Cheap Eats
By Carol Schmidt
November 21, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Donovan’s: Not an Irish pub

You may peek inside Donovan’s expecting to see corned beef and cabbage and mugs of Irish ale.

Surprise! It’s an excellent Mexican restaurant (with a few Italian specialties) painted a cheery peachy-coral color that perks you up just to walk inside. It’s open for breakfast at 8am, when any self-respecting Irish tavern has barely closed.

Juan Ramírez, his wife and head chef, Emma, and her sister, Antonia, the pastry chef, bring decades of San Miguel restaurant experience to Donovan’s at Hidalgo 15, a few doors south of Insurgentes.

Ramírez was the manager of St. Augustine’s for seven years, and he and his wife worked many more years at Mama Mia, both landmark establishments. Their experience shows.

Juan follows the traditions of the most successful San Miguel restaurants in being a friendly host, helping you with your Spanish if needed and suggesting the best dishes of the day. Vases of fresh flowers and cloth tablecloths are on the tables. A band of decorative painted flowers circles the room, and two murals enhance the inviting entrance foyer. If the place looks small, an additional dining area is out of view in the rear of the restaurant.

And yet it is inexpensive, with many meals of 50 pesos or less, though there are also more pricey offerings. A specialty is chicken fajitas at 80 pesos.

We had one of the tasty breakfasts, huevos norteños, with spicy beef and diced vegetables seasoning the scrambled eggs, served with bread or tortillas, beans and hash browns, for 45 pesos. Individual-size pizzas start at 70 pesos, with all the usual topping choices. They roll out their own pasta and pizza dough.

Many Mexican plates are 50 pesos. Wines are available by the glass or at 60 pesos a half-bottle, and their cappuccino is 18 pesos. For breakfast, the 12-peso large coffee cup is refilled continuously. Among Antonia’s postres is a “sundae,” really a devastating chocolate cake served with ice cream.

So why is this restaurant named Donovan’s? It has nothing to do with an Irish pub but is instead a combination of dona, the Spanish word for doughnut, and the middle name of Juan’s and Emma’s son, Ivan. They are open every day, 8am–11pm, midnight on weekends, phone 152-4493.

Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair run www.fallinginlovewithsanmiguel.com, profiling more than 70 “Cheap Eats” restaurants, plus blogs, forums, SMA FAQs, Mexico news, and a thousand San Miguel photos.

Mexico by the Glass
By Dick Avery

Bordeaux in Baja

Ch. Camou How many people in their forties dream about what they would like to do when they retire more or less at 65 and pull it off right on schedule? Ernesto Alvarez-Morphy did just that, fulfilling a lifelong dream.

In his mid-forties, he decided that upon retirement he would own a winery. In 1986, he made his move on time. Combining forces with several Mexican businessmen, he purchased an existing vineyard in the Baja’s Valle de Guadalupe that had been planted in 1937. 

The goal? Nothing less than world-class wine! Anything less was not an option. 

Then the hard work began. Six months later, a winery in the California mission style was built overlooking the vineyards. After studying the soils and vines, the plan became to graft 60 acres and to reseed another 30 acres with the so-called “noble” French varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

The area was settled early in the nineteenth century by Russian immigrants who dry-farmed wheat and some still call the area Valle de Trigo or Valley of Wheat. We didn’t see any wheat, but Russian surnames abound. 

Ch. Camou sits in what is called Cañada del Trigo, surrounded by 95 acres of Bordeaux-style grapevines. Production is in the hands of winemaker Victor Manuel Torres Alegre, who trained at the University of Bordeaux. Michel Rolland, a Bordeaux winemaker, has been a consultant at the winery since 1995. 

Leading off the three levels of wine at Camou is the El Gran Vino Tinto at the top, a classic Bordeaux/Meritage blend of Cab, Merlot and Cab Franc. After fermentation, it spends three months in used oak barrels, then goes into new French oak for 15 months. The Vinas de Camou line includes a “Fumé” blanc (Sauvignon Blanc) and a Chardonnay. The Flor de Guadalupe is the “value” line and includes a Zinfandel, a Blanc de Blanc and a “Clarete” (a Bordeaux blend). The Zin is from purchased grapes and is blended with a tad of Cab and a smidgen of Cab Franc. Bordeaux-heads will love these wines, with their complexity, restraint, balance and power.


Alvarez-Morphy feels he has achieved his dream of making world-class wines. With gold medals from the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles in 2000, highest honors in “Wines of the Americas,” and “Challenge International de Vin,” Camou is hitting on all cylinders!

The history of Ch. Camou shows how small-to-medium producers are taking the art of winemaking in Mexico to new levels.

Cavas Valmar

Federico Valentine had no idea what awaited him when, clutching his 1874 edition of Traité Sur Le Vin (Treatise on Wine), he fled post-war France in 1919 to seek his fortune in the New World. Arriving first in New York, he later got a job on the railroads in Mexicali, Mexico. Moving to Tijuana, he met and married the comely Guadalupe.

With her family’s help, the newlyweds bought a small ranch near Ensenada. No High Chaparral, it had no electricity, water or paved roads. It had “honeymoon” written all over it! Undaunted, they began raising vegetables and cattle. He sold his wares from a small cart door-to-door. Behind the little ranch house, being ever the good Frenchman, Federico planted a small vineyard and, using his handbook as a guide, he made the good juice for his family’s use. He had a small wooden vat in which he pressed the grapes with his own feet. 

Volume increased and so did the family. Federico’s sons, Hector and Gontran, opened a general store in Ensenada, selling all sorts of vegetables. Years later, Federico’s daughter married Fernando Martain, who happened to be the head of production at Bodegas de Santo Tomás, another up-and-coming winery in the Valle (we’ll have a look at Santo Tomás in a future article). 

The family had been discussing the idea of creating a family winery, so they decided to take the plunge. Things began slowly and very low-tech. Wine was produced in an old garage with rustic, manually operated equipment. The whole family pitched in. Cavas Valmar was born and off, if not running, walking. The first production came in 1985 with a whopping 350 cases of a wide scope of varietals: Barbera, Muscatel, Lambrusco and Nebbiolo, to name a few. With the profits, they began to upgrade the equipment and expand production. Today, production has hit about 2,000 cases coming out of about 50 acres of vineyards. 

Cavas Valmar is dedicated to pushing the envelope on winemaking in Mexico. They take pride in the fact that their wines reflect the terroir (the unique characteristics that the soil in which the vines are grown impart to the grapes) of the Valle and have minimal human intervention. In this way they avoid standardization of their production and allow Mother Nature to express herself through each vintage.

Dick Avery is head sipper at VinoClubSMA, a wine club devoted to the enjoyment of “boutique” Mexican wines through tastings. He can be reached at vinoclubsma@gmail.com.  Check out the website at www.vinoclubsma.com.  

Travel Channel films at Casa de Sierra Nevada

Presenter Charlie Ottley and producer–cameraman Alasdair Grant of the Travel Channel’s program Flavours of Mexico filmed at Casa de Sierra Nevada the week of November 10 during their journey through Mexico. 

Ottley and Grant are filming seven episodes about Mexican cuisine and have already spent close to three weeks in Mexico. The team filmed executive chef Gonzalo Martínez in the Sazón cooking school kitchen and in parts of the hotel. The episode focuses on the traditional dishes of Guanajuato. 

To learn more about the show Flavours of Mexico, visit Ottley’s blog at http://www.travelchannel.co.uk/mexico/index.html. 

House & Garden Tour
By Jennifer Hamilton

Turkish and Thai headdresses, British prints, Aztec sculpture

House & Garden Tour
Sun, Nov 23, noon
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
US$15 or 150 pesos
Breakfast at Café Santa Ana starting at 9am

1. This spacious home in a quiet section of Colonia San Antonio is furnished and painted in Mexican colors and styles. Large, open spaces and high ceilings bring the living, dining and kitchen areas together painted in different hues. The living room contains a spiffy chandelier with matching sconces.

A guestroom on the first floor has beautiful artwork, an enviably large closet and a chandelier with glass beads casting a soft glow at night. The private patio behind is filled with Virginia Creepers. The second floor contains an office, entertainment area and a screen filled with photographs. A rounded fireplace is in the corner of the room which leads out onto a sizeable deck.

On the walls are two headdresses from Turkey and Thailand. Doors are fronted with mirrors reflecting additional light. 

Whimsical masks line the staircase which leads to a rooftop with 360° views over the town and its church domes, a full kitchen, a barbecue, spacious seating areas and pull-down shades to stave off the summer sun.

2. The entranceway of this hillside home leads down through a cactus-filled front garden and into a two-story hallway with vaulted ceiling.

The home’s beautiful objets d’art were acquired during the many years the owner spent working for the BBC in the UK and Japan. Downstairs, an entertainment area houses a substantial collection of videos and music.

The dining and living areas afford extraordinary views north to countryside and undulating hills. The downstairs guestroom was decorated with Guatemalan huipiles on one of the walls, colorful Mexican folk art, a brilliantly-hued bedspread and a fun bathroom “afloat” with fish decorations.

On the stairwell are noteworthy old British prints of Japan. The spacious master suite with its wood-burning fireplace is home to more artwork and commands further outstanding views. A cozy terrace can be enjoyed in quiet moments or for extraordinary sunsets. A small gym makes good use of another terrace.

The walled-in rear garden is a tribute to San Miguel’s high semi-desert climate—a profusion of cacti reached by winding pathways eliminates the need for constant watering

3. This might be the first home built in Atascadero over 50 years ago. It contains an outstanding jewelry studio and lots of light in every room through the beveled-glass French doors opening out to the entrance or back garden.

The museum-quality Native American pots and artifacts in the foyer indicate the number of years the owners were involved with the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe.

The house reflects years of collecting. Hallmark artists and Missouri artists who painted 1900–1950 created much of the artwork.

All the bedrooms open onto either the flower-filled front patio or garden. 

The rooms flow effortlessly one to the next, with beautiful furniture, outstanding artwork and more collectibles displayed on counter- and tabletops. The oversized aviary in the garden was especially designed for countless birds and the garden’s fountain was made locally.

A collection of masks, photos and memorabilia line the walls of the garage, as do riding trophies and photographs. An Aztec sculpture on the wall of the garden was in the foyer of the original house 50 years ago, and carefully and lovingly taken apart to be placed outdoors.

The House & Garden Tour

thanks the following for opening their beautiful homes on Sunday, November 16, 2008:

Sandi Merdinger
Pam and Don Knoles

3rd Sunday in November for 2007 
150 visitors on tour 

Year To Date 2007 
8,029 visitors on tour


3rd Sunday in November for 2008
126 visitors on tour

Year To Date 2008
8,042 visitors on tour