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.