This is by far the best food in Cozumel.
It's a small, intimate operation in which a very talented chef named Alejandro takes you through a personally composed tasting menu of 10 dishes, each representing a different region of Mexico. The location is the Chef's home with a sleek, modern, spacious and candlelit dining room. The experience is intimate. We happened to book on a night we were the only couple. On other nights you may share the experience with 2-3 other couples. The experience is similar to having a Michelin star chef cook a private dinner for you. (I am not exaggerating in the least).
Chef Alejandro's background is as an engineer. His cooking very precisely balances flavors and textures. Each course is paired with wine or a cocktail. The pairings are each exactly correct and the result is as it should be: the pairing enhances the food and the food enhances the pairing.
The Chef's precision, however, is also married to passion for his craft. Like many of the world's best chefs, he learned to cook from his mother. His dishes exude both precision and love. (As an aside, whenever you get a chance, you might find it interesting to ask your favorite chefs whether they learned to cook from culinary school or their mother or grandmother - they're usually happy to tell you).
Here are a few highlights to illustrate all this emphatic praise. The first course was a composition of perfectly poached shrimp served in a citrus coconut soup with toasted anise. There was a perfect balance of savory (coconut) with acid and just the right punch of licorice (anise). This dish was paired with a refreshing cucumber martini with salt on the rim. The cucumber and salt from drink rounded out the dish. The overall result was lightness, paired with intense flavors (a very difficult trick to accomplish).
Another dish was their version of Aztec soup. It arrives in a bowl with shrimp, avocado, panela cheese cubes, avocado, all laced with a bit of crema. Then they bring you THAT broth. It's intense - somewhere between sauce and soup - richly flavored but still light. The dish is paired perfectly with a local tequila.
Another dish was a "simple" mole tasting. A hot, house baked bread was brought out to dip in three different moles. A green pumpkin seed based one, a reddish brown sesame seed based one, and finally one that was peanut and chocolate based. I say "simple" because anyone that has tried to make a real mole knows that there is no such thing as a mole that has less than 15 ingredients and or one that takes just a couple of hours to knock off. Each of these three moles were paired with a different liqueur.
Finally, there was an aged loin of tuna that was bathed in a coffee and chocolate mole sauce. There were shreds of a local cheese on the side. No trained chef - particularly Italian - would ever dare to pair cheese with fish (although I have at times reminded my Italian friends that their chefs break that rule all the time - e.g. scallop in Parmesan fondue served in so many places). Although I confess the rule is generally a sound one to follow, here this particular heresy is a resounding success. The aging of that tuna made it taste quite beefy and the sweet and bitter currents in that coffee/chocolate mole paired well with the cheese as well as the cabernet served alongside.
A couple of notes. The meal is paired with a musical video of the different regions of Mexico and they have a live narrator (who speaks in English for American guests). The video is very interesting and introduces you to the culture and food of 10 different regions of Mexican. It gives you ideas of places to visit for your next trip.
Finally, the above is not cheap - $160 per person. But considering the exceptional quality of Chef Alejandro's cooking, and that you're receiving 10 courses and premium alcohol pairings with each course, we felt that the price was a steal. For any Los Angelenos who may understand this reference, this experience compared favorably with a tasting menu experience I recently had at Providence, but at a fraction of the cost.
I have never previously initiated a Yelp entry for a restaurant. As you can see from the above, I was motivated for a reason. Hope I did this place justice. read more
