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EatMx.Com: A Brand New Blog

Want to learn about Mexican food--what to cook and where to eat?

That's what I'm writing about  in my brand new blog, EatMx.com, which will cover everything related to Mexico on both sides of the border and, possibly, other places too.

Check it out today. You'll start with a welcome cocktail--that's it above--then move on to a series about great Mexican dishes in Los Angeles and a post on a fabulous place to eat in Baja's Guadalupe Valley.

Coming up is Mexico's answer to L.A.'s best dishes--10 top tastes chosen from five states. Then a recipe for chilorio, which is spicy, delicious taco meat that you can easily make at home.  And then five fun places to eat in Mexico. And much more.

TableConversation will continue to explore Asian and other ethnic foods,  American cuisine,  restaurants, wines, ingredients, recipes, cookbooks,  tastings and other happenings.

The Mexican posts and recipes in tc.c will remain there, but from now on, everything Mexican will go to the new blog.

Mexico City's Izote Reopens

The hottest restaurant news from Mexico City is that Izote has reopened.

The formal inauguration takes place this Thursday, but Izote actually opened last Tuesday, when chef/owner Patricia Quintana (right) returned from a trip through northern Mexico and Michoacan. 

That trip was a gastronomic tour de force called Aromas y Sabores de Mexico, which Quintana set up to show off Mexican cuisine to an international group of chefs and media people.

While on the road back to Mexico City, she got the news that the restaurant was set to open. After a quick change to an outfit from her extensive indigenous wardrobe, she arrived in time to greet the first diners.

Established in 2000, Izote was closed for a couple of months for renovation.  "We needed to have a new look," Quintana said.

The changes include addition of an upstairs terrace for smokers, a new, temperature-controlled wine closet (right), a banquette that runs the length of the room and a lighter, sleeker, more open look.

For Tuesday's soft opening, Quintana invited her travel companions to a dinner of small plates. The food was traditional, because she has a passion for ferreting out and preserving authentic flavors, but the presentation was up to date.

That night's camaron en chía (shrimp with chia seeds) was one example. Barely cooked in lime-seasoned liquid, as for aguachile, the shrimp came in a small tumbler hardly bigger than a shot glass, with chopsticks for fishing them out and a spoon for scooping up the liquid.

Chia seeds often show up in Mexican agua de limón (limeade). Perhaps this was the inspiration for sprinkling them into the shrimp liquid, where they added subtle nutty flavor.

Sweet, fresh red snapper and green chile strips were tucked into a cornhusk to resemble an open-faced tamal, but without any masa. 

Above the fish, a tiny banana leaf packet contained black beans sweetened with caramelized onion, a small taste that made one long for more.

Dinner started with sopecitos camineros, miniature salsa- and cheese-topped sopes.

These were flanked by a knotted strip of cornhusk on one side and an ornamental smear of sweet red chile salsa on the other.

A  cornhusk container of esquites (seasoned roasted corn kernels) came on a plate with a leafy salad. Sliced bread was stacked in a guaje (gourd).

A clay mug held only a small taste of sopa Tarasca (Quintana had just been in Tarascan country in Michoacan), but the soup was so dense and rich that a larger amount could have been cloying.

The components included pasilla chiles, black beans, diced avocado and strips of cheese.

The wine did a good job of matching such a wide range of flavors. It was Casa Grande Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz 2006 Gran Reserva from Casa Madero in Parras, Coahuila, which had been a stop on Quintana's tour.

The dessert was as traditional as they come--natillas, a soft custard to which Quintana added a slim chocolate bar and chocolate truffles.

Quintana says she has researched Mexican cuisine since the age of four and is still making discoveries. On her trip, for instance, she saw for the first time the source of escamoles, ant eggs that are in season in Mexico until July.

Author of 26 cookbooks, she is widely copied, but not always successfully. One restaurant purloined her stir-fried duck in tortillas with black mole but cooked the duck improperly and used storebought mole. A perfectionist, Quintana makes the mole herself.

She acknowledges the celebrity chef movement in Mexico City. "The boys want to stand out," she said. "It's a new interpretation of the cuisine. The chefs are creating their own styles with eclectic, European tendencies."

But Quintana is already at the top and intends to stick to her own style, which is to preserve authentic flavors and ingredients while presenting them in new and stylish ways.

"I'm not doing the foams and gels. I'm doing the food that tastes good, in beautiful presentations," she says. "Why do you have to reinvent, when it's all there, in our cuisine?"

Izote de Patricia Quintana, Presidente Masarik 513, Polanco, Mexico City, Mexico. Tel: 52 80 16 71. 

An Updated Look at Zihuatanejo

Forty years ago, Zihuatanejo was empty, isolated and spectacular, rocky mountains plunging to a curving bay. It wasn't hard to guess that one day this quiet Mexican village would boom with tourists. Only the flashy resort Ixtapa just up the coast stole its thunder, and Zihuatanejo faded into a worker community.

This has changed too. Now both are such hot destinations that they go by a single name, Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. And tourism has replaced agriculture as the main industry.

The land is thick with coconut palms, mangoes, papaya trees, tamarinds, cashew trees and other tropical riches.

Corn is important too. Perhaps that is why restaurants liven up plain white rice with a few golden kernels.

Just-picked coconuts supply refreshing water to drink. The dried meat goes into candies such as the little pyramids of shredded coconut in the photo above.

Zihuatanejo's municipal market shows off piles of mangoes, guanabanas, jícamas, different types of local bananas, avocados, thin-cut meat hung up to dry, spices and herbs. 

Rather than the neat sprigs of cilantro one sees in the United States, cilantro here is plucked in long stems with feathery tops.

Market shops display soft cakes of tamarind, some of it red with chile, also sea salt, and sacks of coffee grown in the hills of Guerrero, the state where the twin resorts are located.

Fish stalls sell such varieties as cocinero, rongo, salema, medregal, cuatete, ojon and boba.

More familiar varieties such as robalo, dorado and atún (tuna) are there too. Or you can buy dried fish, such as that at the sidewalk stall of the woman at right.

Seafood is so abundant that it is almost taken for granted.  But what every inhabitant eats most often contains no seafood at all. It is the meat and corn stew pozole. The official day to eat pozole is Thursday, and restaurants hang out signs announcing that they'll have it that day.

An unusual variation made with seafood turned up at a tasting during Food & Wine magazine's recent culinary festival (right). But on that occasion, dishes were spruced up to impress visitors.

What local people prefer is white pozole with pork. And what they drink with it is mezcal, not from Oaxaca but produced in the hills of Guerrero from Agave cupreata, known in this region as papalote.

In the early days, one flew from Mexico City into Zihuatanejo in a tiny propeller plane that bounced scarily through the clouds. There were no stewardesses. You helped yourself to drinks and snacks from a drawer.  The terminal consisted of two banana trees, an open air structure that shaded a counter with a typewriter, a water bottle and a couple of bathrooms.

This has been replaced by an air-conditioned building with gift shops and other airport amenities--and long, slow immigration lines.

The simple home cooking of the past  has given way to Italian restaurants, sushi bars, gelato shops and hamburger joints.

 
Ruben, who opened the hamburger place in the photo above, cooked for 20 years at Playa La Madera in Zihuatanejo before upscaling to larger quarters in Ixtapa.

The grilled burgers are very good, I hear. They're served Mexican style, with pickled vegetables and jalapeños.  I saw this view of Ruben's several times a day from my hotel. It was frustrating to be so close and not have time to go there.

The well heeled stay at places such as The Tides Zihuatanejo (at right)  and La Casa Que Canta (at top), where room rates can soar beyond $1,000 a night,  

The super rich have their own majestic villas, molded onto steep, rock-crusted hillsides. The mode of architecture, using natural components such as palapa roofs and earth tones that blend with the landscape, is so typical that it is known as "Zihuatanejo style."

It's a big change from the past, but the seafood is still good, and it's easy to get there, only a couple of hours nonstop from Los Angeles.

If luxury isn't your style, you can hang out at market fondas.

Delia (right) offers a comida corrida, a set meal that includes rice, beans and handmade tortillas with the main dish.

Or you can mingle with locals at places such as the Cenaduría Callita on Nicolás Bravo in downtown Zihuatanejo, not far from the market.

You go to Callita for fried tacos dipped in guajillo chile sauce and buried under lettuce, tomato, pickled lalapeños and crumbled queso fresco. Or tamales with atole, followed by fried bananas in syrup. Not fancy but a real feast, just like the old days.

Cilantro Chicken--for Breakfast

In Mexico, breakfast is BIG. I've watched skinny women dig into  huge plates of eggs and meat, beans and rice. How did they stay so slim? By leaving half or more of their gigantic meals uneaten.

The breakfast buffet at the Dorado Pacifico in Ixtapa, where I stayed when I went to Food & Wine magazine's recent food festival, was loaded with meat.

 

There were things like cochinita pibil, cilantro chicken, chicken in cream sauce, pork in green sauce and Mexican style beef steak in addition to eggs, chilaquiles with red or green sauce, fried bananas and, one morning, grilled nopal cactus.

The cactus is on the plate above, along with red chilaquiles, a chunk of fried banana and a couple of sweet breads.

There were salsas too, red, green and fresh chopped, as well as thick crema, to top anything you wanted.

The bread and dessert section always included a loaf of flan along with a variety of pan dulce, cookies and bouncy orange and green gelatin squares.

You could start with fresh fruits from the area such as bananas,  pineapple and papaya along with juices including, one morning, a green blend of grapefruit, nopales, celery and parsley.

What really brought out the best in breakfast was a beautiful view out toward coconut palms, with netting underneath to protect anyone sitting at the tables outside from getting an unexpected bonk on the head. 

Although I'm a light eater in the morning, I really liked the cilantro chicken. Another festivalgoer, Ruth Alegria, who lives in Mexico City, told me how to make it.

Ruth is the International Association of Culinary Professionals' country coordinator for Mexico. Check her blog for culinary tours if you're headed to Mexico and to see photos of the Food & Wine festival.

Ruth cooks the chicken in a green salsa made with tomatillos, chiles and lots of cilantro. For more intense flavor, she recommends using the miniature variety of tomatillo called tomatillo milpero.

I see these often in Mexican markets in Los Angeles. If you can't find them, select the smallest tomatillos available, not those that have become large and yellowish rather than bright green.

POLLO AL CILANTRO
Cilantro Chicken
With thanks to Ruth Alegria

3 pounds small chicken thighs
Water
Salt
1 pound tomatillos milperos or other small tomatillos
1/2 small onion, cut into wedges
2 large cloves garlic
2 serrano chiles, seeded, coarsely chopped
2 cups cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons oil
2 cups reserved broth

Remove the skin and the fat from the chicken thighs.  Place them in a Dutch oven.  Add water to cover and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, 45 minutes. Let cool in the broth.

Preheat a griddle over medium high heat.  Remove the papery husks from the tomatillos. Roast them on the griddle until flecked with brown but not burned, turning as needed. Remove and cool slightly.

Place the tomatillos in a blender container. Add the onion, garlic, chiles and cilantro.  Blend until pureed.

Remove the chicken from the broth and set aside. Strain the broth and reserve 2 cups.  Use the rest for another dish or a first course soup.

Clean the Dutch oven.  Add the oil and heat.  Add the pureed cilantro mixture. Rinse out the blender with some of the reserved broth and add with the remaining reserved broth to the Dutch oven. 

Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Taste and add salt as needed.

Place the chicken pieces in the sauce and simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes, or until heated through.

Serve with rice and tortillas.

Makes 6 servings.  

Memorable Mole at Fonda Lety

You can rave about complex Oaxacan moles and talk worshipfully about Puebla's intricate mole poblano.

But at the moment I can't think of anything more pleasing than a plate of red mole (mole rojo) at Fonda Lety in Zihuatanejo's municipal market (right).

The pure red chile flavor is simple but memorable. There must be more ingredients than chiles in the sauce--nuts, seeds, and so forth--but they blend so harmoniously that you can't single them out.

Tubs of ready made mole paste are on sale in the market, but Fonda Lety makes its own. 

The plate isn't photogenic, just a blob of chicken smothered in thick red sauce, without decoration. 

Lety's beans are pale and soupy. Rice contains bright yellow corn kernels. But all you really need is a basket of freshly made steaming hot tortillas (above). With these and the mole, you have a perfect meal.

According to the menus on the wall, Lety offers a surprising variety of food--chicken, goat and shrimp soups, aporreadillo (machaca), beef ribs, fried tacos, enchiladas, shrimp any way you like them, fried fish, steak and eggs prepared to taste, chops and milanesas.

Chicken soup (caldo de pollo) is a beautiful bowl of chicken and vegetables.

Enchiladas (right) are soaked in a guajillo chile sauce. Like the tacos (above), they hide under a mound of salad, avocado, soft white cheese and crema.

Everything is fresh, light and delicious. For that, one owes thanks to the proprietor, Señora Belen Ramos Ramirez, whose name and New Year wishes are on the calendar posted on the wall.

Fonda Lety, No. 213 in the Mercado Municipal, Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico. Tel: (755) 554-6294. 

El Tiburón's Lure is Seafood

A giant shark hangs from the ceiling of El Tiburón de la Costa. The shark looks scary, but it isn't real. It's there because "tiburón" means shark.

Located in Barrio Viejo (real name San Jose Ixtapa), a quiet town not far from Ixtapa's resort hotels, El Tiburón is noted for seafood. Rick Bayless ate there when he came to Ixtapa Zihuatanejo for Food & Wine magazine's recent gastronomic festival.

"The seafood is impeccable, all of it prepared with a sure hand," he said.

Bayless was intrigued by cucaracha del mar, a crustacean that grows on rocks in this area. It tastes like West Coast sea urchin, he said, slightly creamy and a little firm.

For lunch following the Bayless demo, El Tiburón put a few pieces in a botana, an appetizer plate that also included sea scallops, shrimp and abalone (right). This dish won an award in a local restaurant contest. To me, the cucaracha had a rich, scallopy taste, but the pieces were cut so small it was hard to tell.

My group also ordered camarones a la diabla (deviled shrimp), which Bayless ate at El Tiburón before demonstrating his own version at the festival.  El Tiburón's sauce was very spicy and a little sweet. One of the ingredients was pineapple. 

The surprising sweetness in fish ceviche (right) came from other sources, orange juice, orange soda and catsup, added along with diced tomatoes and Bufalo hot sauce.

The kitchen sent out the classic local fish dish tiritas, raw fish strips mixed with lime juice, red onion and, in this example, plenty of hot chile. The fish was swordfish.

One of the reasons seafood tastes so good at El Tiburón is that it is very fresh, like the components of aguachile mixto, a spicy lime juice treatment of assorted shellfish.

Of all the main dishes ordered that day, I liked mine the best. It was camarones sarandeados (right), big, butterflied shrimp soaked with red adobo, grilled and then topped with sliced guajillo chiles and garlic. Even the mashed potatoes on the plate were good. The rice included corn kernels.

Tiburón specialties that sound a little touristy include shrimp stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon and bathed with chipotle sauce.

Another is shrimp breaded with coconut and placed on a bed of mango-coconut sauce (right). 

El Tiburón's namesake, shark, isn't on the menu, because it's rarely available. If the restaurant does get some, it is likely to go into ceviche which, I hear, is really good.

El Tiburón is perfect for a vacation lunch. The dress code is so casual that one guy came in wearing an undershirt.

It's  upstairs, open and breezy, with ceiling fans to make it really cool.

The peaked roof is lined with pine boards and beams of palm wood, like a log cabin.  White plastic "Corona" chairs surround tables covered with blue and white checked oilcloth. The decorations are sea-inspired.

Your hosts, says the menu, are the owners, the Camarena brothers. There's no formal street address. If traveling from Ixtapa, you turn from the highway onto the main street of Barrio Viejo and look for it on the left.

El Tiburón de la Costa, Avenida Principal, San Jose Ixtapa, Guerrero, Mexico. Tel: (755) 552 6234.

In Zihuatanejo, Try Carmelitas

There's no reason to leave the beautiful beaches of Ixtapa Zihuatanejo--unless you want to taste real home style local food.

Then the place to go is Carmelitas, where you can watch tortillas made by hand and eat dishes you might not have seen before.

One of them is aporreadillo rojo. That's the local equivalent of northern Mexico's machaca, made of sun-dried beef scrambled with fresh farm eggs and a red sauce.

Aporreadillo is at the back in the photo above. The dish is front is another specialty, lengua (tongue), which Carmelitas prepares with a variety of sauces, among them chipotle and tomato with pineapple.

Along with these, you might try requesón guisado, a soft, spreadable fresh cheese blended with epazote, chiles and garlic, which you fold into tortillas or spoon up with chips. Or squash flowers cooked with corn kernels and epazote, either by itself or tucked into quesadillas (above). Or chicken enchiladas with a mild tomato sauce.

Carmelita is Maria del Carmen Ramirez de Gonzalez (right). She laughs a lot and gets excited if you like her food.

Her restaurant is comfortable and casual, with checked tablecloths and ceiling fans, open to the breezes and the garden outside. The kitchen is spotless.

Local people come for Sunday specials. These include pancita de res (beef stomach), which is a hangover curative like menudo. Another is hard-to-find goat blood sausage, moronga.

If that sort of dish isn't to your taste, the specials a couple of Sundays ago included pork, lengua with chipotle sauce, fat chiles rellenos (right) and calabacitas--pale Mexican squash cooked with onion, garlic and tomato and blanketed with thick crema and queso fresco.

The menu offers almost any antojito (snack) you could think of, including fried chicken tacos (tacos dorados), sopes, enmoladas, sincronizadas and quesadillas. 

Breakfasts are popular. With your huevos rancheros or chilaquiles, beans and tortillas, you can drink coffee from the hills of Guerrero.

The sweet breads (pan dulce) are delicious. They come from the Zihuatanejo market, where I spotted a stall that claims to sell homemade bread.

The chicharrón (fried pork skin) in green sauce is said to be outstanding.

I didn't see that dish, except for a bite of crisp, light chicharrones, served like chips. But I can tell you that seared tuna (above) with green spices has to be one of the restaurant's best dishes.

Carmelitas also turns out a superior plate of tiritas (right), strips of fish "cooked" with lime juice and combined with chile and red onion. It's a local specialty, so you'll find it at many restaurants. At Carmelitas, the flavor seemed to be especially bright.

The signature drink is pale yellow agua de maracuyá(passion fruit). which is  light and natural in flavor, not heavily sweetened like Mexican drinks north of the border.

Desserts are standard, like ice cream, strawberries with cream, peaches in syrup and fried bananas. But the best choice may be a fresh mango. Those I tasted at Carmelitas were super sweet, not surprising because mangoes are a leading crop in this part of Mexico.

Carmelitas Cafe and Restaurant, Avenida Morelos, Centro, Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico. Tel: 554-3885.   

Star Chefs Cook at Ixtapa

Last weekend's food and wine festival at Ixtapa Zihuatanejo, sponsored by Food & Wine magazine, was virtually a one man show--and that man was Rick Bayless, the USA's most talked about Mexican restaurateur, cookbook author and TV food show personality ("Mexico - One Plate at a Time").

Bayless was without question the star, promoted by the promoters, his likeness on posters plastered around town, and media from both sides of the border lined up for interviews.  

But if you could get a ticket, the price to attend one of his demos was only $40. And Bayless gave back by showing dishes that you could actually make, not impressive, impossible chef creations.

The theme was "Market to Table," and he'd gone shopping locally to make three dishes typical of the coast of Guerrero, the state in which Ixtapa Zihuatanejo is located.

These were spiny lobster in mojo de ajo (garlic-olive oil sauce), camarones a la diabla (spicy shrimp--shown in the photo below) and aguachile (raw seafood with lime juice and chile).

As he cooked, he moved seamlessly back and forth from English to Spanish so that everyone could understand.

The demo took place outdoors at the Hotel Las Brisas Ixtapa, which faces  the beach.

For spectators, it was ideal--cool breezes for comfort and the ocean quietly rumbling in the background.  For chefs, not so idyllic. The breezes did what they were supposed to, mitigate the heat. But that included the heat needed to cook the food. 

Federico López, who gave "The Purist's Point of View" at the Hotel Barceló Ixtapa, finally put a sheet of foil over a skillet of fish to conserve what heat there was.

As big a star in his country as Bayless is in the United States, López was voted one of Mexico's top 10 chefs five years in a row, founded the Ambrosía culinary school in Mexico City and consults on both sides of the border.

In the '90s, López was in the forefront of new cooking. But elBulli in Spain put him "out of style," he said, and so he switched to the other side, conserving traditions.

However, the food he presented was anything but old. it would seem that López is at the forefront again, not of anything so elitist as molecular gastronomy but of vegetarian and vegan cooking.

He's obsessed with greens--quelites, as they're called in Mexico.  And he lined his demo space with containers of huazontle (rich in protein, he said), epazote, hoja santa, cilantro, radish tops, lettuce leaves and chard as well as fresh favas, peas, poblano chiles, asparagus and tomatillos.

With these, he made a mole verde for local robalo, combining green pepitas with the quelites and vegetables and topping the fish with asparagus.

For another dish, he placed a creamy purée of favas and peas under fish fillets and topped them with a leafy vegetable salad tossed with a simple lime juice and olive oil vinaigrette. It's in the photo at the top.

"The coming battle is between red meat and vegetables," he said. It's clear what side López is on. 

Chef Guillermo González Beristáin, who also struggled with insufficient heat as he cooked at Club Intrawest, walks a middle road. His theme was "Old Meets New: The Flavors of Contemporary Mexico."

Beristáin has six restaurants in Monterrey in northern Mexico, including the flagship Pangea.

His opener, a crab-filled avocado, seemed conventional enough, except for its topping of crushed chicharron and accompaniments including jelled Clamato (a tomato-clam broth drink popular in Mexico), green mole, cilantro foam and tostadas made from three kinds of corn.

His take on meat with salsa borracha (drunken sauce) veered from the traditional too, as he replaced the beer that is customarily used with red wine. "It makes a finer, more delicate sauce," he said.

Other additions were veal stock, fried chorizo and chunks of barbacoa, all of this seasoned with serrano chile, onions and tomato.

The presentation was anything but traditional. Beristáin smeared a plate with chayote  purée and then goat cheese diluted with cream and pickled jalapeño juice. A spoonful of the salsa borracha went onto this.

Next he added sliced beef tenderloin that had been seared and finished in the oven. And then a sprinkle of sea salt and a garnish of tiny corn gorditas and crisp-fried cilantro.

Beristáin ended with a Pangea dessert, a mango shell filled with diced fruit and coconut ice cream, topped with crisp flour tortilla strips sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and a dash of sweet-sour jamaica sauce.

It was a logical dessert, because mangoes are a leading crop of Guerrero. But Beristáin was not such a purist that he wouldn't condone using canned mangoes instead of fresh and building the dessert in a martini glass.

 

A Wine to Remember

It was bottle number 408 of only 1,210  produced.

The wine was a Malbec. Not from Argentina, where Malbec is as common as tap water. And not from California, where Malbec is gaining recognition as a varietal rather than used primarily as a blending grape.

This wine came from Baja California's Guadalupe Valley.  It was the 2002 Malbec made by Hans Backhoff of Monte Xanic.

On the label, Backhoff says the 2002 harvest yielded only four barrels, of such notable flavor that the winery felt it a duty to share it with clients and friends. 

I was lucky enough to receive a bottle when I visited Monte Xanic some years ago. But I didn't open it until the other day. And I was amazed. Deeply colored, the wine was fresh, young and full of spirit. It was an admirable Malbec, not purple, soft and jammy like many Argentine Malbecs.

According to Monte Xanic's website, the 2005 Malbec is available for purchase now. 

Like the earlier bottle, it is a limited edition wine, and the description is the same as that on my bottle--concentrated black fruit and delicate notes of licorice and freshly ground roasted coffee, "complex flavor, voluptuous in the mouth, elegant and memorable."

It's a wine I would look for on another trip to Baja. After all, one must keep good memories alive.

 

Javier Plascencia's Tijuana Food

You would have to spend a week in Tijuana to eat in all of Javier Plascencia's restaurants. And you might want to spend another week just to eat in them again. 

I've only managed two so far, the classic Villa Saverios, where Tijuana's well-heeled eat high style Baja-Mediterranean food  (above).  And the new Erizo Cebicheria, a casual seafood bistro. Erizo means sea urchin, which is sometimes on hand, but not when I was there.

The restaurants do have a couple of things in common. Both serve Plascencias' mosaic-like octopus carpaccio (Erizo's version is at right. The greens in the center are slivered nopales) and his thin-crusted pizza that's like a cheese course and dessert combined. It's topped with Baja's Real del Castillo cheese, then quince paste, fig syrup, pomegranate seeds and thyme sprigs.

And each has a signature cocktail--a tamarind martini at Saverios, Peru's pisco sour at Erizo, where you can have it plain or dolled up with flavors such as mango, passion fruit and pomegranate.

With your tamarind martini at Villa Saverios, you could have a trio of tiny tostadas (right), one topped with spider crab, another with geoduck clam and a third with a combination of Sonora dried beef and octopus machaca.  

Standouts at Saverios this last trip included a juicy cassserole of lamb shank cooked with wine, onions and little dumplings of corn masa that are called chochoyones. 

Crisp fresh radish slices on top added the contrast needed for such a rich dish.

If the only chile relleno you know is a green chile stuffed with cheese and coated with batter, you would be amazed at Saverios' pasilla chile stuffed with beef cheek sweetened with fig granules, surrounded by heirloom beans and topped with arugula.

The duck taco at Saverios is just as inventive. The wrap is a thin slice of jicama, not a tortilla. A spoonful of green habanero salsa lies underneath, crossed by a red line of jamaica salsa. Jamaica flowers are scattered over the top.

Plascencia does an interesting risotto based on his grandmother's recipe, switching from rice to farro and inorporating crisp suckling pig, sliced morels, heirloom beans and, in the center, shredded nopales.

He honors Tijuana tradition with two classic Caesar salads, the original from the Hotel Caesar and another from Victor's, which some insist is the best.

In a side by side comparison, Victor's seemed a little lighter and more vinegary. But the tableside presentation made them both winners.

Villa Saverios is upscale and dressy. Erizo is a nice place to spend a lazy afternoon. It's on a pleasant street, Avenida Sonora, where the Plascencia family restaurants Caffe Saverios and La Tia are also located.

The seafood menu is extensive. The 10 ceviches include one modeled on what Plascencia tasted in Peru. True to Peruvian style, it is dressed up with red onion, chunks of yam and corn, only not the giant corn used in Peru. Perhaps that's not available in Tijuana.

A three-clam ceviche combines geoduck, chocolate and pismo clams. A green shrimp ceviche (right) is intensely colored with tomatillos, cilantro, green onions, avocado and green chiles.

One called petroleo, which includes a variety of seafood,  apparently gets its name from the addition of squid ink.

Erizo does some clever innovations, like birria made with fish instead of meat and swordfish cochinita modeled on Yucatan's achiote-seasoned cochinita pibil (pit-steamed suckling pig).

Toritos are deep fried batter-coated guero (yellow) chiles stuffed with shrimp and crab. Aguachile combines two types of scallops with bright fresh seasonings sparked with lime juice and serrano chile.

And there's a dramatic salt-crusted whole corvina  (right) that is stuffed with herbs and lemon slices and carved at the table. It's accompanied by a garlicky yellow salsa de pescado packed with flavor from ginger, citrus butter, white wine and Peruvian aji amarillo (yellow chile).

The inventive approach to fresh seafood makes Erizo a destination place. But so do its "Tardes de Pisco Sour," a daily afternoon special when the drink price is reduced. The good thing is that afternoons at Erizo continue from 4 to 9 p.m.

Villa Saverios, Blvd. Sanchez Taboada, corner Escuadron 201 in the Zona Rio, Tijuana, B.C., Mexico. Tel: (from USA)  01152 (664) 686-6502

Erizo Cebicheria, Avenida Sonora 3808-11, Tijuana, B.C., Mexico. Tel:  01152 (664) 686-2895.