Maybe it was the rainbow that had me thinking. How not much has changed (thankfully) since Don Day made one of the best decisions of his life and started to spend a few months each year in San Miguel de Allende. Except, perhaps for one thing. Eleven years ago when Don Day’s Wife and I first began living la buena vida, people came to San Miguel for maybe a month, sometimes a winter or perhaps a lifetime. These days most of them come for probably a weekend or possibly a week. Eleven years ago, most visitors came from the United States and they rented or purchased a home. These days they come from other parts of Mexico and they stay in hotels.

I don’t know how many hotel rooms there were in 2003 but I’d guess that number has since doubled. When you build a hotel you give people a place to sleep but you also must almost always give them a place to eat and, though a restaurant is seldom a profit maker for most luxury hotels, you might as well do your best to make money from it.

Most of the hotels that have opened in San Miguel, particularly in the last five years, are what Don Day would call luxury hotels and what the owners call boutique hotels. And because most of them are luxury hotels they have upscale restaurants.

Now if you’ve been a regular reader of Don Day over the last five years, you’ll know that, unlike most restaurant critics, Don Day rarely writes about upscale restaurants. There are a few reasons why but one very obvious one. Most restaurant critics have expense accounts. Don Day only has expenses.

Don Day has no aversion to Andanza, 1826, Dos Casas or Moxi. None of them even require Don Day to wear a jacket or even socks when he dines. Don Day would love to eat at all of them. And do it quite frequently. But Don Day can’t afford to eat at these restaurants. At least, not very often.

There is one exception though. It’s a place that Don Day occasionally goes to for a drink. But only once before had we ever gone to eat.

What convinced me to have dinner there was running into someone at another bar, a place that Don Day quite often goes to for a drink, La Sirena Gorda. Sitting at one my favorite of all San Miguel’s watering holes (it’s hard for Don Day not to like any horseshoe shaped bar), I saw German Ortega. I’d first met German, a tattooed local from neighboring Celaya, the kind of guy women call “lean and mean”, back when he was with the food and wine shop, Carnevino. German had helped orchestrate one of the best launches San Miguel had ever seen when the shop first opened its doors.

I asked him if he was still at Patio Tres and he said he still was. And, like any good restaurant manager, he said I should come and check out some of the changes to the menu. Like any responsible food writer, last week, Don Day’s Wife and I did.

Patio Tres is perhaps the most confusing restaurant/bar in all of San Miguel. It’s in a great location, in El Meson Hotel next to the Opera House on Mesones. But as easy a place as it is to get to it’s a very difficult place to get into.

Signs, signs, everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind

It starts with the signage. To the left of the main entrance, there used to be four signs but now there are two. The one on top is divided into five and, reading clockwise advertises ENVINARTE/ALEGRIA RESTAURANTE/MARTINEZ BAR/PATIO 3/EL MESON HOTEL. Below it is the second sign and the only one that makes total sense. It simply says EL MESON HOTEL.

To the right of the main entrance there are four signs. Again reading clockwise, the first says LENCINA GOURMET; the second reads MARTINEZ BAR; the third says ALEGRIA RESTAURANTE; and the last ENVINARTE TIENDA DE VINOS. From those four signs, I would have guessed that inside El Meson Hotel are a gourmet food shop, a bar, a restaurant and a wine store. I would be quite wrong. If, as you read this, you are confused as to whether I’m in Martinez Bar, Alegria Restaurante or, what I usually call the place, Patio Tres, it’s because I’m more confused than you are.

After the signs, one enters a very pleasant courtyard restaurant where, unless you go when residents of El Meson Hotel are eating their breakfast will probably be totally empty. Now, as you may know, human beings being human beings, they will stand in line for an hour to get inside a sardine can but they will never take one baby step into a place that’s empty. Which Don Day thinks is the reason why all of those different places mentioned on those signs are almost always as empty as a cobbler’s curse (no Don Day has no idea what that means either; I just like the expression).

If you do not go straight into the empty restaurant but instead make a quick right and a quicker left, you’ll soon see what Don Day knows as Martinez Bar, one of the best looking drinking places in San Miguel de Allende. In fact, though I’d probably rank Matilda the hotel as a little better looking overall than El Meson the hotel I’d rank Martinez Bar as better looking than the bar at Matilda.

When we arrived, German Ortega and bartender Carlos Vallin gave us their usual very warm greeting. Despite their cordiality, I couldn’t help myself. I had to bitch one more time about those signs, about every little corner of the place having a different name. The place needs to visit a shrink. It suffers from schizophrenia.

“I like the concept because I understand it perfectly and it really helps to sort things out internally”, said German, “but I agree, it is very hard to communicate it to our customers.”

As you might have guessed, Martinez Bar is a play on martinis bar and that’s what almost everyone goes there for. Martinis and other mixed drinks. There are probably enough bottles on the bar’s shelves to paint Don Day’s face with a perpetual smile for the rest of his life. Don Day, however, rarely drinks mixed drinks because mixed drinks often make Don Day fall off his stool. Don Day goes to Martinez Bar for Mexican wine for there’s not a better place in San Miguel to get a good sampling of the best Mexican wines.

There are about 50 wines on the list, at least 80% of them red and every single one of them Mexican. There are other bars/restaurants in town with a very deep bow to Mexico as a wine producer but Martinez is the only one that’s exclusively Mexican.

“We get the odd complaint about no other countries being represented. There are a lot of people who like their Chilean or Argentinean so it hasn’t exactly been easy. But I wouldn’t even think about changing the list”, said German. “We’re Mexican. We’re proud. We have great wines and we want more people to experience them.”

I told German we’d like to eat at the bar and I asked him to select three courses from the new menu for us and pair them with three wines he was particularly proud of. And, of course, there was a budget that made the wine choices a lot tougher for him.

The price of wine at Patio Tres may be a small problem but not the price of food. For a fancy, high end restaurant, the dishes are quite casual and the prices very low end, almost ridiculous when you think of what you’d pay for some entrees outside of Mexico in such deluxe surroundings. The most expensive main is 200 pesos or about $17.

The starter that German chose for us was the bisque de camaron. Don Day and Don Day’s Wife had been missing bisque and it’s especially welcomed when you’re in a town where it’s seldom seen. Patio Tres shrimp bisque uses roast tomatoes and onions in the stock to add a smoky, toasty hint to the intense taste that’s extracted from the shells. There’s no cream, as there shouldn’t be in a bisque, but there’s a little cream cheese to give it a tiny tang. There’s also some heat from a pepper and, speaking about another kind of heat, Don Day’s Wife said, “It’s so nice that the soup arrived at the table piping hot. That’s rare these days.”

German told us, “I’m going to match the bisque with a red if that’s OK with you. I think you’ll agree it really, really works.”

“Pour on”, said Don Day’s Wife.

The wine was Parteaguas and, if there’s any wine at Patio Tres that’s their house wine, this would be it. Now Don Day said that Patio Tres’ list was exclusively Mexican, well this one is Mexican with an asterisk.

Parteaguas is made by the most celebrated of all Mexican winermakers, Hugo d’Acosta. The wine though is not made with Mexican grapes. D’Acosta imports the juice in barrels, a combination of Carignan, Grenache and Syrah, from the Cotes de Rousillon in the south of France and then adds his magic at his winery in the Baja. The wine is quite complex for a wine at this price (it sells for $390 pesos or a little over $30 for a bottle at the restaurant) and is reminiscent of a Chateaneuf-de-Pape. There are interesting nuances of dried fruit such as prunes or apricots as well as almonds. As German Ortega promised it would, it worked very well with the shrimp bisque.

Octopus is making a welcome appearance on more and more menus these days and just the fact that it’s there is causing Don Day to eat more and more octopus.

Don Day’s Wife is deathly afraid of octopus. Not of the tentacles wrapping around her throat in the middle of the night and squeezing the last dying breath out of her. But of serving it at home and having our guests doing what we used to call the Goodyear chew as they stare at you in a fixed, wide-eyed glare. It can be tough, very tough to get the toughness out of octopus and though we’ve tried a lot of ways to tenderize it…yes, even the buttermilk…you never quite know.

Patio Tres has no reason to worry: their octopus was almost melt in the mouth. It was served with an excellent guacamole, verdolaga (Don Day’s favorite raw green), cherry tomatoes and guajillo peppers.

Patio Tres calls their octopus dish, carnitas de pulpo and German encouraged us to eat them like carnitas, in the tortillas he’d brought to the bar. We did and left a plate that could have been put on the shelf without washing we’d cleaned it so well.

Accompanying the pulpo, German suggested a wine that he thinks is about as good as it gets when it comes to Mexican wine. It needed a bit of insistence as it’s well over Don Day’s daily budget but Don Day’s Wife was over Don Day’s budget when he met her.

The wine is called Contraste Continental and, again, it’s Mexican with an asterisk. It combines grapes from Mexico’s best wine region, the Valle de Guadalupe in the Baja with grapes from the very well respected Wente Estate in Livermore in California. German told me the mix is about 60% Tempranillo, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% Merlot. It was obvious that Contraste Continental had spent a lot of time in oak. Closing my eyes, I thought I was drinking a well aged Rioja, which is good. Was it worth the $800 peso price? No, not quite. Would I ever order it again? No, I wouldn’t, because I’ll rarely buy any $800 peso wine ever again. But it was a delight simply for the experience of tasting one of Mexico’s best. Like paying for box seats to see Aretha Franklin is worth it once or twice in a lifetime. And yes, Don Day still wants to see Aretha one last time.

German Ortega has put together a crew of young, enthusiastic chefs in the kitchen.

“Alejandra Ventura leads the team but I want everyone to be ambitious, everyone to want to go beyond their present positions” said German. “It’s a team effort but I want everyone to bring their own ideas to the kitchen. And never forget the importance of service.”

I couldn’t help thinking about the film “Kings of Pastry” (a must for foodies if you haven’t seen it) when dessert arrived. In the movie there’s ribbon after ribbon of artistically spun sugar as there was on the Patio Tres dessert. Don Day can’t even spin Don Day’s Wife on a dance floor so he’s very impressed with spun sugar especially when it’s on a dessert where the sugar usually just floats on top. The dessert was a pumpkin creme brulee.

“I would take this over pumpkin pie any day”, said Don Day’s Wife. “You know I’m not a big pumpkin fan but this is a great dessert.”

Even the accompanying cookie was special. It was an elderflower biscuit with a hint of anise in the taste.

The wine to accompany dessert came not from the collection of Mexican wines but from the cocktails section of Patio Tres. German Ortega calls himself a mixologist and when he’s got a shaker in his hand he’s a lot like the octopus that was on the plate of our main.

I was talking to Jessi Olvera, a partner in San Miguel’s excellent Casa Olvera, the day after our dinner at Patio Tres. She said, “You always know when German is going to make a cocktail. Everyone else in the bar evacuates the area.”

The wine was a sparkler, an Italian Asti.

“We use it in some of the cocktails”, said German. “I’ve yet to find a sweet Mexican white that works as well.”

Don Day just reread this blog, and though there are a lot of…OK, maybe too many…words, I realized I hadn’t accomplished what I wanted to in talking about Patio Tres. I wanted to talk about German Ortega, I wanted to talk about the imaginative food and its very affordable prices but most of all I wanted to talk about that Mexican wine list. And I hadn’t given it anywhere near the attention it deserves.

If I was to say Mexican wine is expensive, I don’t think I’d get any naysayers (except perhaps people in the Mexican wine business…and probably not all of them). Due mostly to some misdirection by the federal government, Mexican wine is, without doubt, too expensive. And that’s why Patio Tres is such a special place. And what Don Day originally intended this blog to be most about.

Restaurants and bars traditionally mark their wines up somewhere between 100 and 250% of what they pay for them. Patio Tres mark-ups are ridiculously low. The prices are often less than what Don Day can buy them for at retail. Look at these examples.

Parteagas is $390 pesos at Patio Tres. At La Europea, it’s $350 pesos.
Contraste Continental is $800 pesos at Patio Tres. It’s $700 pesos at La Europea. At another upscale restaurant it’s $1400 pesos.
Cuna de Tierra, the red from close by Dolores Hidalgo is $400 pesos at La Europea. It’s less than that at Patio Tres, just $395 pesos.
Luz de Noche is $390 pesos at Patio Tres. At another San Miguel restaurant, it’s $690 pesos.
Vino de Piedra, perhaps the best Mexican red you’ll ever taste is 920 pesos at Patio Tres. It’s $814 pesos at La Europea.
Entretanto is $200 pesos at La Europea. For $260 pesos at Patio Tres, you can sip it in beautiful surroundings accompanied by delightful food.

Patio Tres is different from the other upscale hotel restaurants in San Miguel de Allende. The others have good food…some perhaps even better food…but not at the prices you’ll pay at Patio Tres. The others have good selections of Mexican wine but none at the prices you’ll pay at Patio Tres.

I shared my impressions about Patio Tres wines and those low prices with German Ortega before I left.

“That’s why I love my job”, he told me, with a beam on his face like a kid with a straight A report card. “This is what makes me so excited. This is what I live for.”

Patio Tres is located inside at the Hotel El Meson, Mesones #80 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Don Day only lived in France for a short time. But it was enough time for a long romance. The object of Don Day’s deep affection was called Madiran.

Every Sunday, Don Day and the rest of the escapees from the asylum (what the locals called the expats) would host a picnic and every Sunday we would have Madiran over for the feast. Unlike the rest of the guests, though, Madiran would never make it home.

Madiran was one of the local red wines, the cheapest of all the local red wines. And the taste? That was of little importance. All that we wanted from the wine was an alcohol delivery system that would be acceptable to the sophisticated belles femmes we would invite and who, occasionally, would actually show up.

In the last few years, Don Day and Don Day’s Wife spent a little holiday time in the Dordogne, not too many kilometres from the place in southwest France where Madiran is made. It was there, 40 years after his original dalliance, that Don Day tried to rekindle his romance with Madiran. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out.

Don Day had changed. Forty years of washing wine over his palate had adjusted it substantially. Don Day found Madiran to be a little too sharp, a touch rough, what Don Day’s Wife appropriately called puckery.

The reason was obvious. Madiran is made from a grape called Tannat, traditionally the wine is about 70% Tannat blended with 15% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Cabernet Franc. Tannat, as the name suggests, has a very tannic taste that, despite a number of bold attempts, Don Day has never been able to become accustomed to.

The last time we tried a Madiran was about three weeks ago, in Toronto. It had a lot of fruit but it wasn’t sweet fruit. The blackcurrant was a little tart. The cherry was a little sour. Those tannins still needed softening even though this Madiran had over three years in the bottle.

So what has this got to do with San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, you’re probably asking. Well a few weeks ago a new restaurant opened in San Miguel. And for it’s name, they chose the word Tannat. Don Day, the wannabe investigative reporter had to find out why.

There is one other part of the world that Tannat is popular. In that country, it is considered the “national grape”. That country is Uruguay. In the late 1800s, a guy named Pascual Harriague and a number of other Basque settlers brought the grape from the southwest of France to the south of Uruguay and, slowly but very surely, it became the country’s most consumed wine.

Jose Manuel Garcia, the owner of the restaurant Tannat, is not from Uruguay but he has a passion for things Uruguayan. His wife and partner Monica is from Uruguay and, in his opinion, “Monica is the world’s best woman and Tannat is the world’s best wine”.

We went to Tannat on Saturday night and were welcomed at the door like long lost friends by Jose and Monica. Using the when in Rome philosophy, we of course ordered Tannat, wondering all the while if we could get over our anti-Madiran influences. There are two Tannats available by the glass, both from winemaker Juan Carrau, one of them a reserva.

“The reserva spends about seven months in oak and had an extra year in the bottle’, Jose told us and, when Monica suggested a glass of each so we could more easily experience the differences, it was an easy answer. Two wines are always better than one to Don Day.

There was no difference in the nose and there wasn’t a lot of difference in taste, not as much as you might get between a Rioja crianza and a Rioja reserva. The entry level Tannat and the reserva both had a deep, dark color but the reserva was a little more of a warm brick red if you held it up to the light. It was also slightly more mellow but, without sampling one right after the other, with my eyes closed, Don Day wasn’t able to pass Don Day’s Wife’s taste test (she of course predicted I wouldn’t) by drinking just one and identifying which one it was.

There was another difference, a difference with both Tannat wines. With Don Day of course finding it unavoidable to make reference to a certain Uruguayan soccer player, the Uruguayan Tannat had less bite than Madiran. Though still robust, it was smoother than Madiran. The fruit was more of a blackberry than blackcurrant. And the cherry was more sweet than sour.

As we tasted those first two glasses and before we even had our first mouthfuls of food, I realized there was something special about Tannat, the grape. And Tannat, the restaurant.

Tannat the restaurant is located on Salida a Celaya/Ancha de San Antonio, the street that is as close as San Miguel has to a restaurant row. There’s a classy sign and an attractive entry but the entryway isn’t quite big enough to be a bar or for anything but a little storage and to show off a few of the bottles on Tannat‘s small but interesting list of wines. The next set of doors open into a bowling alley of a back yard where, closest to the entrance, wooden tables and iron chairs seat about 20 people. There’s a bamboo roof that looks like it may need a couple of prayers to stop a rain. A wall of twigs partially hides the restrooms. But no, it’s not the location, it’s not the decor, it’s not the the washrooms that makes Tannat, the restaurant, special. It’s the hospitality. Immediately, Don Day liked Monica and Jose. The way they shared their enthusiasm for their new venture. The way they shared their knowledge about wine and food.

Monica and Jose call Tannat, the restaurant, a cocina con caracter and have divided the creative menu into three sections, caracter inicial, caracter intermedio and caracter fuerte.

With what we picked from the second and third sections and knowing that, when there’s a Don Day, there’s inevitably going to be a caracter finale, a dessert, we decided to skip the caracter inicial.

We were almost successful. Monica brought tiny bowls of one of the five appetizers, a complimentary amuse bouche of cream of fresh pea soup enhanced with a little onion and white wine. It was a nice little tease for the delights to come. Don Day was liking the soup, liking Monica and liking Tannat even more.

On the second section of the menu, we had found a dish that we couldn’t remember ever seeing on a San Miguel restaurant before. It was a favorite dish. A foodie dish. A dish that we knew would go well with the second glasses of Tannat that we’d ordered. It was steak tartare.

Filet of beef had been hand chopped into larger than usual and very tender pieces. The raw meat was nicely seasoned with little more than salt and pepper and lay on a bed of the rarely seen (even though Don Day thinks it’s one of the world’s best greens) verdolaga. Topping the tartare was asparagus, green onions and both shavings and a wedge of parmesan.

“I would have shaved all of the parmesan”, said Don Day’s Wife, “but I still give it a five out of five. If it had a couple more pieces of that toast on the side, I’d give it a six.”

There was a good reason the food was good. Jose Manuel Garcia had spent four years at San Miguel’s The Restaurant. Monica had spent two. From the standpoint of serving imaginative, flavorful but still reasonably simple food, there’s probably no better exposure than The Restaurant. Haniel Cruz and Cecilia Alvarez, the couple manning (or should that be man and womaning) the back of the restaurant, had a similarly excellent training ground in the kitchen of San Miguel’s MiVida.

The Italian influence from MiVida showed in our selection of main courses. Don Day’s Wife chose a pasta with cherry tomatoes, anchovies, cubes of mozzarella, torn lettuce and green olives.

Don Day chose a pasta with veal in a sage butter sauce colorfully decorated with carrot shavings. Both pastas used fresh, not dried fettucine. Both were fine but could have been spiced up a little for our tastes (but perhaps not for everyone’s tastes). The sage butter would have been helped by a little more sage in Don Day’s opinion and he also would have liked the chance to sprinkle some dried chiles and add a little heat. Don Day’s Wife thought some capers or more anchovies to add salt would have helped hers. Along with perhaps a sprinkle of dried oregano. A request for parmesan was granted instantly and a “would you like more cheese” inquiry came from Jose before we were half finished.

Though it deserved to be full to the brim. No, make that overflowing. Tannat, the restaurant, was not busy. Especially for a Saturday when there were a lot of Mexican tourists in town. There was only one other table for four occupied so it wasn’t difficult for Jose to take time out from hand towelling the tall stemmed glasses (he’s one of those finicky people who even sticks his nose inside the glass before any wine is allowed to enter it) and join us to talk wine in general and Tannat in particular.

It was immediately obvious that Jose Manuel Garcia lives and breathes…no makes that breathes heavily and deeply…wine. To the table, he brought with him a selection of Tannats, most of them well aged, for our viewing pleasure. One of them, from 2000, he planned to open next week when he celebrates a fortyish birthday. Another of them, we decided to open immediately.

We were now tasting an older, much more mellow Tannat. I was beginning to understand Jose’s passion; it was beginning to rub off. Jose told me he collects Tannats. He knew, exactly, how many different he had, 72 in total. He told me how there are only about 120,000 bottles of Tannat produced each year in Uruguay (in comparison, the annual production of Madiran in France is about 10,000,000 bottles and Madiran is far from what you’d call a popular French wine). He bought out a bottle of Bouza, a Uruguayan Tannat that includes Merlot and Tempranillo in a blend to mellow the tannins and showed me how production is so limited each number is bottled.

“I can’t find another woman as good as mine…but I can find an awful lot of good Tannats,” Jose said.

Rather than order a glass of dessert wine, we decided that Tannat would be a perfect partner for the molten chocolate cake that we’d ordered.

Delivering the dessert to the table were Haniel and Cecy. Don Day thinks going to a restaurant without meeting the chef is like going to a gallery opening without meeting the artist. Seventies soul was playing in the background and Don Day couldn’t help imagining the next song being Marvin Gaye doing “Pride and Joy” to describe the glow on the chefs’ faces.

Though it would never stop Don Day from ordering it and ordering it often, molten chocolate cake is a bit of a been there/done that dessert that doesn’t take much more than timing to perfect. What makes the difference is what might keep it company on the plate. There were two white slabs on the side of Tannat’s molten chocolate cake that looked a little like nougat. They had a melt-in-the-mouth creamy, cheesy, fruity taste that was a perfect partner to the chocolate. The flavor was passion fruit, Cecy told us, and the name for the two white slabs was donata panciera.

Jose had now brought two books to the table. The first one was an obvious choice. It was “Wine Grapes”, the Encyclopedia Brittanica of wine that details almost 1400 grapes in almost as many pages. It’s a book Don Day once considered buying until he realized he could buy ten bottles of wine for the same amount of money.

The other book that Jose had placed on the table was one Don Day was very surprised to see. Though written by a restaurateur, it’s a book that’s relevant to almost any business. It’s a book about the importance of hospitality in virtually every aspect of life. I think Donny Masterton, chef/owner of The Restaurant had recommended or given it to Jose.

The book is called “Setting The Table”. The author is Danny Meyer, the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, a chain (though he wouldn’t like that word) of New York area restaurants whose chefs have won an unprecedented 25 James Beard Awards.

In “Setting The Table”, Danny Meyer says, “Within moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the first four gifts of life: eye contact, a smile, a hug and some food. We receive many other gifts in a lifetime, but few can ever surpass those first four.”

During our first visit to Tannat, Jose and Monica Garcia gave us frequent eye contact, piles of smiles and fed us very well. As we left the restaurant, they gave us a hug.

When Don Day’s Wife and I are charmed by a restaurant, as we were on Saturday night by Tannat, we have a line. It’s only three words. Those three words are, “They get it.” Surprisingly, very few restaurants “get it”. Those that do are usually around for a long time. And they almost always keep getting better.

Tannat, the wine, is not easily available at retail in San Miguel de Allende. La Europea lists five Tannats or Tannat blends but doesn’t stock any of them in their San Miguel shop. Some of them may be available in one of their two Queretaro stores. Tannat, the restaurant, is obviously your best bet for finding the wine locally. They have two available by the glass (or bottle) plus a premium Tannat available only by the bottle. There’s also the possibility of enticing Juan to sell you something from his “private” stock. Tannat is located at Ancha de San Antonio #67 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It is closed on Monday and Tuesday.

When Don Day was still growing up…or perhaps more sideways than up…the biggest treat in the world was a trip to The Stoney Creek Dairy, the Hamilton, Ontario, Canada version of butterfat nirvana. It required a birthday, a couple of A’s on a report card, or, if Don Day was really lucky, just a sticky, sweaty July night for Don Day’s Dad to say, “OK, everybody in the Olds, we’re going for triple scoops.”

When kids are still growing up in Fraccionamiento La Luz, a residential neighborhood just outside San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the biggest treat in the world is a trip to Jimmy, their local version of ice cream nirvana. It doesn’t require a Nissan or any other wheels, for usually, it’s only a hop, skip and jump over a couple of cobblestoned blocks.

On a lot of Saturdays in San Miguel de Allende, Don Day goes to the market. Not the Rosewood Organic Market but the La Luz not even close to organic Market. If you’ve ever wondered where your favorite fruit and veg stalls or that juicy carnitas stand goes when they’re not at the Tuesday market, you just might find them here. After the market, Don Day walks two blocks to see his favorite butcher, Alberto at Carniceria Nuevo Aurora which is also in La Luz. And then, perhaps because he never quite grew up, he walks two more blocks to Super Neveria y Paleteria La Luz for what Don Day considers ice cream far better than he ever remembered as a kid and as good as he’s ever remembered having in his life.

Jimmy’s, as Don Day calls it, is located just off the main square of La Luz and just steps from La Luz’ most notable and almost magnificent Parroquia of Our Lady of The Light. Don Day calls the place Jimmy’s because the Super Neveria is only half of what are two restaurants in one with the other half called Super Tortas y Hamburguesas Jimmy. Jimmy, the owner, darts and dances between the two, as chimes ring out when someone enters either of the two doors.

On the left is a somewhat typical hamburger joint serving somewhat typical fare such as sandwiches, quesadillas and chicken nuggets. On the right is a somewhat typical ice cream parlor that won’t get anyone excited about the atmosphere. Don Day spends none of his time on the savory side on the left and all of his time on the sweet side on the right trying to make one of the world’s most difficult decisions.

There are four backbreaking freezers (is it impossible to make the ledges inside one foot taller?) each holding eight tubs of ice cream. For those who didn’t get an A in arithmetic and didn’t get taken out for triple decker chocolate chunk cones by their father, that’s 32 different flavors to choose from and at least 320 seconds you’ll waste before you even come close to a decision. And as you probably know, life is like ice cream. You must enjoy it before it melts.

There are the old classics…vanilla, chocolate (but only white, natural chocolate), strawberry and neopolitan…but despite the fact that Don Day himself might be considered an old classic, he goes for something a little more exotic. Not as exotic as the guanabana, chongo zamorano or beso de angel, particularly when he’s not sure exactly what they are. But either capuccino, key lime pie, strawberries and cream, pistachio, mango and cream, or, best of all, blackberries and cheese or as Jimmy’s calls it zarzamora con queso. Now I know zarzamora con queso sounds a little weird but didn’t a New York style cheesecake covered with cherries in syrup once sound weird as well.

How about if I describe each of the components of queso con zarzamora. You have the creamiest of all creams, overstuffed with hail-sized chunks of Philly’s finest, streaked with whole ripe berries that are oozing sweet juice. What’s not there is important as well. In none of Jimmy’s ice creams do you ever get the cloying, teeth jarring taste of too much refined sugar.

Jaime Aguila Nieves (the more formal handle for Jimmy) is not the only person in central Mexico to make ice cream but his operation is quite primitive compared to the glistening chrome machines resembling Star Wars sets that Don Day has seen. Maybe there’s some credence to those copywriters who use that “made the old fashioned way” line in their ads. Jimmy’s fabrica is located around the corner from his tienda and is about 6 feet long by 48 feet deep, exactly the size of a horseshoe pit for those who know the other meaning to the words let’s toss a few.

In the factory, the first thing you see are chest freezers filled with carefully measured bags of the fresh picked fruits that Jimmy uses. Then there’s a walk-in fridge with those tubs of that richest of rich cream. I asked Jimmy what the butterfat content of the cream was but he didn’t know the number. And the packaging gave no clue either. I’m guessing about 15% but it may be a very stupid guess.

On the shelves along the wall are bags and boxes and bottles and jugs and jars with almonds and walnuts and chunks of chocolate. And more jugs and jars with those apparently essential to the process ingredients like emusifiers and gums with great names like guar, locust bean and xanthan that apparently improve the texture and prevent ice crystals forming.

Finally at the end of the fabrica are enormous tanks with electric motors and things that twisted and twirled and swum and swirled in order to make that fluorescent blue chicle flavored ice cream that was in production when Jimmy gave me my personal tour.

I bought three half litres of three favorite flavors to go last Saturday at Jimmy’s and arrived home around Noon. I sampled a single spoonful of pistachio before I put it in the freezer drawer. Around 2:00 pm, I was pulling out the drawer again for a couple of spoonfuls of the mango con crema. About 5:00 pm, I went back to the kitchen to crack open a bottle of wine and there was that drawer again…well, you know what happened. Jimmy’s ice cream is Don Day’s heroin.

Now Don Day made a very bold…some might say arrogant…statement when he titled this piece. He called Jimmy’s the “very best ice cream in San Miguel”. So Don Day obviously must attempt to prove his statement.

There’s a lot of very good ice cream in Mexico. There are a lot of passionate people who have their favorites. So why does Don Day have his neck stuck out so far, calling Jimmy’s “the very best”. Well, it’s back to fairly simple arithmetic again. Though it was rare that Don Day’s marks in math ever got him a trip to the dairy with his parents, he did learn enough about fractions to come up with a formula for ranking the things he likes most in this world.

On the top of the fraction, what Don Day’s math teacher called the numerator, the number represents the amount of pleasure Don Day gets from the experience. On the bottom, the denominator represents the cost of that pleasure.

Now Don Day has more than one favorite source for ice cream in San Miguel (most addicts do). In fact, Don Day has three. And he’d be quite happy to exist exclusively on the ice cream from just one of those sources. So there isn’t much difference between the numerators.

But oh the denominators! A scoop of Jimmy’s ice cream costs 12 pesos. Two scoops costs 20 pesos. A half litre of Jimmy’s ice cream costs 35 pesos. A litre costs 60. At Don Day’s other two favorite ice cream makers, the prices for each of those amounts of joy are around twice as much. Which in simple arithmetic makes Jimmy’s about twice as good. Or as Don Day said right up front, “the very best ice cream in San Miguel de Allende”.

Super Neveria y Paleteria La Luz and Super Tortas y Hamburguesas Jimmy is located at Plaza Comercial Itzquinapan Local #1, at Calle Francisco Jose de Landeta #9, in Fraccionamente La Luz, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

I never quite understood Julie Andrews. When the dog barks or when the bee stings…neither does a thing for Don Day. Since the days when I was knee high to a chapuline, Don Day’s favorite things have always been wine, women and song. And, even more so, if they accompanied a good meal.

To be able to experience wine, women and song all at once is rarer than Don Day stepping inside a church. To experience them all with good food is rarer than Don Day stepping inside a confessional box. But it happened this week.

Call it an accident. Don Day and Don Day’s Wife had just arrived back in San Miguel de Allende and the cupboard was as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s. We decided to walk down to La Sirena Gorda, the old cantina named after a fat mermaid, for two of the things we’d been missing for the last couple of months, smoked marlin tacos and a big, juicy pork hock. It was not to be. It was Monday and on Monday, mermaids must go swimming with the porpoises or dolphins or whoever mermaids swim with on their day off.

So we began walking down Barranca towards the middle of San Miguel when suddenly the heavens decided to rain on our parade and transform Barranca from a road to a river. Right before us, there it was. Shelter from the storm. Las Cuatro Milpas.

I’d seen the sign many a time but rarely this early in the evening. And rarely from this vantage point. Usually it was from the back seat of a car. I’d always loved the sign because it had that certain something that appealed to graphic designers and those, like Don Day, who sometimes pretended to be. It was on the route taxis usually took when taking Don Day home some time after the big numbers on the clock had become tiny again. After one or three too many beers. After two or four too many watering holes. It was right at the curve where the cab went left off Barranca and headed up that should have been a one way but was actually a two way street.

Las Cuatro Milpas. It was a confusing sign. After four beers it looked like it was backwards, like a mirror image of what it should be. After six beers, it just looked fuzzy, like something you find in your navel in the shower. After eight beers, it made perfect sense. The words were clear if the meaning wasn’t. Every night, when I passed the sign, I would say to myself, self, you must look up what a milpa is. Every morning, when I woke up, I would have forgotten about it.

Don Day wasn’t at all sure what Las Cuatro Milpas once was. But it was obvious what it now is. It is now a restaurant. And behind the bar were three attractive women welcoming us and offering sustenance to Don Day and Don Day’s Wife.

Note from Don Day’s Wife: If you’re male, you’re probably saying why isn’t there a photo of these attractive women. All I can say is Don Day was once in advertising and it was there that he learned that, if he’s going to get you to read all of the boring body copy, he better have a promise of something very desirable at the end.

On the wall was a blackboard with, from the obvious erasures and rewrites, an ever-changing menu of dishes most of which were very enticing simply for their simplicity. No bullshit adjectives. Just straight-talk dishes, mostly Mexican classics plus a brief nod to Italian pastas, middle eastern vegetarian, and a couple of American grill classics.

One of the women, the tall one with the Shirley Temple ringlets, backless blouse and Converse All-Stars, came to our table and, before she had a chance to ask (it was already two hours past tipple time), the very thirsty Don Day requested a bottle of red. She returned, not with a wine list but two bottles, neither of which Don Day had ever before seen in his life (and there are not many wine bottles that Don Day is not intimately familiar with). Both of the wines were Mexican. Don Day likes places that show allegiance to the red, green and white. One was a Cabernet Sauvignon. The other was a Merlot. Don Day chose the Cab only because he’s spent more evenings with Cabs than Merlots and has never believed that familiarity breeds contempt.

The effervescent woman with the All-Stars on her feet (what a great color the footwear was, like limes you’ve left a few days too long in your fruit bowl) then proceeded to open the bottle using a double notched sommelier’s corkscrew with the finesse of someone who’d uncorked almost as many as Don Day had consumed.

But then the unthinkable.

Didn’t the ebullient woman just freely pour the wine into Don Day’s and Don Day’s Wife’s glasses. Had she not spent the requisite two years earning her certificate at the Queretaro School of Hospitality and Tourism? Did she not know that she must first take the bottle with one of her slender hands gracefully caressing the neck and the other firmly grasped on the butt then gently tinkle it into the male’s glass, twisting it as the last drop tumbled so he could swirl and sniff and nod his head in approval? Did she not know that promoting pretension is the very essence of a server’s job?

Damn it, Don Day liked this woman. And there were still those two other women behind the bar. And didn’t all three look so happy. And weren’t they already enjoying a glass of red as well.

We started with the carpaccio de trucha ahumada. It was the color Don Day wanted the coral to be when he signed up for the dive off the coast of Cozumel. A neon orange/pink that Don Day suspected came from farmed trout that had enjoyed a steady diet of shrimp. The taste though was more like an Atlantic herring. A little too oily, a little too salty, a little too fishy for most people. But pretty close to perfect for Don Day.

The smoked trout came with Salmas galletas, which encouraged an “I love these crackers” comment from Don Day’s Wife. The fish was also decorated exactly as Don Day’s Wife prefers it. In the style most associated with smoked salmon, with capers, finely chopped onions and a generous squirt of lime juice.

Next up was a trio of sopes, those little Mexican tart shells of masa with pinched sides that are soaked in lime. The presentation was delightful. A white ceramic tray that Don Day is more used to seeing topped with Japanese sushi here was topped with three shuffleboard pucks, one filled with chicken, one filled with pork and one filled with beans. Bookending the sopes were two bowls, one with a cream, the other with a salsa. The trio soon became a quartet when a fourth sope arrived, this one topped with two different fungi, the very Mexican huitlacoche and the not so Mexican portabello, all flavored with the very Mexican herb, epazote. Don Day likes it when restaurants give their customers freebies. Don Day was liking Las Cuatro Milpas more and more.

Don Day has told you about the women, mentioned the wine but what about the song. Was there live music at Las Cuatro Milpas? Live, no. Recorded, yes. And what appropriate music. Almost as functional at enhancing Don Day’s mood as the wine.

Music at restaurants is a challenge. You can’t please all of the people, all of the time, with any kind of music. There’s a restaurant in Toronto that has some of the best food that Don Day has ever tasted but he has to promise Don Day’s Wife to do things like fix dripping taps in order to get her to return. Because, even more so than Don Day, she doesn’t wish to be invaded by hiphop with a monotonous beat and unintelligible lyrics at level ten volume.

At Las Cuatro Milpas the music is at the perfect volume and the genre, a selection of mostly cool Latin jazz, is what very few people would choose as their favorite but very few people would ever find offensive. Music is an essential ingredient in the dining experience, as important for spicing the atmosphere as the herbs are for spicing the food.

While anticipating the next course, I asked the effervescent woman, the one wearing the All Stars and doing most of the out front work while the other two did the prep and cooking, if she was the owner.

She was. Along with the other two almost as effervescent women as partners. Did she not know that partnerships of more than two people only work for people like accountants and lawyers?

I asked her why they opened the restaurant. She told me it was because one of them was a great cook. Did she not know that great cooks make even worse restaurant owners than accountants and lawyers?

I asked her what restaurant experience they had. Her answer: “None.” Finally something that put them on equal footing with accountants and lawyers.

“I now know how tough this business is.” said Carolina who, by now, had obviously introduced herself. “I now know why so many restaurants fail. I don’t know how anyone could run one of those monster-sized restaurants. This business is crazy, crazy, crazy but, so far, most of the time, we’re absolutely loving it.”

Las Cuatro Milpas has only been open a few weeks. I’m not sure what it was in its previous life (though I did finally Google Translate milpa and discovered it means cornfield). It’s a small place with seating for less than 20 on chunky but comfortable, honey-colored hardwood chairs. The restaurant is tastefully decorated in a style that’s more home than restaurant. The cutlery and dishes are a mishmash of styles that range from primitive clay pots to fine bone china but work together in the same way that pairing Arthur Miller with Marilyn Monroe somehow worked. At first, Don Day couldn’t understand why none of the three women ever left the dining room to go to the kitchen when I had the sudden realization that the area behind the bar was the kitchen. These women must have more hip bruises than a roller derby queen. Con permiso are obviously the two most spoken words. There’s a three burner stove (four when they finally get the other one fixed), about an ironing board of counter space and not much else. There’s a fridge out in the dining area taking the space where four more bums could be put on chairs. But no microwave or toaster oven. And yet these three women didn’t seem particularly perplexed even with a dish where timing is almost as important as the rhythm method of birth control, where a few seconds can cause the dish to resemble scrambled eggs.

The dish was spaghetti carbonara, along with pomodoro and cacciatore, one of three pastas being offered in this cozy corner on that rainy evening at Las Cuatro Milpas.

The carbonara was brought to the table by the woman in the ruby red blouse, the woman who, of the three, it was now obvious to Don Day was the “great cook”. It was the first time she had stepped out from behind the bar. It was the first time Don Day had seen that she was wearing tight blue jeans and heels. Heels! One of Don Day’s fantasies was coming true. This woman was manning a stove not wearing sensible shoes. This woman was sporting heels.

Spaghetti carbonara is one of Don Day’s Wife’s all-time favorite dishes, one she’s almost legendarily famous for preparing, and one she can be a harsh critic of. Las Cuatro Milpas version is a little different than most. It’s a simple treatment, topped by crispy bacon bits with no superfluous, extra added attractions such as porcini mushrooms or fresh peas. Don Day appreciated its simplicity and that the spaghetti was perfectly cooked but found the sauce to be a little too oily and not quite creamy enough. Don Day’s Wife scolded Don Day for his opinion, defended the sauce and said the only necessary improvement was a little more heat so that the egg was more completely cooked.

If spaghetti carbonara is one of Don Day`s Wife`s favorites, cochinita pibil is even more of a favorite for Don Day. Traditionally it is cooked al horno, in an oven wrapped in banana leaves. As Las Cuatro Milpas is sin horno, it must be cooked on one of those three gas burners. The extraordinarily moist shredded pork shoulder was served on three corn tacos with the taste of achiote and orange enhancing but not overpowering Mexico`s best meat. On the side was the essential accompaniment for a pibil sauce, pickled onions that are always freshly homemade, never jarred, in Mexico. When Don Day’s wife makes them she adds a jalapeno for a little kick. When the “great cook” at Las Cuatro Milpas makes them she adds a habanero for a 55 yard field goal kick. Don Day let out a wine-encouraged and therefore loud hijole and the three effervescent women gave Don Day encouragement for using his (and perhaps their) favorite Mexican word.

Don Day swung his eyes over to the blackboard in search of one last thing to savor, knowing his eyes are often bigger than his belly. That`s why he passed on the tabla de quesos and moved down to the two items in the bottom right corner. Chocolate mousse or flan. No contest. Flan is one of the few things Don Day can get too much off in Mexico. Chocolate mousse is one of the things Don Day can never get too much of anywhere.

The mousse was brought to the table accompanied by two spoons and an apology. It had just been made and there hadn’t been time to chill and set it. It made no difference to the taste. All it did was make Don Day want to pick it up and gulp it rather than slowly spooning it.

Don Day has already mentioned how much he likes regalos. How much he likes sorpresas. Now there was another gift, another surprise coming to the table. Two tiny crystal stems containing an amber liquid that the ladies called a digestivo. I`m not sure what was in it. If it was a liqueur it was a very light liqueur. Perhaps it was just a clear tea. Whatever it was, it was free and that alone made it a very happy ending to a very pleasant episode.

And speaking of happy endings, Don Day did discover where the name Las Cuatro Milpas came from. It’s the title of a very popular song from the thirties (suggesting that’s when the building housing the restaurant first got its name). It’s a sad song, a very sad song, about a man who has lost his hacienda, his ranch, his horse and saddle and all of his livestock. But there is still some happiness in his life. For he still has four patches of corn growing. That and a beautiful, dark-skinned woman who is the reason for him to go on living.

Y par eso estoy triste morena
Por eso me pongo a llorar

The rain had now stopped. And so had Don Day`s Wife’s enthusiasm for a walk back up the hill. As we slouched in the back of the cab, I looked up again at the restaurant’s sign and thought what was it that made this evening so special. The wine was good. The song was good. But it was those good looking women who were very good. It was Carolina, Lucia and Daniela who made the evening special. It was the way they didn’t seem to take anything too seriously. It was their joy, their spirit, their infectious enthusiasm for their new restaurant, that makes Las Quatro Milpas such a welcome addition to San Miguel de Allende`s dining scene.

Las Cuatro Milpas is located at Barranca 42 at the corner of Montes de Oca in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. They restaurant is open from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm, every day but Sunday.