Wednesday night, we met up with Lisa and Megan and we all headed down to see Mark Callanan, who had invited us out to a gallery in Vallarta that he was showing at. It turned out to be an art walk, unfortunately we showed up fashionably late at around 9 or so, just as the galleries were closing up. His piece in the show was awesome as always, a photograph of a fern that was abstracted almost to the point of looking like an explosion of fireworks. beautiful.
Miguel showed up also, in rare public display, we were most certainly blessed with his presence, always good to see the man. After a while of checking out the gallery we talked a bit and sauntered over to “Si, Señor” a relatively new restaurant (I think), a few blocks down from “Cafe Des Artistes”. Whoever did the interior/exterior design did a hell of a job, it’s a beautiful restaurant, very well designed and crafted. But the food wasn’t so hot. Mark and I both had the Azteca soup and the Chiles en Nogada. The Azteca soup was actually quite good and it was on that high note that I was so disappointed with the chiles. The Axteca soup had an amazing broth with hints of guajillo chile or some other kind of chile, it was like crack as I slurped it up, um waiter can I have more broth? The Chiles en Nogada is a traditional dish serves all around mexico around this time of year, and it’s usually like pizza, even when it’s not so good, it’s still pretty good. It’s got a ground meat base, stuffed in a roasted poblano chile with a slightly sweet walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds on top. This version of it, though, had a sauce that tasted like melted strawberry ice-cream and the meat filling had fruit chunks in it. I had two or three bites out of hunger and had to put it down. Mark didn’t even get that far, he was the smart one and had it sent back (and hence not charged). I was the dumb one with the $18 charge for un-eaten Chiles en Nogada (yes, 18 bucks, did the chile have gold leaf? no). Oh well.
Past the food it was a nice night. It was great to finally connect Lisa with my homies Mark and Miguel. All Quality Peoples for sure, and a slight shame that it took me this long to connect them. When talented people come together, good things always happen. Us artists gotta stick together. I hope we start doing this on a more regular basis.
If you want great Chiles en Nogada try the Red Cabbage (Repolla Roja) in the Remance district of PV. Excellent!!! They serve it all year.
BTW, thanks for the info on surf lessons. I will hopefully have my first lesson this Thursday in Sayulita.
ntd