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November 25, 2008
Bebé, Bebé, Bebé
Karina
Carmen and Charles had a baby girl this past Friday morning at 1:30 am. They have named her Karina Elizabeth. She weighed over 9 pounds.
Posted by crispy at 02:56 PM | Comments (1)
November 15, 2008
Mexi-con-a?
GDL<->MEX, on Kayak
Shawn and I are planning a trip to our beloved Mexico City for Christmas, so we went to kayak to research the tickets. We found a great deal that was only $76 per ticket on Mexicana, round trip.
In Mexico, one does not have to pay up-front with a credit card to book tickets online. Although this is slowly changing, it used to be rare for Mexicans to use credit cards. People do not tend to write checks to pay bills here either. The postal service is not reliable enough for a system of bill payments where people send checks through the mail; everyone goes to various official payment centers to pay the gas bill, the light bill, the cable bill, etc. Luckily, most grocery stores and convenience stores are authorized payment centers for such things, so one does not usually have to travel too far.
With Mexicana, as with many airlines here, one can make the reservation, then pay within a certain period of time to keep the reservation. If the payment is not made in time, the seats are returned to general availability. Mexicana's web site does not even give one the option of paying when the tickets are booked. One has to book the tickets first, then go around through the home page again, using the confirmation number and last name of the ticketholder to look up the reservation and pay for it.
Mexicana accepts payments either online with a credit or debit card, or at any tienda Sanborns, and the allotted time for payment before the reservation expires is 24-hours. On the online form, it had a pull-down menu to indicate the country of origin for the card. As we were using a card from the United States, that is what we selcted, but on the following page, we received a notice that said that, since the card being used for payment was from a country that differed from the country indicated when buying the tickets, the price had to be adjusted. It then showed the adjusted price: USD $220 per ticket!
We called the customer service line and they more or less confirmed this; tickets that are indicated as being issued in Mexico have to be paid for with a Mexican source of payment, or one must pay a lot more. I would have thought that there should be no difference either way in our post-NAFTA world, but as we live here, we learn that the term "free trade" apparently does not mean what anyone would think it does.
I went back to the Mexicana web site directly to see the difference, as we had linked there from Kayak before. I had to go to Google and search for Mexicana to find the English pages of their web site; their main pages do not have any links to it.
I noticed a pull-down menu for "Select Country of Purchase" on the Mexicana form.
Buying Tickets on Mexicana
Yet this would seem to indicate that we, living in Mexico as we do, should select "Mexico." Given the previous trouble we had and what they told us over the phone, it means "Select Country of Issue of Credit Card Used for Payment." Maybe that is too much text to fit on their form.
I selected Mexico first, as I was going to compare the two. It should be noted that in Mexico, round trip tickets are always the sum of the separate trips. Therefore, prices shown are always by each leg of the journey. For space considerations and to keep things a little less confusing, I have only included images below for the results for the return trip, from Mexico City to Guadalajara. I indicate the price of the Guadalajara to Mexico city trip in the text, although as it turns out, the fares given were the same on both trips.
This was the price given to us for just the tickets, valued in Mexican pesos:
Buying a "Mexican" Ticket on Mexicana
Before I go into much more detail, I want to point out that for the sake of accuracy, I am going to use the Mexican Peso to US Dollar conversion ration that exists at the time of this writing (1 USD = 13.0600 MXN).
This is a much different ratio than the standard 10:1 ratio that gets used in many places as a rough guidline for converting pesos to dollars. It appears that the ticket prices as shown on the Mexicana web site are calculated using a 10:1 ratio, which may be the result of a built-in calculation that does not update with the real exchange rate. That in and of itself is a bit unfair, but I will give Mexicana a break and presume that this is just an artifact of their web site, not an intentional move to rip off American customers. Below when I declare what is at the time of this writing USD $17.23 to be close enough to USD $22, this difference between the old standard exchange rate of 10:1 and what it has been for the past month and a half, closer to 12:1 or 13:1, is what is causing the dollar price to be slightly lower.
The fare the site returned was MXN $225, which converts over to USD $17.23 at the time of this writing (which is notably a few days later than the price was quoted). The GDL->MEX trip price (not shown) was also MXN $225 (USD $17.23).
Continuing through the process, I found that the total price of both tickets, MXN $1958.92 was the sum of the MXN $450 fare (MXN $225 both ways), plus MXN $529.46 in taxes, times two.
Buying a "Mexican" Ticket on Mexicana
To put that into US Dollars at the time of this writing for comparison, that breaks down into a total of USD $149.99 for both tickets (USD $75 each), based on a fare of USD $34.46 each (USD $17.23 both ways) plus USD $40.54 each in taxes.
I started over again and selected the United States as the country of purchase. It brought up a fare of USD $22. Based on the standard 10:1 Mexican Pesos to US Dollars ratio, that was relatively close to what the fare was for the Mexican "Country of Purchase" tickets.
Buying a "United States" Ticket on Mexicana
The trip from GDL->MEX (not shown) was also USD $22.
Up to that point, it was looking the same, more or less. Continuing on however, the final results added up to something quite different.
Buying a "United States" Ticket on Mexicana
The fare was almost exactly the same at USD $44 for the round-trip fare per ticket (if still using the old 10:1 conversion ratio), but look at the taxes. Instead of the taxes charged for Mexican "Country of Purchase" ticket, which are MXN $529.46 (USD $40.54) per ticket, the taxes were USD $186.96 per ticket. That is a difference of USD $146.42 per ticket between the price paid by Mexican customers and those in the United States. Since we were buying two tickets, the total difference we were being asked to pay was USD $292.84 - almost USD $300 extra - just to pay with a credit card from the United States.
Fortunately, we could opt to pay instead at our local Sanborns instead of with a credit card, but customers who live in the US are not so lucky. Nor would be gringos who live in cities without Sanborns locations, although it is hard to think of any places that meet both of those conditions.
It is unclear why there is this difference in the tax amounts. It would seem, because the fares are comparable, that Mexicana is not ripping off Americans, but that the Mexican goverment is. It could be the case too that Mexican airports, which for the most part have all been privatized in the past decade, are charging additional fees for gringos, just because they want to. "Gringo tax" goes on a lot here, as does exploitation of foreign visitors in every country, it seems.
I am going to try and find out more about this tax difference, and as I do, I will report it here.
Posted by crispy at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2008
Eating Vegetarian in Puerto Vallarta
Introduction
Although we can usually find something to eat at your average restaurant in Mexico serving traditional fare, seafood restaurants are different. Because they specialize in seafood, they offer little else on their menus. The logic is, it is stupid to go to a seafood restaurant for something like cheese enchiladas or chiles rellenos de queso - one goes there for seafood.
Fair enough. A restaurant should be able to focus on their specialty without having to be concerned about all the other foods that are not. Yet consider the situation when members of the meat-eating ruling majority wish to dine out at such a place and want their vegetarian friends to go with them. That is a lose-lose situation. The vegetarian is going to have to make due at a restaurant that they would never choose, and the restaurant is being asked to accommodate with something that might be way beyond their regular scope. There has to be some accommodation on both fronts.
For my part, I try to do some advance research in screening restaurants that either have some interesting dishes on their menu that we can eat or those that will accommodate us by making some special dishes that are not on the menu. Most kitchens have plenty of things in their larders that do not have meat in them, but it still takes some effort on their part to make something vegetarian out of those basic ingredients. It takes even more effort to make something with them that is truly compelling.
Method
I started by searching for restaurant recommendations on the Internet. I narrowed the first list by looking for more upscale restaurants, because they are often more willing to accommodate special requests and their chefs tend to be more skilled at making those irregular dishes well.
It should be noted that in Mexico lower-end places (like tacos al vapor stands) also tend to offer vegetarian options because they are not preoccupied with having to serve so-called 'fancy' food in a place where fancy always requires meat. These places do not usually advertise on the Internet (although some of my favorite food blogs chronicle them), and finding them requires asking the locals or happening upon them in the street.
The research turned up a couple of strictly vegetarian restaurants, a restaurant recommended by vegetarians for being accomodating to vegetarians, and a handful of restaurants that did not have any vegetarian dishes on their online dinner menus, but did seem like they might consider special requests for customers. I wrote to the listed email addresses for the restaurants in the latter two groups to ask what they could do for vegetarians interested in dining at their establishments. I told them that I was interested in a hot meal, not just a salad. I also notified them that Shawn and I are the kind of vegetarians that eat eggs and cheese (usually in Mexico, everyone thinks vegetariano means what we think of as "vegan." I heard back from three of them.
In addition, Molly insisted on dining at a restaurant with a view of the ocean. I did not believe that any of the ones I had selected had a view of the ocean, so I did some further research and found Le Kliff, a fair drive from Puerto Vallarta in the area known as Mismaloya, but built on a cliff with a fantastic view. I wrote to them and asked if they could accommodate vegetarians that eat eggs and cheese and they also wrote back.
I put a restaurant recommended to us by our friend Joseph on the bottom of the list - La Palapa - after they wrote back to me. The restaurant and bar looked very nice, but in their reply, the items they said we could have as main courses are on their menu as appetizers. By that I mean, they said that they had main courses for us and then proceeded to list the two appetizers. If an item is an appetizer for someone that eats meat, it should be an appetizer for us too. Yes, at times everyone eats an appetizer as a meal, but the fact that they tried to pass off the appetizers as a full main course instead of just being up-front and saying, "you can make a meal out of a couple of our appetizers" made me hesitant. I did not cross them off the list entirely, but I did put them at the bottom of the list.
The Restaurants
Planeta Vegetariano: Strictly Vegetarian
We arrived in Puerto Vallarta a day before Molly landed. That gave us a night to go out to one of the strictly vegetarian places that people rave about: Planeta Vegetariano (Iturbide 270, 322/222-3073).
We had been there before when we visited Puerto Vallarta with our friend Tara, and I did not like it then. This time around, my expectations were low going in, and it lived up to those expectations. Planeta Vegetariano is better than a lot of restaurants that serve the vegetarian community in Mexico, but this is not saying much. They are buffet-style, and things served from steamer trays are already going to lack the potential of dishes made to order.
The majority of their offerings are cold salads (I have to say that their vegan potato salad was one of the best vegan potato salads I have ever had), and the hot dishes are so-so. When we went they had chiles rellenos de papa, a soy-meat "stir-fry" with mixed bell peppers, and a cauliflower gratin. Unfortunately, these were mostly the same dishes we had the last time we went there. I think if this restaurant were in any of the other smaller cities in Mexico, I would give it higher ratings, but as it is in Puerto Vallarta, a town loaded with spectacular eateries, its relative blandness really stands out.
Worst of all though was the thing that made Shawn remark, "This is the last time I'm coming to this restaurant." Luckily I had quickly gathered only a few things from the salad side of the buffet and not noticed this, but Shawn went to get a couple of different items and saw bugs swarming around the serving dishes. He said they were not in the food itself, but they were crawling all over the edges. Later on, he went to get some bread, and found that there were ants in the container and on the food. I can deal with so-so vegetarian food. In fact, I have grown accustomed to it when eating out. But bugs all over the place? Ew.
Le Kliff: Room With a View
We had to take a taxi to Le Kliff (south coast, 322/224-0975), because it is in Mismaloya. It has a beautiful view of the ocean, and the restaurant cascades down in many levels. I thought it would end up being a long evening of enjoying the view with a lot of lingering over the meal, so I decided to start it off right with a nice dry gin martini. This arrived and was quite good.
There were no vegetarian main courses on the menu at Le Kliff, so I wrote well in advance and asked them if they could make us something not on the menu, alerting them that we do eat eggs and cheese. The sales manager for the restaurant, Carlos Gutiérrez wrote back and said that they could, and that when we made our reservation, he would notify the chef of our visit and that eggs and cheese were okay. When they came to take our order, I told them about this arrangement. Molly ordered the huachinango, which gets translated in English as "red snapper."
We had some salads, and as those were very good, I was excited to see what the chef had dreamed up for us. When the huachinango was placed in front of Molly, I grew even more giddy, because the presentation was very nice. Then they put down in front of Shawn and me a couple of bowls of red and yellow bell peppers lightly sautéed in oil with some chunks of panela cheese and hard-boiled egg whites tossed in.
What a disappointment! I felt like our dish was an afterthought, and that the word that we eat eggs and cheese was taken too literally. A big problem I have with the Mexican concept of vegetarian food is that the dishes have to be dietetic for some reason. I suspect that is why they gave us egg whites and no yolks, and panela cheese, which is kind of like cottage cheese were it pressed into blocks and dried out. While this was a very healthy dish and well-executed for what it was, it had no seasoning whatsoever and severely lacked flavor. As a main course, it was very underwhelming. I left Le Kliff happy only because I had seven martinis over the course of the evening.
The next morning, I did not wake up with a hangover, but I did wake up angry. The trip to the restaurant was not a cheap taxi ride and I had put a fair bit of effort into writing to señor Gutiérrez trying to clarify what we wanted. I wondered though if perhaps I had not been specific enough in what I was expecting, and that was an error that I could correct with the next few places with some advance notice.
The River Café: A Classic
I had been in correspondence with the general manager of The River Café (Isla Río Cuale #4, 322/223-0788), Michael Boufford, for several weeks before we arrived. He was very helpful and quite friendly in his email messages, so I thought that perhaps he would not find it too rude if I wrote and told him of our experience at Le Kliff and why I had found it disappointing. I already expected more from The River Café, given the things Mr. Boufford had told me about the restaurant.
With the way our schedule worked out, we had to go to The River Café for lunch, and not dinner. Their standard lunch menu has a fair number of vegetarian items on the menu (or items that one can request to have made vegetarian), making me feel a little silly for having bothered the GM with so many email messages back and forth. After we had been seated, he came over and talked to us. He took the time to welcome us to the restaurant and explain what options we had open to us, including a couple of off-menu items.
We all shared a Mexican combination appetizer, consisting of cheese quesadillas, guacamole and nachos. I had the black bean soup, then I had the Mexican combination platter, made vegetarian. This was a big plate of two types of quesadillas (flor de calabaza and huitlacoche), more guacamole and beans. Shawn had mushroom crepes. I had another dry gin martini; Shawn and Molly had a few of their fruit daquiris - peach, mango and kiwi.
The River Café experience was much better for us as vegetarians than that of Le Kliff. The view might not have been quite as spectacular, but we had a very lovely table overlooking the river, shaded by broad reaching trees that provided a beautiful dappled sunlight (see photo from previous entry). We even were able to watch their resident iguanas patrolling the trees above us. Every person that provided us with service was very professional and Diego, our waiter, demonstrated a perfect knowledge of the food on the menu. He knew, for example, that the refried beans on the nachos were made with some animal products, allowing us to order them with no beans if we so desired (although I had to wonder if the beans that came later on the vegetarian platter main course were the same ones).
I only had a couple of martinis at The River Café, but I wished I could spend the rest of the afternoon there at the bar, catching up on old times with Molly or debating current events. I think if I lived in Puerto Vallarta, I would spend many an afternoon doing just that. (Actually, Shawn and I did return to have lunch at The River Café again before the end of our time in Puerto Vallarta.) To me, the atmosphere there says classic Puerto Vallarta - beautiful, casual yet refined, relaxing.
In my email correspondence with Mr. Boufford, he mentioned that he is also the GM at another restaurant in town, Mestizo. Given Mr. Boufford's helpfulness in assuring a good experience at The River Café, after looking at the more experimental menu of Mestizo, I decided we had to make a stop there as well.
Mestizo: Elegant Dining
While The River Café serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, Mestizo (Abasolo 233, 322/223-0788) is a dinner restaurant. Our reservations were for 9 pm, but Molly was hungry so we went over at closer to 8 to see if they would let us dine a little earlier. They were very obliging with the request.
While The River Café is set up on wide, sweeping terraces, Mestizo is in an old house. The tables are set up on the back patio, where a lion's head fountain provides the soft sound of trickling water. The menu has relatively traditional flavors, but the dishes are a bit more upscale. While The River Café offers a more casual dining experience, Mestizo is about fine dining.
I have to say here though that the service at both of Mr. Boufford's locations is top notch. He has really done a great job in hiring and training an outstanding staff in both restaurants. Molly ordered a glass of wine from the list and the waiter had her taste it first. I thought this was somewhat unusual, since that process tends to only be done when one orders a full bottle, to ensure that the bottle is good. She was not at all happy with that selection, and was grateful that he let her try it before pouring out a whole glass. Even if that wine has drawn particular criticism from diners, that kind of anticipation of the customer's tastes by servers is rare in Mexico.
Shawn had the Mestizo Salad (lettuce with beets, jicama and biznaga served with goat cheese croutons and a tapenade) while I had the Tomato Napoleon to start. Both were very good. We then moved on to our main course, both of us having enchiladas rellenas de flor de calabaza (we could have had them filled with huitlacoche, but neither of us relished the idea of that much huitlacoche all at once), covered with a creamy poblano chile sauce. These were delicious, and unlike some places we have been to that serve flor de calabaza, they definitely were not stingy with the filling.
My one complaint with Mestizo would be that their vegetarian main courses are not as exotic as the sides that come with the meat dishes: mini queso y rajas sopes, little poblano custards, grilled watermelon, grilled cactus and garlic mushroom tamales. All these seem like they would (or should) be vegetarian. While what we had was good, I enjoy trying unusual vegetarian stuff I have never had before, and I probably would have enjoyed all those sides more than what we had as our main course. I admit, it might be entirely possible to do just that, but as we had made arrangements in advance and the enchiladas were what the kitchen was prepared to serve us, I felt we needed to stick with that. Also, having worked in a kitchen, I know that the amount of the sides paired with certain dishes might be exact and serving some without their main course partners might mean the kitchen would run out of the proper sides to go with those dishes. However, if I am able to give them advance notice the next time, I think I might ask them if I could arrange for a main course of all their cool sides.
I know. They might not all go together so well, but that is part of experimentation, ¿no?
The next night I was to get my fill of unusual dishes, at El Arrayán.
El Arrayán: Unusual Eats
El Arrayán (Allende 344, 32/222-7195) is named after a kind of tree that bears fruit similar to what in English is called a guava. They do have a drink there - the house Margarita - that is made with a puree of this fruit, and it is very tasty.
I had read on a couple of vegetarian forums that El Arrayán would accommodate vegetarians if they are given a little advance notice, so I wrote to the email address on their web site. I inquired, and promptly got a reply back from Carmen Porras, who is a co-owners along with Claudia Victoria. She assured me that they could indeed accommodate us, and named some very interesting dishes that they can make for vegetarians, but she did note that they would require four days notice to make them. I was shocked and feared that this might make it an impossibility for us, given that we were there with a friend that wanted to play things by ear.
Nonetheless, we made our reservations for the end of the week and showed up at El Arrayán ready to try some interesting new dishes that we had never had before. On the outside of the restaurant, they have plaques awarding them Reader's Choice Selections on Virtual Vallarta - which they have won for three years running. Walking inside we found it to be a cozy and charming dining room, done up in traditional Mexican decor with Huchol-style paintings hung on the walls. No sooner than we walked in the door did Ms. Porras come over to introduce herself, seat us and point out the vegetarian options on and off the menu.
We delighted in several courses of their unusual dishes. We had de jamaica y queso, marinated goat cheese, and empanadas de platano y frijol negro to start. Then we followed with a salad: Shawn had the nopales tiernas and I had a very interesting ensalada de chayote. We followed this with this funky dish that they made especially for us that was not on the menu - huauzontles rellenos de queso Oaxaca - that utilizes the green part of the plant that amaranth (a grain) comes from. We had dessert, but unfortunately, I forgot to write down what we had.
Porras and Victoria have a hit on their hands. While we were there, the dining room filled up and everyone seemed to be enjoying the experience. Because I like to try dishes that I have never had before, our dinner at El Arrayán stood out as the most interesting of all during our visit to Puerto Vallarta. It is unfortunate that they need four days notice to ensure having the huauzontles, but I have to say that it was certainly worth the wait. Everything else that we had was on the menu (well, the ensalada de chayote was on a little special table-tent-like menu, but maybe they will add it to their standard menu on the next printing), so a vegetarian could still just walk in off the street and have plenty to eat. They also had some chiles rellenos de queso that we did not order since we had the huauzontles, and while not nearly as unusual, I am sure they would be very well executed at El Arrayán.
And The Rest
I wanted to include a special note about the restaurant in the condo building where we stayed, because it had a couple of vegetarian items on it, and one that really stood out. The place is La Época (174 Aquilles Serdan), and while they had a vegetarian tamal that was exquisite, the real thing to try there for those that eat cheese is the panela coated in nuts and fried, served with a sweet-hot sauce on the side. After enjoying it the first night we tried the restaurant, we went back almost every day for the rest of our trip to have just the crispy panela. How could I resist? It is a dish that speaks to me!
Posted by crispy at 07:53 PM | Comments (1)
November 03, 2008
The Decline of Western Civilization
Shawn and I returned home last night to find that we again have no running water.
This comes on the heels of our television dying. And losing a boatload in our investment funds.
We are sitting around in our apartment, unshowered, unshaven and with a sink overflowing with dirty dishes, unable to watch anything on television and too broke to go out and spend money on entertainment.
I told Shawn that I feel like we are experiencing the decline of western civilization first hand.
Having been a Cinema/TV student, he countered with, "Having no running water makes me feel like we're living in Little House on the Prarie. Having no money makes me feel like we're The Waltons, living in The Depression. And living with no TV makes me feel like the Kramdens in The Honeymooners."
Posted by crispy at 10:49 AM | Comments (22)