I love this bar
It’s my kind of place
Just walkin’ through the front door
Puts a big smile on my face
It ain’t too far, come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm, I love this bar

Though Toby Keith’s lyrics are still so very relevant, things have changed at Berlin. There was a time when, if you weren’t there prompt at 5:00 on a Friday, you had a snowball’s chance in hell of begging a barstool. But there we were. At 5:30. With a choice of chairs. At a hightop or at one of those ten treasured stools at that gently curved bar.

Berlin is one of San Miguel’s three great expat bars. It has what every great bar has. It has regulars. With 15 or 20 thirsty regulars, a well-managed small bar can break even. Add in a few irregulars and they can make a profit. Berlin is a place where an irregular like me can strut in alone and not feel like some stray cat out on the prowl.

I wasn’t alone on Friday. Don Day’s Wife was on my arm. The plan was an early dinner before hitting Kenny’s for Trivia Night.

Carlos Ordóñez hasn’t changed much since he changed hats in his career and bought Berlin ten years ago (though he has changed from a sporty British cap to a Central American straw fedora). Carlos still orchestrates service from his stool at the far end of the bar, thumbing the remote to select which Bill Evans song plays next, subbing for the servers if he sees a glass sitting empty a little too long.

Carlos hasn’t changed the menu much either over the years. He’s followed the if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it rule. The focus is on comfort food. There’s not one dish that I’d call trendy, that didn’t exist before the year 2000. The Monday special is still meatloaf. The Wednesday mussels are gone but that’s probably because of the problem of getting fresh product to the middle of Mexico. The Friday special is new. New to me anyway. But not new to the regulars. Three of them had recommended it to us before I’d even seen the blackboard. And, when I saw it on the very regular Lou Christine’s plate, I had to have it.

Berlin’s blackboard calls the dish roasted pork ribs. For a bar that caters mainly to a north of the border clientele, I therefore would have expected to get what usually goes by the handle baby back ribs. But these ribs are different. They’re what we used to call side or spare ribs. They come from further down the side of the pig. Not only that, Berlin’s ribs come from the front end of the rack, near the chest, not like St. Louis or Kansas City style ribs that come from the back of the rack. At the front end, there’s a nicely marbled slab of meat that’s next to the bone and that’s what you get at Berlin.

“My partner has an in with the butcher at City Market. He cuts them especially for us”, Carlos told me.

Spare ribs usually take a little extra time and effort to become tooth tender and Berlin’s roasted ribs are not fall of the bone tender like baby backs. Side ribs never are. But the meat is much richer, far more full of flavor. And they’re definitely knife and fork, not finger food. Once you get through that scrumptious slab of pork, there’s only gristle and fat left around the bone.

The seasoning can be just as important to a rack of ribs as the meat. It must enhance but never overpower the meat. It must never taste like it has ever heard words like Kraft or Heinz.

Berlin’s ribs have sweetness and tang and heat in the flavor but they’re very delicate additions. The chipotle in the rub is obvious. I couldn’t pinpoint where the sweetness came from until Carlos Ordoñez shared that it was raspberry. In addition to the rub, there’s a side cup of sauce that makes a great moisturizer for the meat.

As we stood up, the two people behind us pounced on our precious stools. The last words I remember hearing as we left the bar came from one of them to the bartender.

“Any of those great-looking ribs still left?”

Berlin is located at Umaran #19 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. They are open from 5:00 pm to 1:00 am, seven days a week.