Mexico: Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi

We are back from two weeks in Guanajuato and San Luis Potosi.
Guanajuato is as charming as we remembered We had fond memories of an outdoor cafe (Rincon del Arte) we frequented 10 years ago, next to the Teatro Juarez and down the street from the hotel. At that time, they sometimes featured singers, and we had the chance to catch one whom we had never heard of but whose music we now follow avidly. The space they used at the time has had to be vacated, to make way for a pathway to the funicular which goes up to the Pipila monument. On someone's suggestion, I went up there at night (Catherine was exhausted, alas), to see a pretty spectacular view. She was able to get an almost identical view, though at noontime, in an Italian restaurant, El Gallo Pitagorico, where the appetizers were great (soup as well as carpaccio), although the pasta were not nearly al dente enough. But the view sort of made up for the overcooked linguine.

We had good food at Truco 7, a sort of maze of small rooms which look like they escaped from a Mexican vision of Greenwich Village and where, at lunchtime, there is an inevitable wait at any time for a table, given the very respectable comida at 40 pesos. Once we had cerdo in adobo, in a dark and very rich sauce which was almost a mole; we also had veal in white sauce which was almost identical to blanquette de veau, one of Catherine's favorite dishes (and which I also happen to love!). In a fancier vein, Los Agaves near the Preso de Olla had a marvelous carpaccio of smoked salmon and chile relleno the likes of which I have never tasted, in a light crusty pastry rather than fried batter. Fantastic!

In San Luis, since we were staying with friends (and were invited by others) we did not eat out as much. Nonetheless, we were happy to find a restaurant in the center of town which specialized in just a few dishes, notably Pozole (the name of the place), which came in all the colors of the Mexican flag -- red, white, and green. Both the red and green varieties were very good, though nothing can beat the home cooked variety. Enchiladas, tacos rojos, enmoladas, and panuchos were also very tasty. But the most fantastic food we had in SLP was went we went to hot springs about an hour away one Sunday morning. There was a little stand which served small gordiates made of blue corn -- we tried the nopalitos, the rajas con queso, the papas, and the huevos rojos. The gorditas were cooked over a comal, and were toasty and not at all greasy. The carnitas we ate on the way back, at Villa de Reyes, were pretty spectacular as well.

We stopped in Dolores Hidalgo briefly on the way back to Guanajuato, the day before our plane left. I had zapote negro and tepquila ice cream in your honor (we also had some in Guanajuato, at the Michoacana place you recommended, though flavors were more conventional.) Among the wilder flavors at Dolores Hidalgo this time, we saw (and in some cases tasted) avocado, maize, beer, mole, chicarron; my prize for the wildest flavor was nopalitos con camarones y pulpo (cactus leaves with shrimp and octupos)! Speaking of nopalitos, there was a sort of craft fair in Guanajuato where we bought a variety of sweets and liqueurs: nopal, xoconostle (cactus flowers), and tejocote (a sort of plum) liqueurs, nopal gummitos which we ate in the plane on the way back (sticky as hell -- they don't call them gummitos for nothing!) but fantastic, as were the candied pecans which tasted like first rate pecan pie in a concentrated form. We still have a stock of various dulces from Guanajuato and San Luis, including a San Luis speciality, Queso de Tuna (which is not a cheese but a kind of seet paste made from cactus fruit.) We did buy some real cheese to eat in San Luis and indeed took a string cheese to eat on the plane going home -- much better than the pretzels which were all that the airline offered.

On the way there, in Dallas airoport, there was even a wine bar in terminal A which served samples of Texas wine. According to their brochure, Texas is the US's 3rd or 4th largest wine producing state, but 95% of the wine is consumed locally. So I guess it's hard to find at Sam's ... To our pleasant surprise, the wine was quite good, but not cheap by any means. But if you want to spend a pleasant hour and a half in Dallas airport, it sure beats the food courts!