3 Perfect Days in Todos Santos: The Food Lover’s Guide

by Todos Santos Eco Adventures

Famous Iron Chef Rick Bayless created an episode called Todos Santos Magic for the recently-aired Season 8 of his PBS series, Mexico, One Plate at a Time. We created much of Rick’s itinerary for the Todos Santos segment, and Sergio appears in a fair bit of the program with Rick. Now you can enjoy some of the same, off-the-beaten path places and activities that Rick did – as well as a few more gems he didn’t have time to get to!

Food Lover’s Day One: Treasure of the Sierra de la Laguna

Doña Ramona at her stove

Today you’ll head into the Sierra de la Laguna mountains to meet Doña Ramona, a woman honored by the state of Baja California Sur as a state cultural treasure – and you’ll see why soon enough! Working in the outdoor kitchen that her husband built for her 50 years ago, Doña Ramona, with help from her daughters and daughters-in-law, will  instruct you on preparing incredibly delicious beef or fish machaca in the traditional manner, using her family’s metate (grinding stone) to shred the meat, cooking it over the wood-fired stove in her kitchen, and serving it up with traditionally prepared tortillas and other side dishes that you’ll make yourself. Doña Ramona is a fabulous cook, but it’s actually the pottery that she makes for cooking and dining for which she has won such great acclaim, and during your class you’ll see why leading Todos Santos restaurants like the fabulous Café Santa Fe use her pottery in their kitchens. It’s a cooking class unlike any you’ve ever had before, and what made her one of the stars of the Rick Bayless show on Todos Santos!

This afternoon head back to Todos Santos to relax and treat yourself to a trip to La Bodega de Todos Santos, the town’s only wine store that exclusively features Baja California vintners. Started in 2010 by California wine country native Mac Sutton, La Bodega is the perfect complement to what he describes as “the incredible, inventive gastronomy of Todos Santos” and reflects his philosophy of Eat Local, Drink Local. There are tastings on Monday nights from 5 to 8 PM, with 3 glasses of wine for 140 pesos and complementary tapas, and there is also Big Red Wednesday (same hours), during which guests can buy red wines by the glass and enjoy tamales and tostadas from Doña Guillermina. It’s a wonderful introduction to Baja wines. Mac and his sweetheart Perla Garnica are also the organizers of the most excellent GastroVino Festival de Todos Santos. Building on the extraordinary success of their debut 2012 festival, the 2013 festival will be May 18-19, and will again feature wine and food pairing dinners, Baja wineries, local restaurant cuisine and live entertainment. It’s definitely an event to mark down on your calendars! La Bodega’s regular hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 12-7 PM.

This evening enjoy one of Todos Santos many extraordinary restaurants. The Café Santa Fe has long been justly considered one of the best restaurants in Baja, and a meal there should be included in any Todos Santos itinerary. Another option is the lovely Landi’s, where high Mexican cuisine is served in a lush garden setting.

Chef Dany at the Hotel California

Food Lover’s Day Two: Preparing the Perfect Meal – It Takes a Village
Today you’ll take in the glorious scenery and nature of Baja, all the while preparing for the evening’s master cooking class with Hotel California Executive Chef Dany Lamote. Start the day off with a trip to Basilfields, a beautiful organic farm that supplies many of the restaurants in Todos Santos. Here the owner will give you a tour of the farm and help you pick out the fruit or vegetables you want to have transformed into tortillas for the evening meal. Yep, that’s right. Whatever fruit or vegetable strikes your fancy – spinach, tomato, strawberry, nopale, basil, mint – we’ll take it to a local tortilleria that will turn it into a batch of fresh, delicious tortillas for you by the end of the day. With the tortillas in process, head out for a desert canyon walk to learn more about the beauty and bounty of the desert, then reward yourself for your exertions with lunch at one of the town’s great local restaurants like El Pastorcito – best place in town for tacos al pastor, or Compa Chava’s – a cute local joint serving up dynamite ceviche. After lunch head over to the beach at Punta Lobos to procure the final ingredient for tonight’s meal – the fish! Todos Santos is home to two fishing cooperatives whose captains and crew are all 4th generation fishermen and you’ll buy the fish from them right as they land with the day’s catch. Doesn’t get much fresher! After stopping to get the tortillas, you’ll head to the Hotel California where Chef Dany will be waiting for you with a multi-course dinner menu and the Baja wines and tequila to match each course. If you’re lucky there’ll be avocado milkshakes for desert. While the cooking class at the Hotel California is extremely fun and very informative, you can also choose to have a wine-pairing dinner prepared for you at Dany’s own restaurant – Santo Vino – which specializes in the wines and cuisine of Baja. It will be a magnificent feast either way!

Food Lover’s Day Three: How Sweet it Is
This morning find your way over to Los Colibris Casitas for a Huevos Rancheros Master Class with local lawyer-turned-chef, Iker Algorri. Connoisseurs of huevos rancheros may argue among themselves about what makes great huevos rancheros great, but they all agree that the secret is in the sauce. And it should be known to all comers that Chef Iker has created the definitive huevos rancheros sauce– the Coloradito. So this morning you’ll learn from the master himself about his Coloradito Sauce, and a few others as well, so that you too can return home a true Mexican breakfast master.

Chef Iker Algorri at Los Colibris Casitas

Now as some of the sauces might have a little kick to them, your next stop should be Paleteria La Paloma, surely one of the best ice cream shops in Baja and home to an inspired range of local ice cream and sorbet flavors including lemon-rosemary, rose petal, passion fruit, pitaya, corn, mamay and guava, as well as the more traditional fare. Ice cream not your thing? Then keep on heading to the edge of town to the dulcerias, or sweet shops (Rick Bayless enjoyed a stop here.) The Todos Santos dulcerias are famous for their locally-made candies including cocada (coconut macaroons), jamoncillo (milk and piloncillo – unrefined sugar), zorrillada (milk, piloncillo and requeson – a special kind of cheese), coyotas (sweet baked empanadas with cajeta or cheese) and chimangos (sweet fried bread). You can also often find local honey from the ranches as well as damiana – a local aphrodisiac – in liquor or leaf form in season.

Playa Las Palmas

This afternoon walk off your morning indulgences at one of the most beautiful beaches to be found anywhere, Playa Las Palmas. Nestled between two rock cliffs, this beautiful expanse of sand is framed by a huge grove of Washingtonian palms growing right up to the beach and a fresh water spring that has created a lovely marsh area for birds. There are horses that live in the palms so don’t be surprised if they come over to see if you’re carrying any leftovers from your foodie endeavors. If you don’t feel like the beach then take your stroll in town and enjoy the town’s many terrific art galleries and creative shops.

This evening enjoy one last meal at one of Todos Santos’ restaurants relatively new restaurants started by young Mexican  Chef Sergio Rivera, who creates spectacular seafood, sushi and steak dishes at La Casita Tapas and Wine Bar. You can’t go wrong!

The Nature Lover’s Guide

The Weekender’s Guide

For more information please contact us at www.tosea.net or

© Copyright Sergio and Bryan Jauregui, Casa Payaso S de RL de CV, 2013

3 Perfect Days in Todos Santos: The Handiwork of the Saints

3 Perfect Days in Todos Santos: The Handiwork of the Saints

By Sergio and Bryan Jáuregui, Todos Santos Eco Adventures

Todos Santos as Seen by Visting Whales

About 50 miles north of Cabo on the Pacific side of the Baja peninsula is a pueblo magico called Todos Santos – All Saints. And truly, the handiwork of all the saints seems to be reflected everywhere in our home town.  It’s easy to imagine that St. Anthony (San Antonio), the Patron Saint of the Desert, had his hand in the underground springs that make the town a true desert oasis, thick with palms, lush with lagoons and filled with the birds they attract.  St. Francis (San Francisco), Patron Saint of the Environment, seems like a sure bet for the town’s seemingly endless miles of pristine beach – home to 5 of the 7 turtle species found in the world, host to surf breaks that make the town one of the best surfing destinations on the Cape, and favored people watching spot of gray whales on their annual trip to Baja because they can get so close to shore.  St. Isidore (San Isidro), Patron Saint of Agriculture, almost certainly got in on the act with the vast orchards of mango trees and fields filled with strawberries, chilies and herbs, while St. Peter (San Pedro), Patron Saint of Fishermen, could easily be the wily soul who ensured no natural harbor in the town to keep the waters from being overfished and therefore full of bounty for the intrepid local fishermen, masters of the surf launch and landing.

But perhaps the saint who most shaped the town with his piece of manna was St. Aaron (San Aron), the Patron Saint of anyone who lives a passionate life. Todos Santos may be a tiny town but it is filled with Mexican and expatriate artists, chefs, musicians, fishermen, photographers, philanthropists, surfers, sculptors, farmers, film-makers, potters, spiritualists, naturalists, adventurers, entrepreneurs, explorers, yogis and more, all pursuing their passions in this paradise that draws, inspires and drives them.   The result is one heckuva place to indulge your passions for travel and adventure so grab your St. Christopher (the Patron Saint of Travelers) and head to Todos Santos for (at least) three perfect days.

Now perfection, like beauty, is really in the eye of beholder, so we’ve created 3 sets of 3 perfect days, each of which shows off a particular aspect of the town and the surrounding environment.

So come check out the handiwork of the saints, and enjoy the bliss of this Baja Eden.

For more information please contact us at www.tosea.net or

© Copyright Sergio and Bryan Jauregui, Casa Payaso S de RL de CV, 2013

A Whale Tale

This memoir by Blair Batson was first published in Janice Kinne’s Journal del Pacifico

Blair and Pinky

I came down to Baja one February to escape the cold grey of Oregon and hang out with my family.  My sister Bryan – who owns and operates Todos Santos Eco Adventures with her husband Sergio — was excited she had arranged for us to come at the perfect time to see the grey whales in Magdalena Bay.  I was excited we had yet another entertaining way to spend a day in paradise while waiting for Sergio’s killer margaritas to appear at dusk.

I had been whale watching in Oregon before, and found it hard to recommend: Go out in a large boat with a bunch of strangers in the rain, get mildly seasick, look for whales for about 2 hours, finally catch a glimpse of one swimming 50 yards off, pursue it until it disappears, then call it a day.  Oh yeah, and get totally drenched and freeze to death.  I was glad I could look forward to better weather.

On the appointed day, my family goes out onto Mag Bay in a 40-foot open boat.  We putter along for a while admiring the smooth open water and arid landscape.  After about an hour, the panga driver starts turning the boat around.  Sergio, who can always spot wildlife a mile away, gets an intense look on his face.

“Ballena!”  We all turn in the direction Sergio is pointing.  And there is the unmistakable shape of a grey whale fluke disappearing into the bay – about 50 yards away.  I’m thrilled.  We’re all thrilled.   It’s like a Sierra Club calendar cover shot.  We hoot and holler and jump up and down as best we can without tipping the boat.  I am completely satisfied with the trip, as I have never seen that classic image in real life – and so close.  Awesome.  And I’m still dry and warm.  I’m thinking Todos Santos Eco Adventures might want to expand their business to Oregon.

The panga driver cuts the motor back and we start sort of drifting around in the middle of the Bay.  I’m thinking a margarita might be nice to celebrate our sighting.  Then I hear again: “Ballena!”  On the right side of the boat about 10 yards off, we see a whale flipper sticking out of the water, turning – as if the whale is flopping onto its back for a rest.  Sergio says it’s a juvenile – probably 40 feet long – the size of our boat.  Gulp.  Where’s Mom?

The next thing I know Bryan and Sergio are diving towards one side of the boat where we can see the juvenile just five feet under the surface a few feet away from us.  Holy smokes, he’s big!  The panga driver starts banging the boat and Bryan and Sergio are singing and calling out like they’re calling their cats:  “Hey Ballena; here ballena.  Come to mama; come to papa.  Here ballena.”

Well, I think, crazy’s what I’m good at, so what the hell?  I throw myself along the edge of the boat, leaning out as far as I can over the water:  “Here Ballena.  Hey baby.  Come here, cutie.”  A moment later, I am gobsmacked when the little sweetheart lifts his huge head out of the water — right under my outstretched hand!  I almost dive in the water to embrace him, but somebody’s got a firm hold on my jeans from behind.

Blair and Pinky in Magdalena Bay

I pet and scratch his head and back and coo and laugh.  As Bryan points out, he really likes it when you scratch his chin and barnacley parts.  She calls him Pinky.  So I keep petting and scratching and cooing, wishing the moment would never end.  My baby stays with me a good long while and then, finally, turns and looks me straight in the eye with a sweet smile to say thank you and farewell.

At that moment, gazing into that beautiful eye, I know.  You may think that angels have wings.  But I’m here to tell you they have fins and flukes and are covered with barnacles.  I have never had such a feeling of peace and connectedness with any of the many sentient beings I’ve encountered on this planet.  That sweet young whale radiated total kindness, beneficence and fun.  Anthropomorphizing?  I don’t think so.  Ask my family.  Pinky was generous.  He let everyone love him and pet him and feel that amazing connection, the grace of encounter.

This is all by way of saying that if anyone suggests you spend a day or two whale watching with Todos Santos Eco Adventures – as opposed to say, another day of walking on the beach, eating at all the fabulous Todos Santos restaurants, or drinking mas margaritas with your pals – you might want to seriously consider it.  It’s not Oregon.  Just sayin’.

Eating the Desert

“Can you make a margarita with that?”

by Todos Santos Eco Adventures

These days it seem like the world has gone just plain crazy for Baja cuisine. The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio – these are but a few from the 4th estate that have lined up to gush over chefs and restaurants that are giving Baja – heretofore best known to outsiders as a totally rad surf scene dude – a bona fide “food scene”.  So while it was the surfers who first made the terms “firing” and “shredding” famous in Baja (all surfspeak for surfing really well) it’s the chefs who are breathing new life into the terms in the culinary revolution that is sweeping the peninsula.

But what exactly is it that the chefs are firing and shredding? Of course there’s the bounty from the two seas, and all that great produce from the organic farms that populate the region. But most of Baja is desert and when you look out at it, it can seem kind of desolate, maybe a little forbidding, definitely thorny. What’s there to eat? Turns out, quite a bit (if you don’t mind getting your fingers pricked)!

Sergio preparing pitaya at home

Take the pitaya. The Baja peninsula is covered in this cactus and Chef Dany of Santo Vino/Hotel California likens the fruit of this plant to a red kiwi. He loves to cook it up with ginger and butter to make sauce for his Cabrilla (sea bass), and he’s also found that it makes a zingy vinaigrette for his salads. Our local ice cream stores in Todos Santos and La Paz report that pitaya ice cream is a perennial best-seller, notwithstanding the fact that the pitaya fruit is disgustingly healthy, packed with cancer-fighting antioxidants and Vitamin C.  In fact, Juice Generation, a chain of smoothie bars in New York City, is promoting the pitaya as “the next big superfruit”, following in the footsteps of pomegranates, mangosteens and acai.

Prickly Pear

The tuna, or prickly pear, is the fruit of the nopal cactus, another ubiquitous Baja dweller. While Chef Dany likes to use the prickly pear for his dynamite fish salsas, and others like to pair it with tequila for a zingy barbeque sauce, Chef Rick Bayless likes to make Fresh Prickly Pear Ice as a refreshing dessert, and many folks in Baja share this enthusiasm for sweets made from tunas and regularly cook up prickly pear jelly, prickly pear syrup and prickly pear candy. Like the pitaya though, the tuna is ridiculously healthy, being high in magnesium, taurine, Vitamin C, calcium, potassium and antioxidants.

Biznaga

The leaves or paddles of the nopal are another great staple of Baja cuisine. Sergio Jáuregui (yes, our very own Sergio of Todos Santos Eco Adventures) likes to make what he calls nopal “quesadillas”. He cleans the paddle, grills it on both sides, then melts his favorite cooking cheese onto it – usually Oaxaca or Manchego – and fries it up. Delicious! (In that deep-fat fryer / comfort food kind of way.) Chef Dany’s favorite way to eat nopal paddles is equally tasty (and far more healthy): he puts it raw in salads with cubes of onion, tomatoes, local fresh cheese (queso fresco), parsley and cilantro – magnifique!

There are many more cactus plants from the Baja desert that make great eating, including the biznaga – which many chefs include in their chiles en nogada – and yucca, whose lovely white flowers make a great stir fry in Chef Dany’s wok.

But the real test of any Baja food is: can you make a margarita with it? And for all of our featured cacti here – the prickly pear, the pitaya, the biznaga and yucca – the answer is a resounding YES! Just swing by Santo Vino or the Hotel California some evening and prepare yourself for a most delicious treat (and don’t be afraid to try it at home either!)

Brown-Garitas for Everyone!

Chef Iker Algorri of Café Brown likes to use a plant local to Todos Santos – damiana – to make his world-famous Brown-Garitas, a sure crowd pleaser:

      • 1 shot of of tequila
      • 1 shot of controy or triple sec
      • 3/5th shot of damiana
      • Splash of lime juice
      • Splash of fresh orange juice

Blend it up, serve with love and enjoy! Oh, and damiana is widely considered a potent aphrodisiac so best to enjoy your Brown-Garitas with friends!

If you’d like to learn more about cooking with Baja foods please contact us about our Cooking Adventures Week here in Todos Santos. It features fun, informative classes with both Chef Dany and Chef Iker, as well as lots of time in the glorious nature of Baja, checking out the bounty of the ocean and desert.

Thanks to Janine Wall for her help with this article.

© Copyright Sergio and Bryan Jauregui, Casa Payaso S de RL de CV, 2012

The Saints of Todos Santos: La Casita Chef Sergio Rivera

by Todos Santos Eco Adventures

You may have noticed a certain remarkable phenomenon that occurs when you take visitors to dine at La Casita Tapas and Wine Bar in Todos Santos: Chef Sergio comes over to greet you; he politely inquires where your guests are from; then, seemingly no matter what place your guests claim as home, Chef Sergio tells them how much he enjoyed his time in their city. And in more cases then not, he’ll tell them about the time he lived in their city, describing neighborhoods, restaurants and, claro, girls he dated.  We’ve heard this happen with visitors from all points of the compass in the USA: from Phoenix, AZ to St. Paul, MN; from New York, NY to San Francisco, CA. Never fails! But how could such a thing be? How could a poor boy from Mazatlan have visited – let alone lived in – so many places on and around the American continent? Surely it must be some sort of charming restauranteur’s parlor trick? Some sort of travel magazine savant’s tomfoolery?

Turns out it’s no trick at all. “The boats I worked on got progressively larger. I started off on an 87-footer, then moved to a 95-footer, a 106-footer and finally a 180-foot yacht. That thing had a $40,000 stove. When I finished the contract they gave me a week on St. Martin, a week in Panama, a week in the Dominican Republic and a week in Mexico City. Very nice people.”

And that’s just the last four years before he moved to Todos Santos. Sergio Antonio Rivera Velazquez has been cooking up one side of the Americas, down the other and at points in between for years. And like many a Todos Santeño before him, the drive to ride the waves was behind his choice of careers. “My main goal when I was in high school was to be a doctor. But then I did the entrance exam for medical school, and let’s just say that the results indicated that I was far better suited to traveling and surfing than practicing medicine.  And the only industry I had skills in that would let me do that was the restaurant business.”

So in 1990 the 20-year old left his home in Mazatlan and headed to Cabo where he landed a job at the Hotel Cabo San Lucas – the kind of place where guests arrived in their private jets. He’d surf El Tule each morning then go to work each afternoon. Nice joint, but couldn’t stick around long. He returned to Mazatlan where he met an American family from Bend, Oregon. He took them up on their invitation to come visit for a while. A year and many great memories later, they finally decided to drive him back down to Mazatlan – stopping in Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and many other points of interest along the way. Once back in Mazatlan he promptly met a girl in a restaurant and moved with her to St. Paul, Minnesota where he worked, naturally enough, in an Irish pub. A year and many great memories later, the Bend, Oregon family decided to move to Cabo so Sergio joined them. He surfed in the morning and worked in the evening at a restaurant called the Giggling Marlin. A year and many great memories later he returned to Mazatlan where he met a girl – but stayed in Mazatlan anyway.

The years in New York left Sergio a die hard   Yankees fan

Now when Sergio was a kid growing up in Mazatlan his mother ran a small restaurant on the weekends and he had always enjoyed helping around the kitchen and entertaining the customers.  So when he returned to Mazatlan in 1996 he’d literally spent a lifetime working in and around restaurants, but he’d never actually learned to cook. He decided that needed to change. He was working in a restaurant called Jungle Juice, and asked the owner/chef to teach him to cook on the job – for no pay. It was an offer the owner couldn’t refuse and Sergio was put in charge of the outdoor barbeque. His skills improved so dramatically that before long an entrepreneur visiting from New York invited him to move to the U.S. to design, build and manage a Mexican restaurant. So at the age of 27 Sergio moved to Suffern, NY and Olé! was born. He ran the kitchen for 6 years and loved the work, but he missed the spirituality of being close to the ocean. So when friends from Santa Cruz, CA invited him out, he bid good-bye to New York and moved to California, where he surfed in the morning and worked in the evening at the Paradise Beach Bar and Grill. Stints in Arizona, Iowa, Mazatlan and New York (again) followed until 2004 when a friend started introducing him to the 1%, many of whom – you won’t be surprised to learn – own remarkable yachts. A four-year career as the private chef on some incredible boats ensued, with Sergio running the kitchen on boats such as the Flying Dutchman, the Adventure More, the Illegal and the Boardwalk, all while exploring ports of call throughout Mexico, the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Aruba, Curacao, the Dominican Republic… a much broader education than medical school could ever have provided!

Sergio and Aury with Baby on the Way

In 2008 Sergio was vacationing in La Paz when he met a woman named Kim Gianotti-Keltto who had a dream of opening a restaurant in Todos Santos. Todos Santos – a surfer’s paradise, a food lover’s haven. In short, heaven for a surfin’ chef like Sergio.  Sergio and Kim pooled their resources and on November 23, 2010 La Casita Tapas and Wine Bar opened and began serving up the fabulous food for which it has won a truly devoted following. In fact, almost every Todos Santos Eco Adventures adventure week includes a meal at La Casita. And seemingly no matter where our guests are from, Chef Sergio has spent some time in their town…

When Sergio leased the building for La Casita everyone told him that the place was cursed and that he no doubt would be too.  If this is what being cursed looks like then Sergio is ready for more.  He bought Kim’s share of the business when she decided to return to the States, so at the age of 42 the peripatetic boy from Mazatlan finds himself the owner of a thriving business, stepfather to a beautiful 4-year old girl, and father to a son to be born in October. “I’m living such a happy life here, and can’t imagine a better place to be. The tranquility, the weather, the spirituality of Todos Santos. I am so thankful to the community of Todos Santos for showing such great support and loyalty to us. It really is heaven here.” Another little slice of magic in our pueblo magico.

© Copyright Sergio and Bryan Jauregui, Casa Payaso S de RL de CV, 2012

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