.

The cellar was gorgeous—hard to take photos in, as it was so dark. We were allowed to drink pretty much all the Reserva de la Familia we could handle in the 30 or 40 minutes we were down there. Of course, we were already buzzed by the time we arrived in the cellar!

My favorite part was that we were instructed on how to use a copper ladle (benencia or ladrón) to dip into the barrel and fill a brandy glass. This part was a whole lot of fun, and unlike any other tour we’ve taken.

Entrance to the cava
The benencia or ladrón
I was highly successful at filling glasses 😉
I was highly successful at filling glasses 😉

So, by now we’ve been “sampling” tequilas for about three hours, and this last cellar visit gave us the chance to sample the best of the best. Now we got to (try and stay vertical long enough to) climb up the stairs and go to a tasting. A TASTING? Seriously?! Oh my!

This took place in a gorgeous room all set up special. We were joined by a few additional people, so we were maybe four family groups in all. Our terrific guide for the day, Rosy, taught us a bit about how to smell and taste three different tequilas (the brandy snifter in the photo below is my leftover Reserva de la Familia from the cellar!), using a plate of tastes and smells (coffee beans, cinnamon, lime, etc.) to help us.

Next we thankfully got a bit of a break, and even some fresh air! We walked out through the gardens, after which we sat down to eat a few of the snacks that were included in our tour. Our break took place in a gorgeous little courtyard, and we had a beautifully sunny day. To my memory (which by now is quite fuzzy), they tasted great. We enjoyed chatting and laughing with the kids who came by selling fresh-made bread and rolls.

Our by now quite happy group
The snacks we received on our tour
The cute “bread boys”
One of the “bread boys”
Another “bread boy”

Finally we got to the BEST PART. We went back down into the cellar and got to bottle our very own private Reserva de la Familia bottles! We filled a clean bottle from the barrel. We corked it, wrapped it with tape so that it would be easy to open, then dipped the cork and tape into wax. You can tell by the photos below that my wax dipping didn’t come out as “clean” as it should have, but I sort of liked the artistic result.

Once the bottles were corked, we had to glue on the labels. Somehow our guide felt the need to straighten each of the labels I put on; can’t imagine why that would be. Our estate bottle numbers were officially registered into a log book, and we were able to hand-letter a personal message on each of our bottles. LOVED IT!

Finally, our bottles were wrapped in tissue paper and placed into the collector box, which is a different design every year.

Greg seems to have a pattern 😉
Filling the bottle
Tape for our bottles
Dipping the bottles in wax
Oops…
Glueing the labels
She kept straightening my labels, not sure why, lol
My almost finished private reserve bottle
Hand-lettering a personalized label (for Danny)
Bottles getting wrapped
Our four boxed bottles
Our four boxed bottles
Four boxed bottles and four happy customers

Once our six-hour, wonderful day finished, we were able to walk around the hacienda further, have another round of something to eat, and shop in the gift shop. Since we had four identical boxes, plus a fifth matching box at home, I asked Rosy if she wouldn’t trade me out for a different box. I’d spotted a cool Japanese woodblock print-looking rabbit box earlier. Sure enough, Rosy did me that favor, and now we have two different kinds of collector’s boxes.

Thanking Rosy, our guide
Conclusion of our tour
Clock and bell
Closeup of the bell
Menu at the snack bar
Bottle changes color when it’s cooled
Bottle changes color when it’s cooled
Rosy helped me change out my box
Loved this Asian-inspired box set
Boxes by year
Cuties in the gift shop
The Cuervo crow
My new box

 

We stayed at a clean, bright hotel conveniently located right on the plaza, steps from the church, called El Jardín. You can see the affordable rates in the photo below. We were happy to spend the night in Tequila; we hadn’t done that on previous visits. As much tequila as we’d “tasted,” we were glad to have the hotel! The plaza at night was hopping, and we ended up with souvenir clay cups or jarras, which our bartender kindly filled with fresh fruit juice and tequila (because of course by then we were thirsty again).

Tequila, looking at the church
A municipal building with a gorgeous mural
Mural of the city
Mural at night
Courtyard of our hotel
Hotel El Jardín
Hotel rates
Statue on the plaza
Moon over the church
Plaza at night
Making our jarras
Fresh fruit juice and tequila

The next morning we walked around a bit more, and enjoyed breakfast with Rosy, our guide from the previous day. As usual, I enjoyed people watching—kids playing music, men and dogs snoozing…

Man and dogs snoozing in the plaza
Men in the plaza
Children’s band
Our breakfast group
Makes me chuckle
The church
Thank you, Rosy! Thank you, Paco and Vero!

Okay, so here’s my advice if you want to do this tour. First, go online and get your Mundo Cuervo membership card. This gives you all sorts of different benefits. Next, “like” Cuervo’s Facebook page. There they share a bunch of special offers, contests and discounts. We were able to have our membership card upgraded to one of the top levels, which allowed the two of us to get our six-hour day including everything above for just 2900 pesos! Of course, we also had champion negotiator, our friend Paco, do the bargaining for us. Even at normal cost of 1600 pesos, however, the bottling on its own is a good deal, but the total price we paid blew me away for everything we did.

Tequila is a fun trip no matter what. Private bottlings require scheduling ahead of time, so if you want to do that, be sure to call ahead.

 

 

Wonderful Mezcal Tasting, Right Here in Mazatlán

P1250590

Heiman presents, with Chef Alastair at his side

Last week we attended a mezcal tasting at Water’s Edge Bistro, that very beautiful, tranquil and delicious restaurant in Centro Histórico at Sixto Osuna 48, on the corner of Niños Heroes.

Heiman Russek Negrete, from Mezcal Minotauro, joined us from Durango. Mezcal Minotauro distills organic mezcales made with wild agaves/maguey plants. Heiman gave us a brief presentation on the history of mezcal, in very good English, shared with us information on the types of magueys, the states in Mexico that are authorized to use the appellation “mezcal,” and he also told us a bit about the production process. One cool bit of trivia I learned was that Minotauro has been able to play a role in saving a couple of species of maguey that were thought to be lost. He also showed us what he said is his favorite book on mezcal. I took a photo of its cover, so if you are interested, you can look into obtaining it.

Chef Alastair talks about the food
The best book on mezcal, according to Heiman
Some of the types of maguey

Heiman had four different mezcals to share with us. Chef Alastair and sous-chef Tony put together three small plates for us that were magnificent, and combined well with the mezcales. The first mezcal was white, young, and accompanied by a jicama taco of aguachile. The second mezcal was actually my favorite; the botana served with it was a mini-tostada with shredded meat—very savory. Unbelievably to me, I don’t have a photo of the second flight, but it was delicious. I guess I was enjoying it too much to fuss with the camera! The third mezcal was also very good. We drank it with shrimp and grilled vegetables on toast points. Heiman then served us a fourth mezcal as well. After that, I guarantee you I wasn’t taking any more photos! Click on any photo below to enlarge it or view it as a slideshow. The food was all outstanding, the event was very enjoyable, and what a value at 200 pesos!

We love Water’s Edge. Alastair Porteous is a terrific chef who believes in farm-to-table sourcing, and his wife, Tracey Grantham, very ably runs the front of the house. It doesn’t hurt that another of our favorite local chefs, Tony Acuña Pérez, is the sous-chef. We also love the ambiance: the restaurant is in an historic home that was restored by Mark Jay. It is spacious, with two large rooms and a gorgeous private patio in the back. They have a stellar dinner menu, and lunch specials that are unbelievable values: drink, salad and main course for 100 pesos! Water’s Edge serves Sunday brunch, and Alastair conducts cooking classes. Tracey tells me that for Carnavál they are going to have some small foods outside, with easy-to-eat-and-go convenience for revelers. The restaurant will also, of course, be open.

Corner of Sixto Osuno and Niños Heroes
Sous-chef Tony

I urge you both to enjoy Water’s Edge, supporting high quality local cuisine, and to get on their list for special events. We really enjoyed the evening, and learned a lot as well. Plus, we are now looking forward to a mezcal tour of Durango, with a most amiable host and his wife!

P1250608