My friends and I had a lovely lunch at Fauna during a weekend trip to Valle de Guadalupe. We had a 1:00 reservation, but as it seems to take forever to get from place to place in Valle, we didn't end up arriving until about 1:30. We were worried about losing our reservation, but as it turned out, we could probably have walked in without any hassle. The host seemed unconcerned with our lateness when we checked in, and invited us to walk around the grounds and take photos before we sat down.
Fauna is the restaurant for Bruma, which is a sort of expansive estate with villas and a winery and beautiful views all around. The restaurant is of one piece with the surrounding scenery, a charming place with a patio looking onto a garden, a dining room paneled with wood slats that look like they came right off wine barrels. We sat inside, but the vibe still felt very al fresco. The floor-to-ceiling doors were left open, letting in plenty of air and natural light. We ordered a bottle of white wine (I forget what kind) and enjoyed a leisurely meal.
Service was great, attentive and helpful. There were a couple of prix fixe options, but unless we were gravely miscalculating, it made much more sense to order what we wanted a la carte and just share. We tried to order seven things for the four of us--two "snacks," three "appetizers," and two "charred" dishes (I don't really understand that classification), and our server told us that was an enormous amount of food. They were out of the trout (or our waiter decided to save us from ourselves), so we stuck to six, most of them snacks and appetizers.
I guess I'm used to Los Angeles small plates, where you're always told to order two to three per person, because the size of these snacks and appetizers did surprise me. The snacks were appetizer-sized, and the appetizers were frankly just entrees (coincidentally or not, all six of the appetizers on the menu were seafood). The octopus came in a straight-up salad bowl with a side of tortillas. I'm certainly not complaining, especially since the most expensive thing we got was about $20 US and included both sea urchin and geoduck.
The food was excellent. The snacks were a nice way to start the meal (I think what made them snacks is that they were kind of like hors d'oeuvres; they would've been hard to share if there weren't so many of them). The cactus tostadas (six to an order) were light, crunchy, and flavorful, with cactus and salsa on squid ink crackers. The duck sopes (four to an order) were pleasantly hearty, the duck layered with black bean and shredded lettuce on chewy little blue corn pucks, served with a green (I think avocado) salsa.
The appetizers made up the bulk of our lunch. I loved the sea urchin with geoduck clam, which was actually a big bowl of amberjack sashimi with sea urchin, geoduck, and seaweed in a cool dashi broth. Not sure why they left out the amberjack in the description, as the fish was delicious. As, of course, were the sea urchin and the giant clam. The octopus with Domingo Rojo beans also came with a significant surprise ingredient--we couldn't even see the octopus or the beans under the layer of chicharrones. This was actually my favorite dish, served with blue corn tortillas to make octopus chicharron tacos. The octopus was tender, the chicharron wonderfully crunchy, and I loved the beans and the radish and juicy cherry tomatoes that rounded out the dish. The tacos were superb. The fish ceviche was good, if not as tasty as the others. It was also less of a ceviche than expected, the fish cooked, with a sort of tuna salad consistency, with a layer of cucumber slices on top. I could also have done without the charred cauliflower. It wasn't bad, but it was sort of wet and bland. Probably not charred enough.
We split two desserts and these were both great. The semifreddo was delicate and reasonably light, finished with corn flakes and caramel. The churro was just right, fluffy with a little crisp, served with candied pumpkin and ice cream.
After we ate, we made our way to Bruma's wine tasting area, where we spent another hour enjoying the grounds. It's kind of hard to hop from place to place in Valle, so I'd definitely recommend hitting up Fauna for lunch and sticking around for more wine. You can't really ask for a more idyllic afternoon. read more