cuisine
The food in Baja is just as wonderful as any in the world. You have to know the right places to go.
Ensenada has hundreds of wonderful and delicious restaurants. The selection runs the gamut from roadside tacos to elegant to very authentically Mexican. El Rey Sol is probably 1 of 2 at the top of this list, but i can think of a dozen more. Enseanda is famous for its abundant seafood, culinary delights and high quality wines. Again i could devote an entire website to this favorite pastime, dining in Ensenada. I have dined at so many wonderful (and some not so wonderful) restaurants it could fill a book.
Gourmet paella can be found in the region prepared with various seafood items, beef, pork, chicken, fresh veggies, herbs and other innovative ingredients. In fact Paella is so popular here that each year a paella cooking contest is included in the annual wine festival in Guadalupe Valley. Paella can be ordered at the wonderful CAPRICHO’s Restaurant in Ensenada. It is their speciality. 138 Ave. Ruiz, Zona Centro Ensenada. Kitty corner to Hussongs Bar. www.caprichos.com.mx Check out their famous Wine Bar #138 Ruiz.
paella
According to the restaurants chef, Carlos Garcia Travesi-Bosch, “making paella is like making love, it takes passion and sincerity to be successful. You have to put your soul into it, so when your lips and senses make first contact with my culinary creation you realize something special, something from the heart.”
El Cid is a major 5 star resturant in the heart of Ensenadas tourist district. 993 Lopez Mateo, next to Best Western. A bit about El Cid…..
The interior resembles a spanish hacienda, with red brick pillars, Moorish archways, tiled ceilings. The menu is VERY long. it is divided into Combinations, Specialties, and listed by Species. There are no fewer than 9 beefsteak choices. Dinner entrees include a salad or soup (3 choices). A sparkling array of fresh veggies for your salad is from nearby farms of Maneadero, along with tasty fresh house baked baguettes. of the 3 soup choices dont miss the unique CREMA de Nopal, a fascinating essence of cactus pad flavor in a smooth creamy puree. I actually mourned when i hit the bottom of the bowl. The other soups are French Onion, done in normal style or “Du Jour”
“Stuffed Chilitos” or little chilies, consist of small pale green fire peeled guero peppers with a nice little kick. They are filled with deep smoked local tuna and the combination of salat, smoke, and spice is invigorating and the little packets of sit atop a dark sauce of oil and soy that picks up the chile burn. Sip dont slurp!
The best entree ever invented is a dish of crepes with a caramel sauce. Waiters will arrive with 2 assistants like magicians performing an elaborate trick. A small table comes over equipped with a burner, cooking tools, mystery liquids, bowls, and of course lots of crepes fresh from the griddles. You can guess the rest. Most mexican resurants only serve one desert and that is FLAN. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_flan_made_of
El Cid offers several versions though.
There are thousands of small roadside taco stands as well. Above are pictures of a standard fish taco with all the fixins. This is standard fare and always popular here in Baja. This is because they are CHEAP. $1.00 each on average. Tacos here consist of either a corn or flour tortilla. You will get your choice of grilled beef, barbecued pork, deep fried battered fish, chicken, carne asada, shrimp, etc. You can add all sorts of toppings such as guacamole, salsas, cilantro, onions, chilies, limes, picante sauces, cabbage, jalapeno, etc. PABLANOS is the best taco stand in in my opinion, in all of Baja. Maneadero, Ensenada.
Senor Guidados has the most excellent, tastiest, mouthwatering Bistek Ranchero taco you could wrap your mouth around. My mouth waters just thinking about one. Ensenada.
EL REY SOL. www.ElReySol.com is fine French dining at it’s best. An Ensenada institution since 1947. #1000 Ave Lopez Mateo. This is Mexico’s oldest restaurant and has won the recognition of many of the highest culinary awards. Clams El Rey Sol is the chefs masterpiece. Try the Escargot de Bourgogne. YUM. Impeccable service and ambience. 
A dining experience you will never soon forget
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THE RAW FOOD DIET !! Pineapple Mango Salsa by Chef Tina Jo Stephens
My friend, Chef Tina Jo Stephens recently graduated and returned from the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in California. She has returned with a wealth of raw cooking information that I want to share with you. In Baja, tropical fruit is everywhere, its very abundant and always available! Go to any fruit stand, farmers market, retail grocer, or swap meet, and you will see locally grown fresh papaya, plantain, mango, guava, grapes, bananas, strawberries, avocado and more. Here is a video that Chef TinaJo made recently showing the steps involved in making a Pineapple Mango Salsa…. all the ingredients were purchased here where we live! GO RAW!
Please visit Chef Tina Jos website called www.splendorintheraw.com to see more instructional videos, and learn everything you ever wanted to know about a vegan / raw food diet and cooking. Living in Baja certainly lends itself to this lifestyle. Punta Banda has its own organic farm right here, up in the hills, and the vegetables and fruits are out of this world. Chef Tina Jo only uses produce purchased there in her raw food “cooking” !! Thanks to Jaime and David for providing our region with fresh, nutritious, wholesome, living foods.
Pineapple Mango Salsa >>>>
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BELOW IS A REVIEW FOR “RESTAURANT LAJA“ in the Guadelupe Valley from 2 friends of mine. Laja’s is about a 30 minute drive west of Ensenada going inland, toward Tecate and wine country. A “not to miss” dining experience….
This past Wednesday we headed to Laja in the Valle de Guadalupe for a late lunch/early dinner. Laja is not for the casual diner. If your idea of a fine meal is going to Applebee’s (or any of its cousins), don’t go to Laja; you will be sadly disappointed and there will be no change back from your dollar.
The first thing one should know about Laja: it’s expensive . There is a menu, but it’s not what you may be used to. It’s a “prix fixe” menu, i.e. a multi-course meal at a set price per person. To set the foundation for comparison, a five course meal (also prix fixe) at Gary Danko Restaurant in San Francisco, is $98 USD (yes, ninety eight dollars.) Let’s head to New York City and taste the fine food an Jean Georges’ restaurant. A three course prix fixe menu is….$98 USD. Seems to be popular price in the USA. But wait! Let’s go the Napa Valley to the French Laundry in the Napa Valley…you can do a nine-course meal for just $240 USD! Just need to set the benchmark, and Laja will seem reasonable! And we should tell you that Laja has been referred to as the “French Laundry” of the Mexico by more than one food/wine magazine.
At Laja, you have a choice of a four-course meal for about $42 USD or an eight-course meal for about $55. There are exactly eight items on the menu (which changes daily), so if you order the eight-courses, you get to taste everything! This is most commonly referred to as a “tasting menu” or in Spanish, “degustación” and we highly recommend it. While you leave the restaurant with your wallet a bit lighter, you won’t be bursting at the seams from food…each course is small, but sufficient. You will leave satisfied in every way.
On to the food! Oh, but wait. Let’s get a bottle of wine first. We spied Casa de Piedra’s Piedra del Sol on the wine list ($550 pesos per bottle) and ordered that. It’s a crisp, refreshing white wine that is on our top 10 wine list.
On Wednesday, the menu started with a gazpacho (cold soup) of beets with a drizzle of olive oil, topped with the most finely diced bits of green apple I’ve ever seen. One could liken this to a “borscht”, which is Russian by its ancestry. And since there is a large formerly-Russian community in La Valle, this seemed most appropriate. When the gazpacho was served, I thought surely there must have been a mistake on the menu. The soup was such a deep pink, and looked as if it had been made from raspberries. But one taste told us differently: it was rich in the taste of earthy beets. Fortunately, we had a basket of a very interesting bread to clean up the bowls with. The bread came to us almost directly from the oven, stopping long enough only to be sliced up and put into the basket. It was steaming hot and smelled remarkably like Cream of Wheat. It was a definitely a rustic white bread with something added (we thought maybe wheat germ?)….soft and tender on the inside with the crispiest of crusts I’ve yet to figure out how to do in my own bread making ventures. Oh, I wish I had a slice of it right now!
Second course: Arugula Salad with aromatic herbs. If I had a choice of salad greens, I would always choose arugula (also known as rocket lettuce). Of the aromatic herbs, we could identify dill flowers as a definite. It was light and slightly peppery (as arugula is) and a great lead-in to our third course, Scallop Tartare with a confit of lemon and a tiny salad of Chinese watercress. Scallop Tartare is sliced (or diced) raw scallop, which sushi eaters would love. We are – and we did.
Next up, the pasta course: freshly homemade pasta, cut like fettucine, with seasonal veggies. The veggies included tomato, carrot, green beans and bit of bell pepper. Order up some more bread because you’ll want to scoop out every last morsel.
Time for the fourth course. This would be the “fish dish”. Today it’s oven roasted rock cod (cooked to perfection!) in a light, almond cream sauce, with sautéed kale, green beans and miniature squash. The chef does fish perfectly every time. Would love to know the secret to getting those moist, tender filets with that chicharron-like crust.
Let’s take a breather, we have emptied the bottle of white wine. I suggest to Andrés, sommelier and maitre’d (my description) , that I’d like a glass of a red wine and ask him to choose it. He heads to the wine cellar and comes back with a local wine, Bella Terra 2007 Merlot. (I would never choose a merlot on my own.) It was incredible! Earthy in bouquet and rich in taste. We’d have never guessed it as merlot in a blind taste test..but now we have that on our “must find” list. At Laja, this was $70 pesos by the glass.
Next course, the meat dish. Today, it’s locally raised lamb, roasted in the oven and served with mustard leaves and a parsley risotto. We detected a hint of tarragon in the risotto…mmmm good! Even if you think you don’t like lamb…you will love this. It is so mild…in fact, during one other visit we actually went to the kitchen and argued with the chef that THIS IS NOT LAMB…we thought it was pork tenderloin. He explained to us what the lambs are fed affects the taste of the meat. He showed us the uncooked meat…and it was most definitely lamb.
Now it’s time for dessert. Because we ordered the eight-course, we get them one at a time. The first dessert was sorbets of watermelon and cucumber. I have one word to describe it: WOW! Next dessert is a tart of apples (served warm) with homemade almond ice cream. I have another word for that: WOWER! Ok, so that’s not even a word, but you get the idea.
We arrived at Laja at 1:30 and it’s now 5:00. This is not eating, this is dining. This isn’t just going to a restaurant, it’s an event.
The chef/owner of Laja is Jair Tellez. He and his crew raise most of their own veggies right there in the garden at the restaurant’s entrance. If you want to have an idea of what is on today’s menu, take a wander through the garden, before you go in, to see what’s in season. On the premises, they have their own bakery to make those wonderful breads and pastries. Ask to be shown the kitchen and bakery! They are happy to take you through and explain! Hey, they gave us a baguette to go when we asked to see the bakery!
Laja has a casual atmosphere. You would feel as comfortable there in shorts and t-shirt as with a pants and blazer (or a skirt and blouse). It’s in the wine valley, and they get lots of ”tourists”. Most times we’ve been there the clientele has been what one might refer to as “well-heeled” Mexicans, of all ages.
The service is attentive and professional. The wine list boasts an excellent selection of local wines. Not sure what to order? Ask Andrés and he is sure to select the perfect wine to complement your meal.
Laja is located just of Mex 3 between San Antonio de las Minas and Francsisco Zarco at KM 83. There is a sign on the highway that says simply LAJA with an arrow pointing to the left when coming from the Ensenada area. Make that left turn and the entrance to the Laja property will be on your right.
The restaurant is open Wednesdays, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. (last order is taken at 3:30); Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 1:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. They usually close for 2-3 weeks over during the Christmas holidays. Visit their website at www.lajamexico. com. They do accept Visa or Mastercard, and, of course, cash in pesos or USD.
We hope you enjoy dining at Laja as much as we do.
Vince & Kathleen
FARMERS MARKETS
Everyone wants to know about the fresh Farmers Markets!! The Organic Produce Ranch is Number 8 on the
wine country map, at 86.5 KM before Laja’s restaurant. You need to
be there on Wednesday mornings before 11:00 and it is sooooo worth
the drive.
Natalia has fresh range chickens, eggs, produce of all kinds and
there is always someone there selling artisan breads. Bring brown
paper bags , egg boxes or string bags. Usually there are nice
baskets to collect items. If you miss the market you can buy some
produce at the fish store (Degarro’s, or Pear y Pera) on 7th street
near the Santo Tomas Winery. Very often you can find items from
Trader Joe’s and if you are looking for leeks, etc., you can find
them here.
When you are there check out the great pizza place around
the corner. It is done in a large stone oven, brushed with olive oil
and really good.
