Sunday, November 23, 2008

Highlight #115: This La Fonda is not that La Fonda (Cabo San Lucas)

If the name La Fonda calls to mind the ever present faux mex neighbor of Felini's Pizza, then you need to wipe that image clean from your mind before you go on reading about this La Fonda, a place where the food is almost as awesome as the Cabo San Lucas' view of rich blue ocean under the sun.

While my mornings at the ocean side resort were spent indoors listening to conference speakers, my evenings were full of discoveries. And my first night of adventure started at La Fonda, a place taxi drivers known by name.

One look at the menu confirmed that this place is not afraid to offend some tourists. On the very first page, under exotic sides, I found maguey worms, ant eggs, and grasshoppers. Having already experienced the first and third (and liked both), I was most definitely in the mood to have some ant eggs that was said to be "better than the best caviar."

The large portioned appetizer looked innocently like little white beans. But the surprisingly large size led L to comment that he'd rather not think about the stature of the ants that these little monsters would have turned into. With that said, L and C both bravely tried spoonfuls of the stuff inside handmade tortillas and like it very much. Unlike the beans they resemble, the eggs burst easily in the mouth with little pressure like soft summer corn kernels. The butter, herbs, and lime in which the eggs were fried imbued them with a delicious tangy savoriness that most certainly revved up our appetites.

For my entree, I ordered the second enchilada verde of the day, the first being at the Mexico city airport. This one was infinitely better than the first. The shredded white meat chicken, not normally my favorite part of the chicken, soaked up plenty of flavor from chopped green chilies, onions, and were perfectly but not overly gooey from a dose of jack cheese. The sauce was my favorite part, tasting strongly of fresh tomatillos and faintly of cilantro leaves.

C's braised short rib came with a rib that was, well, not very short. :) From the one bite I tasted, the meat seemed fall off the bone tender, but I didn't get a very good sense of the tomato based sauce and can't say much other than that C seemed to have enjoyed it.

Since we were in flan country and C confessed to be a big flan fan, we ordered the special corn flan topped with caramel sauce. After the first bite, we looked at each with question marks in our eyes. It didn't taste like fresh corn or caramel, but rather like hominy congealed in a fine, but still slightly mealy state. It was not the smooth, creamy, and custardy thing that we had hoped for, but we were happy to have tried it.

La Fonda (Cabo San Lucas)
Miguel Hidalgo s/n between Obregon and 12 de Octubre
Cabo San Lucas, B. C. S., CP 23410 Mexico
Phone: (624) 143 – 6926 and 172 – 0176

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha ha! I wish I had known a fellow foodie (and renowned local blogger) was there, too! We didn't try La Fonda, but we had some awesome carnitas at Carnitas Michoacan and seafood cocktails at Tacos Rossy in San Jose del Cabo. The other nights we suffered with what was offered at the group dinners.

Cathy said...

Same here. We would have loved some fellow Atlantans to eat with. We also went to The Office that was a lot of fun, although the food wasn't as great as La Fonda.