On the recommendation of our butler, Gerardo, at Villas del Mar, we headed out to a final dinner with Samuel in downtown San Jose del Cabo, just 10 minutes away from our new hotel, The Marquis Los Cabos, which I honestly won't be recommending to my clients. But that aside, we arrived at the quaint modern Mexican restaurant and it was pretty quiet just after 6pm. By 7pm, they were turning folks away on a Tuesday night as the place was completely full; lucky we had a reservation made by Gerardo!
Needless to say we quickly ordered Samuel a CHICKEN QUESADILLA which he ate about 1/4 of, but still behaved wonderfully as we munched on. The restaurant has two sections and we were in the newer one with reddish and white walls, leather chairs and wine bottles and a huge wine theme throughout. Indeed, the bar at the rear was covered by paintings of wine magazines. A duo of guitarists came by, clearly willing to play for money, which the folks next to us did not seem to comprehend.
We ordered a bottle of CASA MADERIA Cepa CHARDONNAY 2005 which is one of the Mexican wines that appear on most menus and is quite reasonable. Our bottle was $30 and had a peachy nose with melon and apple on the tongue and just a hint of oak.
As we had had that wonderful and filling lunch at Esperanza we decided to split an appetizer of the CHILE RELLENO de QUESO CREMA y SALMON CURADO con CREMA de AGUACATE. The smoked salmon was superb and there was not much cream cheese, which I felt was a good point. Corn and vegetables filled the pepper (which was not spicy at all) and gave a nice crunch to the dish; the sauce was creamy avocado and superb.
We quickly asked our waiter for a rest before the entrees and he did so to perfection, but when our dishes arrived they were sadly lukewarm, though absolutely delicious. Will's DUCK ENCHILADAS had a dark corn tortilla wrap with zebra-like white stripes of cream and were served in a CHILIMOLE Sauce and served with RICE & ALMONDS. My SHRIMP BROCHETTE came with six huge crustaceans on two wooden skewers with a CREAMY CHILI CHIPOTLE SAUCE, Refried Beans, and a crumbly cheese on top (they called it cottage, but it was a bit tastier and drier--like ricotta). The shrimp were moist and delicious and the sauce had a slight punch that really made ME happy we ahd found this place.
Sam enjoyed his dessert of CARAMEL ICE CREAM while we had our entrees and it was superb. How surprised we were to find out it was Haagen Dasz CARAMEL ICE CREAM CONE ice cream with chunks of cone and chocolate! No room for dessert for us so we headed home and crashed PRAYING for better weather.
