Cabo San Lucas: Baja California offers a variety of fine dining with local restaurants
CABO SAN LUCAS — A stream of liquid blue flame lit the night as the cook poured burning Tequila and Kahlua into glasses for Mexican coffee.
We had just enjoyed meals of Baja shrimp, fillet mignon, and lobster tail beneath the Saturday night stars at Restaurant Edith’s, and this next level of culinary entertainment captivated our attention. While news reports have focused on the narco-traffickers and swine flu, I found no evidence of those scourges anywhere in Cabo, whose fine wining and dining had galvanized our attention for four days.
The dining in Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Baja California Sur had enthralled us since our arrival the previous Wednesday. We’d arrived at the airport at about noon, and by mid-afternoon we were sitting in the spacious dining room of Mocambo de los Cabos.
Gloria Estefan sang "Con los anos que me quedan" in the background. Dorado and sailfish leaped across a blue stucco wall, and two marlin leaped from the water, crossing their bills against the backdrop of Land’s End and its stony arch, the ominous formations at the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.
Fittingly, we helped ourselves to a plate of fish tacos made of fresh marlin.
"This is one of the premier destinations for marlin fishing in the world," said Jim Phillips, the husband of Zulema Baez, acting director of Spanish publications at Valley Freedom papers. Baez’s brother, Ivan Baez, is the marketing director of El Squid Roe in Cabo San Lucas, and he’d made arrangements for us to eat at Mocambo and several other establishments.
We also enjoyed appetizers of shrimp and marlin quesadillas, a stew of scallops, boiled shrimp, octopus, plus various sauces, one of which had a musky taste that jelled into a powerful and pleasant burn. Cold Pacifico beer, lemonade, and pina coladas completed this first introduction to the cuisine of Cabo San Lucas.
Nick-San Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar
The following day, after we’d enjoyed a short hike through the desert with a guide who taught us about native plants, we sampled the cuisine at Nick-San Japanese Restaurant and Sushi Bar.
"Exceeding your Expectations," is the motto of the restaurant created 15 years ago by Gerardo Carbajal and Masayuki Niikura. That’s when the two executive chefs met by chance one evening while on vacation in Cabo and began experimenting with flavors from their separate cuisines.
"We got together to cook what we had that night, fish, serrano peppers, sesame oil, and onion," Carbajal said. "That’s how we started. It wasn’t something we planned, but that’s how it happened. Then we included avocado, and more Japanese ingredients."
From that humble beginning originated the idea for a restaurant fusing the two culinary traditions. They began with a restaurant of six tables and a bar only half the size it is now. The establishment can now seat 120 people, and the two owners are planning an expansion so that 180 people can dine there at one time.
The primary Mexican ingredients used in the restaurant are cilantro, lemon, avocado oil, and several types of peppers, including habaneros and serranos.
Sushi chefs worked swiftly behind the bar this evening preparing orders for red snapper, shrimp, octopus, squid, clam, albacore tuna, marlin, and other seafoods. While we waited for our samples, we enjoyed warm, sweet saki in small cups that contrasted sharply with the beer and tequila we’d sampled earlier in the day.
"We have celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Luis Miguel, Shaquille O’Neil as common clients," Carbajal said. "We catch our own fish, we have our own boat, and daily that’s what we serve. If someone orders a certain type of sashimi (another dish consisting of raw fish) that we didn’t catch, we don’t serve it. We have more than 200 dishes."
Returning customers will often ask for the house special, seeking some new flavor.
"We come up with new recipes for them," he said.
A cook brought us a plate of hamachi (tuna), with habanero peppers; the plate also included curry ponzu (a sauce), red onions cooked with lemon and vinegar, fried garlic, ginger and sesame seeds.
The tuna had been seared on a grill; the whole dish had a saucy sweetness I thoroughly enjoyed. Lobster rolls were wrapped in a soy nori (soy bean wrappers) and came with a host of flavors: avocado, mango, cilantro, curry, mustard sauce, lobster tempura, and olive oil. This dish had an exceptionally pleasant appearance and we hesitated a moment.
"Everybody’s sittin’ here lookin’ at it," Phillips finally said. "Let’s eat it."
"They don’t want to spoil it," said Ivan Baez. "It looks too good."
We dove in and thoroughly savored the dish. Other delightful experiences included the serranito sashimi, which came with a burst of Mexican flavors: soy, lime, and spices with thin slices of serrano pepper. The tuna rolls were stuffed with tempura shrimp.
At one point I had the pleasure of venturing behind the bar to the cook area, and Daniel Castro, a four-year veteran of Nick-S an who has cooked for 10 years, showed me how to sauté ginger with avocado oil. I’d toss a handful of the shredded spice into the skillet, then some wine that would catch fire and swamp the skillet for a moment in its searing heat, sautéing the ginger in preparation for the lobster sambal, another delicious dish marinated in sake and garlic sauce. Other ingredients included sesame oil, cilantro sea bass, and sweet and sour peppers.
After tray upon tray of dishes covering a broad range of the Nick-San experience, I couldn’t tell which one I liked the most. It was all good, and much of it was mysterious and joyously new. I struggled with one dish to keep glistening black caviar on my chopsticks, and I wished I could have had some silverware, which didn’t arrive until we were served an exquisite crème brulee at the end of the meal.
Pitahayas Restaurant
The following evening, after a day of zip lining, we visited Pitahayas Restaurant in the Hacienda del Mar Vacation Club where the chef treated us to an exquisite five course meal, each serving scrupulously married to a specific wine.
We arrived at the restaurant in early evening and sat first beneath a thatch-roofed palapa by the sea while a cool instrumental rendition of "You Are the Sunshine of my Life" played in the background. Zulema and I both ordered coconut mojitos. Phillips ordered a margarita, and Anette Aispuro ordered a Cadillac margarita.
Palms, barrel cactus, purple wandering Jew and cardon (a tree-like cactus) permeated the area with a placid ambience. Stone walkways meandered around pools and dining areas and the bar, while a turquoise surf landed easily on the beach a few yards away.
Jacki Glenwright, 14, was enjoying a banana, platano, and orange juice smoothie at a table next to a low wall.
"I have come here for eight or 10 years and I have always gotten these smoothies and they are the greatest things that have ever happened," said Glenwright of San Francisco as she enjoyed the evening with her mother, Joy Glenwright.
"It’s smooth," continued Jacki Glenwright. "I think it’s just the fact that it’s so fresh. It’s not icy."
Why do they keep coming here year after year?
"It’s peaceful," said Joy Glenwright. "That’s the word that comes to mind. Nurturing."
"It’s really family-oriented and safe," said her daughter.
Later, after we’d walked down a winding staircase to the wine cellar, Chef Volker Romeike said he didn’t really know what made his smoothies so good.
"Here in Mexico we still use a lot of fresh fruit, fresh ingredients," he said.
Candles that cast dim light across the 380 brands of wine in the cellar, set off in individual rooms with wrought iron. Heavy flagstone circled a table set with glasses and napkins. The first course was a tuna tower – blackened tuna, wasabi mayonnaise, mango relish, wonton chips and ponzu sauce. The spicy din of flavors grabbed my taste buds, already primed for the experience by the cool Carmen Sauvignon Blanc. I would gain 10 pounds tonight, and only a foray this delicious could stop me from caring as we relaxed in the warm glow. It was sweet, hot, spicy, all bound together in a fabulous bouquet of flavors.
The next course, two charred chili-rubbed beef tacos, came with a Cycles Gladiator Pinot Noir from California.
Jim Phillips smelled his wine and declared, "I don’t even want to drink it. I want to smell it. The aroma is excellent. Who would think that wine actually goes with tacos? But it does, and it’s good."
The sweet guacamole that came with this course had been prepared with peanut butter, a delicious new rendition of this culinary favorite.
"We kind of get the guacamole and put some mirin (Japanese cooking wine) in the peanut butter in there, dress it up a little bit, give a different flavor, so it fits our style," said Romeike, who came downstairs to visit us.
Romeike, originally of Dusseldorf, Germany, has been with Pitahayas since 1995. He worked in the United States for 12 years, gaining experience in California, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. Then the Cabo San Lucas opportunity became available.
"When they called me up in Hawaii, they said, ‘We need a chef, and we want to do Pacific Rim,’" said Romeike, 48. "My specialty is mainly Pacific Rim cuisine, Asian fusion. You get the liberty of creating flavors with ginger, lemon grass."
When he first arrived here, he had difficulty obtaining the right ingredients for his cooking. Cabo San Lucas had not expanded into the Mecca of development it is today, nor were there as many services available. Certainly, that has changed.
"My problem now is it’s so big and it’s not controlled," he said. "Some places, there’s no electricity, no roads. Like I said, you have to think about where you are at. There’s only so much money."
He’s been here so long, he’s now thinking about citizenship.
"After so many years being here, I kind of feel I belong to Mexico," he said. "So I will try in two years."
Restaurant Edith’s
We didn’t have to wait two years to eat at Restaurant Edith’s. That treat came the following night, as a salty breeze rustled the palm trees in the outdoor dining areas, and a wandering band played "Guantanamera" while a woman in white cotton tended tortillas on a griddle. The scent of bacon sizzling around thick servings of filet mignon flooded the air as the chef tended them on a grill. Chef Hermelindo Mantillas, 40, said he never uses charcoal, only mesquite wood.
"It gives a better flavor," said Mantillas, of Puebla, who worked for eight years in New York. "The mesquite has a little perfume aroma. Our house specialty is finely cut meat and fish, and the lobster and shrimp, mignon, ribeye, and New York strip steak."
We took our seat outside beneath the southern Baja stars, and the cooks and waiters immediately came to our table. "I am Sr. Fernando," said Luis Fernando. "Everyone’s going to be at your service."
A trio of players now performed a fine rendition of "Si Nos Dejan," the bass player’s rich baritone voice entwining itself through the instrumentals. Guitar licks sprinted through the piece and the voices blended sweetly like the fragrances of a floral bouquet. Lights were strung everywhere; pierced copper lanterns hand-made in Guadalajara cast splintered light over tables set with blue, red, green, and orange tablecloths, while other dining areas and the bar rested beneath thatched palapas.
The staff served us clam chowder in a bowl made of bread shaped like a knobby gourd. The chowder was made with flour, milk, juice, carrots, onion, celery and crackers, plus white wine to thicken it, and garnished with bacon and diced potatoes. We then sampled a plate of shrimp quesadillas stuffed with dried chili guajillo, sautéed shrimp in red sauce, and Monterrey jack cheese. Vegetable quesadillas with spinach, pumpkin blossom, and epazote also shared the plate, along with beef tacos.
A cook stepped forward and began prepping a big Caesar salad, and Fernando explained the secret of Restaurant Edith’s food. He said the quality of the ingredients makes the difference.
"For example," he began. "You are the one who wants to buy the romaine lettuce." He glanced at the cook preparing the Caesar salad. "I am going to sell you lettuce for $1 a piece. I am going to buy that lettuce, but I am not going to pay $1. How about $1.50? I am going to choose the ones I like. And also, you are going to wash that lettuce for me and disinfect it for me."
We were now served two large leaves of Romaine lettuce with savory oils and grated Parmesan cheese. The dressing was made of lemon juice, egg yolk, Dijon mustard, olive oil, salsa inglesa, maggi juice and white wine, a delightful gathering of flowers that left me yearning for more.
Now came our meals of Baja shrimp, steamed lobster with clarified butter, and mesquite-grilled New York steak. The lobster had a deep ocean tangy flavor that beckoned me further into its spell. The flavors, untainted by the deep freeze, were enhanced by the pinot noir glowing in the candlelight and my mouth.
"You’re tasting the original flavors of the Baja Peninsula," Fernando said.
Dipped in clarified butter, the flavor of the lobster tail mellowed and diffused into a calmer ambience. The Baja shrimp, which had been grilled over mesquite, had a slightly sweeter taste, and the vegetables –sweet carrots and zuccini grilled with chives, onion and garlic – had a nice zip. I also enjoyed steak’s powerful bold flavor.
Now the cook stepped up to prepare Mexican coffee. He lit two sternos and poured the burning liquid between containers to burn off the alcohol, leaving behind their distinctive flavors to dispense in glasses. He tossed cinnamon into each glass that sent sparks into the night. This was followed by a glob of vanilla ice cream and then the coffee.
Our five days of wining and dining in Cabo San Lucas left me with a yearning to return. There were no shootouts or diseases sweeping our ranks, only a circus of aromas and flavors to tease our imaginations. The chefs of Cabo San Lucas had shown themselves equipped with a rich imagination, spontaneously generating new culinary experiences for visitors.
