The Little Bird with 100 Different Tequilas
Written: Mar 20 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Top-notch food and more tequilas than you knew existed
Cons: Be aware of the dress code
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Tijuana |
The one fundamental aspect of a restaurant that really makes it jump to the top of my list of favorites is passion. No, I'm not talking about romantic restaurants, I'm talking about restaurants having a passion for excellence -- plus a passion for something else...something special to the heart of the owner. Maybe a passion for the world's greatest wines -- bar no expense, or a passion for the world's most unusual seafood -- no matter how hard it might be to obtain, or a passion for a region's cuisine -- no matter how impractical its traditional recipes might be to prepare. A restaurateur with passion for what he does is bound to succeed in my book.
My favorite restaurants would probably be considered quirky. If you look at some of my past epinion reviews, you'll know what I mean. Obrycki's in Baltimore, who close for part of the year when they can't obtain locally caught blue crabs. Ragin' Cajun in Houston, who have more trash from Louisiana yard sales nailed to their walls than the New Orleans city dump has in its biggest piles. These are places with character! They wear their colors on their sleeves. They're places I like to eat.
On a recent trip through Tijuana, I had the good fortune to find yet one more of these hole in the wall gems: Cien Aņos.
Cien Aņos is located at 1407 Jose Maria Velasco in the modern Rio Tijuana area. It's not very far inside the border -- probably less than a mile, but it's so good that it would have been worth driving an hour to get to!
Let's start off with the food. The restaurant claims that everything is made following recipes that are at least 100 years old (hence the name of the restaurant), and that the kitchen follows time-honored traditional techniques. Take the tortillas -- rough textured and irregularly shaped because they're made by hand and cooked over a fire, one at a time.
The menu offers lots of traditional dishes that you don't find all that often, particularly at most "Mexican" restaurants in the U.S. I started off with tamales de huitlacoche. Huitlacoche is a type of fungus from corn, and it's fairly common in traditional central mexican cooking. It's black in color with a somewhat sweet flavor. The tamales were topped off with a tangy tasting coarsely crumbled goat cheese. Outrageous! I also got to try a chicken dish that was positively redolent with chiles and sesame.
Be warned though: Cien Anos has some very, very weird stuff on the menu. Care to munch on some maguey worms (guisanos)?? Believe it or not, it's listed on the menu as an appetizer. "Unappetizer" would be more like it in my book. Ah well, what can I say, I'm a typical gringo...
I really should have started off by talking about the tequilas, because this is one of those totally unreasonable passions that the restaurant owners obviously have, and it's one of the big reasons why I have so much respect for the place.
When you sit down you are handed a menu and a tequila list -- with well over 100 different tequilas listed! I had no idea that there were so many, and even in my trips to Jalisco, I've never been to a restaurant that had such an extensive variety.
Service was great! We hadn't even gotten situated at the table by the time the waiter arrived to take our drink orders (which was unfortunate, since a little more time to peruse the vast tequila list might be nice). Fortunately, the head waiter -- a super friendly, funny gentleman who introduced himself to us as "el pajarrito" (the little bird) -- recommended a few of his favorites to us. I wasn't up for splurging on the most exotic tequilas on the list, since I didn't really know what I was looking for, so I settled on a Don Julio aņejo in a shot, plus a margarita made with it. The disadvantage with tasting spirits is always that you really can't do any kind of side-by-side tasting of many brands without stumbling into walls.
The restaurant was very nice inside with kind of a mix of rustic charm and modern elegance. While they had a sort of polished wood trim and modern lines around the dining room, they also had rustic saltillo tile floors and heavy traditional wood chairs and tables. Numerous fresh flower arrangements decorated the room. Very comfortable and classy.
Be warned though, this is a good restaurant. It is not one of the laid back Revolucion restaurants that cater to gringo tourists. Most of the customers were wearing business attire. I was wearing dockers and an oxford shirt -- not dressy, but not sloppy either -- and I felt quite welcome when I walked in. However, I did see the doorman turn away a couple of people who showed up in T-shirts and shorts.
Prices (always a dear subject to me) were pretty good for this caliber of restaurant. Most of the entrees hovered around $15. Your total tab will probably be greatly affected by your bar bill since some of those more exotic tequilas are going to run it up FAST. Still, life doesn't often deal you a card like Cien Aņos, so enjoy it while you can.
All in all, dinner at Cien Anos was without doubt the best single meal I had on this trip. Definitely a gem worth discovering.
Recommended:
Yes
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