More good eats

I was recently reminded that my earlier discussion of food in SMA needs to be updated: there are so many new really good places to find carefully prepared food and reasonable prices here.

Our new top favorite is Buenos Dias on Calle de Reloj 64. Here I am with Carlos who runs this cozy place with his business partner and cook, Eliza. The recent cold weather has made this the perfect place for breakfast in front of their fireplace. Fifty pesos is the set price for a full American breakfast, which really means lots of tasty fresh brewed coffee, eggs, bacon, toast and jam.

They do lunch on a tiny patio in the entry or inside. Check the menu board for daily lunch specials.




Another new favorite is Media Naranja on the corner of Hidalgo and Calzada de la Luz, upstairs from Pharmacia San Gabriel. We have heard raves about their breakfast and their fresh muffins but have only had lunch there - several times. The owners spend summers serving burritos from a small trailer in their home state of New York. While in San Miguel they produce beautiful baguette sandwiches made with organic veggies in a creative menu that also includes chicken salad with curry, veggie lasagna and falafel in pita bread. The have a full menu of smoothies as well.

We will breakfast there soon.







Yet another new breakfast find is Cafe Monet, on the corner where Ancho San Antonio, Zacateros and Codo come together. (For those Once Upon a Time in Mexico fans, this is the intersection where Johnny Depp's character gets his eyes gouged at the end of the movie.)

For us the draw is the french press coffee delivered to your table and the breakfast entrees such as fresh cinnamon rolls or oatmeal, starting at 25 pesos. The lunch menu changes daily but everything we have ordered has been excellent.









If you are a fan of eggs Benedict, Donovan's at Hidalgo 15 is the place for you. They even claim they have waffles on the menu but every time I have asked they are not available. Not to worry, everything else is tasty.















Now you think we only "do" breakfsts, but Puerticita at Santo Domingo 25 has a wonderful view of the back of the Parroquia church and a reasonably priced lunch menu. You have to go up narrow stairs, continuing all the way to the roof.

Bryan's favorite here is Cochinita Pibil, a slow-roasted pork dish with sour orange and spices, traditionally cooked in a banana leaf. (For you OUATIM fans again, this dish was the obsession that caused Johnny Depp's character, CIA Agent Sands, to shoot any cook who makes it too well)








We found Le Crepe at Hospicio 37, at the back of the courtyard, when we decided on an evening treat. We loved our crepes with raspberry filling and the careful attentive serice. The patio with it's small fountain was so perfect that we went back a few days later for their December special, turkey and cranberry crepes, beautifully presented with a green salad.

There is inside dining but the weather has been so lovely that the patio has been perfect. There are outside heaters in case there is another cold snap.

If you haven't seen the Jardin like this then you haven't been to the rooftop La Teraza Cafe. Enter from under the arches where the dried flower sellers are and climb upstairs all the way to the roof. There you have a front row seat to whatever is happening in the Jardin while enjoying sandwiches and beer or lemonaide. It can be rather windy but I see that they have recently put a glass barrier to hopefully keep your french fries from blowing down below.




Since we are in Tlaquepaque right now before flying tomorrow from Guadalajara airport to Tijuana and then crossing to San Diego for Melissa and Tim's wedding, I thought I would share a favorite restaurant here: Rio San Pedro at Jaurez #300. This well lit and festively decorated resturant can be identified by all of the ceramic pigs adorning the walls. The service is excellent, the price is under US$10 for an entree and a beer, and of course Bryan orders Cochinita Pibil in deference to all the pigs.

Please feel free to comment with any favorites you might have; there are too many great places to mention them all.

Posadas for Christmas

Although we leave the US partially to get away from the consumerism of Christmas, we can't help falling in love with the Mexican Posadas leading up to Christmas eve. Neighborhoods reenact the story of Mary and Joseph searching for an inn, with the whole community walking from house to house singing and asking for a place to sleep. Although they are turned away there is plenty of hot ponche offered and often the procession halts for some piñata bashing. It is a time of community and family.

Unfortunately, since it takes place at night, it doesn't lend itself to photography, at least not with my small digital camera. On this particular night , sweet Mary was scheduled to ride a donkey and I was excited about seeing a more authentic procession. Mostly nowadays the nativity scene is posed on that back of a flatbed truck with the procession following. However, this time the donkey was not to be; she turned out to be more pregnant than the original Mary and threatened to have her foal right there. So the procession continued on foot.






An important component of a Posada party is the opportunity to eat tamales. These require a special skill in the making. Here is Yoli demonstrating to Bryan and Dick the correct way to wrap the corn husk around the sauce and cornmeal stuffing. The process can take hours for a good-sized Posada but is worth it.






After wrapping, the tamales are stacked several deep in pots and steamed. In this case there were tamales with red sauce, green sauce and sweetened ones for dessert.


















Once the eating is out of the way, the piñatas come out. Shopping for piñatas is easy in the weeks before the Christmas season since their making is a cottage industry and entire markets appear devoted to piñatas and their candy, sugar cane and orange fillings.




























Here is Trish and Dick's daughter, Stephanie, stuffing the piñata with more kinds of candies than I have names for. Traditionally, many are a combination of sweet and spicy, an unwelcome discovery when, like me, you expect sweet but the children love them.

The actual piñata bashing begins with the smallest of the children. The string holding the piñata is controlled from above, providing an easy target for the youngest ones and getting progressively more unpredictable as the older children take their turns.





This particular piñata resisted for a long time before finally spilling it's contents to an excited scrum of children. Somehow no one got hurt in the pile-on and everyone got plenty of treats.

Quilting Queens

It seems like Yolanda del Rio has always sewn, learning first from her mother growing up in Juarez, Mexico, and later sewing for her daughters as they were growing up in California. Last night inaugurated the third phase of her sewing: the San Miguel Quilters exhibit at the Bordello Gallery. Each of the talented quilters displayed a hand made jacket and some quilt squares. There were over a dozen quilts for sale or display and a fundraising raffle. Yoli proudly displayed her hand beaded and quilted Frida jacket.

You have to realize that she created these beautiful pieces while completely redoing her home which burned the night of the Zumbathon, almost exactly 2 months ago. The new living room furniture is still in plastic and the tile floors hardly dry from the refinishing but she completed the jacket and the Guadalupe square behind her in this photo.

Here are a few of the details from the jacket. You can click the image to see more detail.







Yoli said she felt like her mother was at her side as she was designing, beading and quilting her jacket and I felt like Charlotte, Bryan's mother, was smiling on it as well. She created this jacket over 20 years ago.


She would have loved the quilt show last night.

Buying talavera in Dolores Hidalgo

Today we went with our friends Yolanda and Victor Del Rio and Trish and Dick Snyder to help Yoli select tiles for her home remodeling project at their favorite tile factory in Dolores Hidalgo, about 1/2 hour from San Miguel. Talavera is the name of the hand painted multi-colored pottery produced primarily in this town.





Once they had selected their tile, the owner invited us to view how they make it. We watched first as the clay was rolled the exact thickness and then trimmed and dried.
And finally it is carefully loaded in the kiln.
The tiles are individually hand painted or silk-screened. Yoli tried her hand at the latter and did an acceptable job under close scrutiny.
Here are some hand painted tiles ready for shipment all over the world.
In addition to tiles, Acosta produces beautiful hand painted sinks like the ones we have in all 3 of our bathrooms.
We watched the intricate hand painting process.
With all that watching, we worked up an appetite for carnitas, jucy pork boiled in oil. There are literally dozens of carnitas shops in Dolores; most seem to be named Carnitas Vicente.
Here they are, waiting for us. (Sorry to the vegetarians out there for the graphic photo.)
The inside walls were covered with murals with a Mexican theme. Here are Yoli and Victor waiting for the food under the watchful eyes Father Hidalgo.
After a full meal, that included fried tortillas filled with pig brain (thanks! Victor for not telling me until I ate it), we enjoyed some fresh coconut milk from a table out front. Here are Yoli (holding the plastic bag of coconut milk), Trish, Dick and Bryan.
This lovely woman risked all of her fingers and her knee as she calmly slashed the coconut meat off with nasty looking knife, a towel over her knee, and her son on her back.
And finally, here are the pretty hand-painted plates I couldn't resist.

Road Trip - Day 2 and 3 Taxco

My mother, Barbara Crow, went to Taxco in 1943, just before she married my dad, and saw a much different Taxco than we did. I have her watercolor of a hillside with single story homes climbing vertically. The vertical part is still there but the homes have been built up and we weren't able to identify where she might have stood to paint her view. Here is the view from our hotel room by day and by night.















To get to the MonteTaxco Hotel and this incredible view we had to take a cable car up the shear cliffs.


Here is the view of the cliff and the hotel on top from across town.




















The town itself is a beautiful historic town. The silver mining industry took off in the late 1500s when Cortes staked a claim and sent silver around the world. This lasted for about 200 years until the mines were mined out. Then in 1716 Don Jose de la Borda (a Spaniard of French descent) "rediscovered" silver in Taxco and built this beautiful cathedral, Santa Prisca.

Again the art of silver work died out until 1926 when William Spratling moved from the US and motivated the community artisans to create designs and rediscover their craft of silversmithing. As a result, we were told by our taxi driver, 80 percent of the industry of Taxco is related to silver.

I had read a book about Spratling years ago and was able to find the newly established Spratling Museum in town. We didn't have time go out to his hacienda where they still make his jewelry designs.

We were traveling with our friends Trish and Dick Snyder from North Carolina. They are building a house in San Miguel as a second home.

We headed into town to look for lunch and found this intriguing 2nd floor restaurant right on the main square with three tables and a killer view of the church.

The walls were covered with black and white photos of movie stars including a very prominent Elvis. We asked the owner if he was an Elvis fan and he denied it but his white jumpsuit and gray pompadour hairdo said Elvis was alive and well in Taxco. Here he is with his granddaughter. You decide.



















After a comfortable night at our hotel we headed to some limestone caves nearby. Not quite Carlsbad Caverns but nicely lit. In the little town the women make intricate wooden flowers from local materals. I wouldn't believe the detail if I hadn't seen it.



Our second stop on the way home was a small town where craftsmen make intricate Trees of Life. The trees can tell religious stories or just depict some part of Mexican life such as the Voladores of Veracruz who hang by their ankles and spin from a tall poll..

It was fascinating to see them being crafted out of many tiny clay pieces in the workshops. You can click on any of the photos to see more detail.