El bajo fondo 
Tue–Sat, noon–10pm; Mon, noon–6pm
Zacateros 19 (enter through Casa Grau)
152-1623 
bajofondosma@gmail.com 

El bajo fondo: A garden of earthly delights
By Lulu Torbet

Unexpected culinary pleasures await you in El bajo fondo, at Zacateros 19. Entering through the discrete entrance of the antique store, Casa Grau, you wind your way to a dining room, lined on the left wall with an unusual array of wines, exotic teas and a display case piled with mouth-watering foods.

Suddenly, the space opens into an expansive courtyard dotted with café tables and woven multicolored webbed chairs. At the center of the courtyard is an open-air rotunda, supported by Gaudi-inspired cement columns inlaid with bits of mosaic tiles. Surrounded by high walls, shade trees and a garden, the restaurant manages to look festive and informal, yet elegant.

Intrigued? That’s the least of it. Come in. Sit down. You’re about to have a unique dining experience. El bajo fondo is the dream-in-progress of two passionate, dedicated women—Silvia Grosso and Alicia Rivero—who are overflowing with ideas and plans and the energy to carry them through. I visited them in their new establishment to find out what they were up to and was quickly caught up in their energy and excitement.

It was Grosso’s husband Peter Grau, the owner of Casa Grau, who had the idea of opening a restaurant in the spacious but rundown space behind the store. They spent two years cleaning up the ruins, restoring the broken-down space, planting bamboo and native flora and, most importantly, planning the restaurant which would combine their interests and skills into something special for San Miguel.

El bajo fondo is a great place to educate yourself on the wonders of tea, with an extensive selection from around the world, and the history to accompany them. The wines offered also represent several countries.

A tale exists for all that El bajo fondo has to offer, including the food. The short version is that it’s delicious, completely organic, almost 100-percent local, and constantly changing, as the whirlwind Alicia makes adjustments, finds and tests new ingredients and recipes at home in her backyard kitchen, and coaxes special recipes from friends. Alicia’s eyes flash as she goes on about the local provisions: butter, wheat, cream, meat, eggs, the guavas from the tree in the courtyard. She just raised a pig to learn the ropes, and plans to do more. She’s about to make a smoker. She trains bajo fondo’s staff at her home as well.

Alicia’s food mania began when, as an insomniac child growing up in Brooklyn, New York, she’d get up and cook, bringing the night’s fragrant results into her parent’s bedroom at 7am. At 14, she was cooking at a Manhattan kitchen of her mother’s friend Felipe Rojas Lombardi, the James Beard trained owner of the famous tapas cabaret, The Ballroom. Her fledgling “catering business” made it hard to keep up in school. After years of teaching 2nd grade, she was more than ever convinced that cooking was her calling, and enrolled in an intensive pastry course at the Culinary Institute of America. Here in San Miguel, she’s been the chef (though she feels the title is a bit ‘high-falutin’ for what she does) at La Carpa and at Natura (Bee Natural), and ran La Fonda Escondida from her home near La Fábrica Aurora. She also provides pastries and other dishes for several prominent locales, including Hecho en Mexico and Luna de Queso.

Silvia and Alicia see El bajo fondo as a project that they hope to grow over the course of several years, serving local foods combined to produce international flavors that reflect the unique qualities of San Miguel, a not-so-provincial Mexican mountain town, populated by people from all over. They are trying to go slowly, but their enthusiasm keeps them moving at a fast clip. El bajo fondo serves lunch and an afternoon tea from 4 to 6, which suits their love of the more relaxed ritual of teatime, and takes the pressure off lunch hour; and wine time is 5–7pm. They have just begun serving dinner and soon will be open for breakfast.

At lunch and teatime, customers choose their dishes—which change weekly and are listed on a blackboard—from the tempting display case. Food and drinks are brought to the table.

At dinner, they offer full table service; a waiter brings a blackboard listing the day’s offerings to your table. Each evening offerings include a rotating selection of a meat, a chicken, a fish and a vegetarian dish. 

El bajo fondo is the product of exceptional dedication and attention to detail, to high quality and high aspirations, to aesthetics and sensuality. What more could you ask?



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High-quality baby lamb meat for sale in San Miguel
By Krishna Villena

Three months ago, veterinarian Julián Rolando Téllez Hoyos and Alejandro Rincón, a butcher shop and farm owner, started raising baby lambs in San Miguel. The Dorper sheep breed is fed with organic supplements from birth and the meat is for sale at a local butcher shop.

According to Rincón, the Dorper sheep breed was developed in South Africa in the thirties. The dual need was for a quality sheep meat product that would meet the demand of international buyers and for a meat sheep breed that was able to perform well under extreme conditions. The sheep was developed by crossing the Dorset Horn with the Blackheaded Persian. The perfect meat sheep breed slowly evolved; the body was white, the head black. Over several generations a pure white Dorper was developed.

Rincón explained where the idea of breeding for baby lamb came from, “I have a lot of American clients and they consume this type of meat because it’s good for health and they suggested I raise baby lamb at my ranch.” At the butcher shop he sells an average of five baby lambs per week, which means about 20 baby lambs every month. “The quality of this meat is excellent, less fat and still very tender.” The cost is 150 pesos per kilo; chops cost 180 pesos per kilo. 

Although lamb is generally a very tender meat, the signs you can look for to better ensure high quality are firm, fine-textured flesh pink in color. “Any fat surrounding or marbled throughout the lamb should be white, not yellow,” explained Rincón. 

Rincón is associated with veterinarian Téllez Hoyos. “I talked to Julián Téllez, who was already breeding the Dorper, and we went to see his ranch. The conditions are optimal and he takes good care of the animals. We decided to work together on this project.” 

Téllez owns the ranch where he breeds the lambs. He gives the baby lambs a pill. “I give it to them right after they are born; this pill is based in trans fatty acids which do a lot for the animals as an energizer and to prevent hypoglycemia. Its ingredients are organic,” said Téllez. 

Another important supplement is selenium in very small doses mixed with yeast. Téllez said this organic element improves the digestion, allowing the animal to assimilate the food well, “the result is a very good meat, rich in selenium, which slows the growth of cancer in humans.” 

Rincón said they are open to all suggestions. “People are free to ask questions about how we feed the lambs; we can set an appointment and take them to the ranch to see the process and the conditions where the animals live.” 

The sale of baby lamb in San Miguel is starting to grow, though the only place you can find it is La Lonja butcher shop on calle Juárez. Nevertheless, Rincón’s baby lamb meat has been recognized for its taste and quality. “We exhibited the different baby lamb meat cuts at Patsy’s Place and Patsy cooked baby lamb hamburgers for the visitors on the House & Garden Tour. They really liked our product,” he said.

Téllez said baby lamb meat is leaner than that of older sheep, which have had time to develop more fat. As a breeder he said, “People can be certain they’re consuming a high-quality product good for their health.”