The lord of the ceviche: The two cities

San José del Cabo is the city where my brother lives. It is located in the southern part of Baja California and if you drive 30 Kilometres heading west through the coast highway, you'll reach San José's twin city: San Lucas.

In San Lucas, I tried two ceviches at eateries for locals; tourists prefer to have giant steaks with giant shrimps or giant hamburgers at hooters or Johnny Rockets. I assume that good food in San Lucas is reserved for Mexicans ;-)

One of the ceviches I got there was interesting and the second was very good.

I bought the first one from a guy who selling fish and shrimp ceviche from the trunk of his mini-van at the marina. He prepared it with fish, coriander, red onions, lime and something that surprised me: shredded carrots! The flavour was very balanced since the carrots added a sweet taste to it. The ceviche was served over a tostada, which is nothing but a tortilla chip the size of a cd.

“Las tres islas” was the place I had the very good ceviche, their ceviche was perfect: White fish perfectly marinated in lime juice with the ideal amount of red onions, coriander and tomatoes and it was served along with tortilla chips.

In the city of San José I also had very good ceviche, it was actually nearly amazing. My brother drove us (my mom and me) to the “container”, a shipping block adapted as a restaurant. It is located at the new San José Marina. They prepared an incredible good ceviche: Big chunks of fresh tuna*, loads of red onions, coriander and the perfect amount of lime juice…and the right amoutn of their secret ingredient: Mango. To add even more points, they serve the ceviche with fresh home-made tortilla chips.

Not far away from the posh container, there is a couple selling excellent ceviche, oysters and clams on the street. They use an old cable barrel as both, kitchen and table for the guests. The atmosphere there is magic: Locals, gringos, dusty streets, dogs and chickens blend perfectly with their excellent ceviche using the traditional ingredients.

Want to see how some of the eateries look like? Click here

* In Baja California there is no industrial fishing; fish comes from sustainable lane fishing.

I'll just call ourselves "The fellowhip of the ceviche"

In winter 2006, my family and I decided to spend our December holidays at the Mayan Riviera. As we flew from Chihuahua to Cancún, we knew this was not a simple family trip, it was the beginning of long quest: The search for the greatest ceviche ever; a quest that until now, four years later, hasn't been concluded.

Looking for the tastier ceviche in the galaxy is not an easy task. Back in that summer, we found our favourite among ten different eateries. On the Riviera highway, in the city of Tulum, not far from the point were you turn left (if coming from Playa del Cármen) to reach the archaeological site, there it is, a street restaurant serving one of the best ceviches we have tried.

I still remember how it all happened: We all ordered ceviche, but my sister was the first one to try it. As soon as the magic blend touched her tongue, she took a look at us and with her eyes wide open said "No…está bien bueno!“. That ceviche is since then our standard: We give ceviche grades based on that one.

My family and me...well, I'll just call ourselves "The fellowhip of the ceviche" continued our journey last month. In December we started exploring new territories. My brother, who has been living in Los Cabos for over a year now, located new terrains. Before I narrate the impressions from the best ones last month, I have to dedicate the next paragraphs to ceviche. Some readers may have joined this blog recently and are not aware of what ceviche is.

I often describe ceviche as the Latin blend of sashimi and gazpacho. Ceviche has the Japanese minimalism if you count the number of ingredients (all raw), it is perfectly combined with some of the fresh ingredients of gazpacho and is pimped with the two best ingredients of Latin kitchen: Lime and coriander/cilantro.

Ceviche has six ingredients: Fish, lime, tomato, red onions, cucumber, coriander and salt. Some people add fresh jalapeños and/or avocado. In Peru, the birthplace of ceviche, ceviche is prepared sometimes with corn and served with slices of grilled sweet potato.

Many cooks try to make ceviche tastier by augmenting the number of ingredients. There is ceviche prepared with tomato juice, black pepper, ketchup, chillies, and a mix of Worcester, Soy and Maggi sauces…

For us, the fellowship of the ceviche, the dish has to be fresh, simple and it must have red onions. That’s it.

I will write about the ceviche experience in Los Cabos in my next entry...

P.S. The picture is a ceviche I had at the marina of San José

fat, old and lonely...niiice!

The British newspaper „the guardian” recently published an article on a trend in cosmetic surgeries: Women want to look like 36. “Sweet” I thought! The consumer society has selected “36” as the landmark of aesthetic-human splendour, the non plus ultra of hotness.

The first thing that came to my mind was that in only four years people will envy me, and if not, they will find me pretty damn sexy.

As I continue reading, I couldn’t believe the article: Looking like 36 was not the goal of ladies in their late 40’s, they are women in their early 20’s the ones trying to look like cougars!

Anne, my flatmate has a refined sense of humour which she perfectly complements with her German way of telling things (She is quite direct). Well, some minutes ago, Anne saw me in the kitchen, and apparently I was looking worried (but I wasn’t) and as I told her I was going to write for my blog, she asked me if I was writing about how sad my life was.
She finished our short conversation by adding that I was “fat, old and lonely”. Although this comment may sound as a reason for either stop talking to her or suddenly committing suicide, I thought it was great and laughed out loud :-D

I liked Anne’s comment so much I told her it was the perfect title for the blog, then I grabbed a bottle of red wine and came into my room to write this.

It is nothing new that I whine for being fat, old or lonely, but that’s not the case this week. Not since I read that Lindsey Lohan and Heidi Montag are 23 and 24 respectively and just got themselves fixed with botox to look older than me.

Thank you Lindsey!


P.S. The article “The year-zero face: is 36 the perfect age for a woman?” was written by Eva Wiseman in case you would like to google it.

that warm family noise

In 1996, a set of circumstances enabled me to go to Europe for two semesters to learn German, I was 17 back then.

I came to Innsbruck, studied German and then enrolled at the University to study political sciences. By the time I finished my studies, I was member of an incredible and lovely circle of friends. I bonded so well with them that taking the decision to stay in Innsbruck and look for a job was not hard at all.

I know many Mexicans who cannot live without consuming Mexican products: Chillies, sauces, snacks and sweets. During my first years in Austria I also showed symptoms of that gastronomic nostalgia. My mom used to send me candies, salsas and chips by either parcel, or with someone who happened to travel to Innsbruck. At present, I can survive extreme long periods of time without consuming Mexican food, but there is something I cannot turn my back to: my family.

The only reason I still travel home is to meet my mom, my brother and sister, and my vacations turn even better if I meet my grandmother, my grandfather, my father, my aunts, my uncle, my cousins and their children. There are also a number of good old friends with whom I enjoy chatting, but sadly, most of them no longer live in Chihuahua.

I came back from Los Cabos only three days ago. While there, I spent most of the time with my relatives, who came for the wedding of my cousin William and to spend christmas and news year's eve there. We were around 30 Castro-clan members. Those weeks were everything but calm: children playing, running and yelling; the adults were eithwer watching TV, cooking, discussing or eating. It was noise and chaos at its highest peak, all the time and everywhere we went to.

Right know, I am happy to be back in Austria, I love my apartment, my friends and the cultural offer here; however, I am missing something: that warm family noise...

I will drink Martinis and eat ceviche every day for the next 25 days.

Its been a while since I last wrote a blog entry, and the reason for it weas that in the last two weeks I did not manage to relax, think and write down what was happening around.

Right now I am at Mexico City's Airport waiting for my flight to Los Cabos, where I will meet my mom, my sister, Victor (her husband), my brother, Allison (his girlfriend), and the rest of the Castro family (mom's side).

Well, in the last days I have:
1. Been Nikolo, the German Santa Claus, in order to give little Jonathan (the son of two good friends) his goodie bag for behaving well all year,

2. Organised and moderated meeting with 17 participants from 12 different countries,

3. Finalised things at the office, so I could take 3 weeks off,

4. Had a christmass dinner with Hannes, Lindsey and Wall.e,

5. Bought presents like never before,

6. Packed 54 kilos of lugagge in two bags

7. Went to three good concerts and one bad concert. Goods were: Lambchop, Yann Tiersen and Torche; bad was a jazz gig by a pianist called Ibrahim something...

8. Made up with Sarah the schedule for the next Food Conspiracy Dinner in Vienna and Innsbruck (By the way, in Aeromexico's magazine there is an article on this kind of illegal restaurant movement and realised we offer more courses than the ones in the article from Brazil, Argentina and USA)

9. Edited a documentary with Verena

The points above are a sample of what happened in the last two weeks, but from now on, I will just relax on the beach, drink red Martinis and eat ceviche every single day...I am not exagerating, I will drink Martinis and eat ceviche every day for the next 25 days.

P.S. Ceviche ist that delicious mix between sashimi and gazpacho with lime and coriander.

a smiley in the title :-) OR Männer im Wasser

I was about 6, and Tita one year younger, when my mother asked us in Tita’s room a tough question for a child, at least for a child in our age. She told us “I am moving out today. I am going to live with your grandparents; do you want to stay here with you father or do you want to come with me?” Tita and I picked up the second choice. Tomás wasn’t asked, he simply came with us; he was not even two-years-old.

In the years after, I did have the feeling my father made a strong effort to re-bond with us. He later got married. Once, it may have been 1995, he took my sister and me to the cinema to see “The father of the bride”. A screwball comedy in which the main character (a man in the mid-life crisis) tries everything to improve the relationship with his daughter. I also remember that the movie had a happy end and that my father cried. Tita and I found that kitsch and funny.

Last Saturday Hannes and I went to the cinema to see “Allt Flytter” a Swedish film translated in German as “Männer im Wasser” (Men in water), but I think the English title is “the swimsuit issue”.

Allt Flytter is a visually beautiful (as all Swedish movies I have seen) and a fine comedy. The main theme is actually about friends and the sacrifices they make to save their friendship. There are many problems to solve in the movie (all of them have to do with the mid-life crisis), however the characters manage to solve them all in their very own way, in a way I haven’t seen in mid-life crisis-comedies.

The situations in the movie are so human and natural, and friendship plays such an essential role that I had to avoid crying at least three times. I did my best because I don’t like to be seen when crying…and Hannes was aside!

After seeing one of the most beautiful movie-endings, we went out of the cinema and Hannes told me that the film made his eyes wet several times, I thanked him for saying it first, and then I told him that the same happened to me.

I am happy my sister was not there, because she would have laughed like hell if she would have seen us there with glassy eyes, she would have laughed the way we laughed about our father back then…no, I know her, she would have laughed even louder :-D

Watching a beautiful film about friendship with my best friend was one of the nicest things I’ve experienced so far.

I hate waiting

For me, the most suffering memories I have from my childhood are always related with waiting. As a child I hated the eternal waiting for the Christmas day to finally get presents. The scariest moments of my childhood was when I waited for the school’s grades to reach my mom, and one of the worst: I sadly remember myself desperately waiting in my dad’s truck for him to come out of an office on a hot summer day.

I am sure that nobody likes waiting, never.

When you wait for a good thing to happen, for example waiting for someone you love at the airport is incredibly hard. For me, times runs slower than physics can explain. When I stand at the arrival gates waiting for my mom, sister, brother, every second feels like I am trying to reach a snail, but I can’t, because I am moving slower…every second.

When I wait for a bad thing to happen, for example when I first applied to get the Austrian citizenship two years ago, I had so much time to thing of all possibilities: what am I going to hear, what should I do if the answer is positive, what should I do if the answer is negative, and so on, back and forth. Time stretches and all you can do is think of possibilities, and when the possibilities are immense, time runs as if it would be no end.

At the moment I am waiting, I have been doing so for some weeks. I am trying to decode an answer but I simply can’t…there is no way out, the only thing I can do is...to wait.