This is a small restaurant that’s been open for 2.5 years I’m San Antonio, TX.
Owned and operated by Executive Chef David Escamilla and Chef de Cuisine Diego Gonzalez, this restaurant provides an intimate setting for enjoying a tasting menu with a story
For this particular menu, the story is a trip around Latin America and the Caribbean.
I failed to get a picture of the first dish. The rest were as good as they look.
The salad course was a deconstructed Caesar salad, which harkens back to the original Caesar salad from Caesar’s in Baja California.
The soup course with braised beef tongue boasted a fantastic depth of flavor, while the beef tongue (lengua) was so tender it came apart with the touch of a spoon
In Puerto Rico, we get to enjoy what they call a “pastel”, which is similar to what in Mexico is called a tamal. The pork and adobo worked well together, while being heightened by a variety of additional spices
The first palate cleanser is a mangonada with Chamoy, which is something I would expect my suegra to make me after a hearty meal. The kicker here is that all the ingredients are not only handmade, but made same day from ingredients sources locally. It was a breath of fresh air between the richer dishes.
From Jamaica, oxtail with a jerk sauce is almost impossible to miss with. The meat virtually dissolved while the jerk sauce was provided as a sweeter version than what you would normally expect. It tied well back into the other dishes as the tamarind present in jerk was also present in some of the other sweet dishes from Mexico, like the Chamoy from the palate cleanser.
From Executive Chef David Escamilla’s home country, we see a dish brought to us from the mind of his great grandmother. A mole rojo that is made with locally sourced chocolates, formally making it a mole dulce. The coco beans are imported from out of the country, directly to a chocolate processing company in San Antonio. From there, it’s utilized in clever ways to help bring David’s great grandmother’s mole dish to life.
Our second and final palate cleanser from Puerto Rico boasts a citric acid rim, made from scratch. It has a carbonated liquid inside with a frozen cube of ice cream, topped with mint and lime zest. It truly woke the palate back up to prep for the last course.
The final dish, a desert from Mexico, also utilized local chocolates with beans sources from out of the country. It was just the right amount of sweet with some texture from the crust. Accompanied by Cajete de Selaya, it hit all the marks a desert course should.
All in all, the menu was inspired. The 3-man show was super involved with guests every step of the way. The experience was all around phenomenal.
If these guys don’t earn themselves a Michelin star soon, they’re almost certainly well on their way to it.
Thanks for reading my first ever food review y’all.
by SliceEm_DiceEm