HOME AND DECORATION
House & Garden Tour
By Jennifer Hamilton

A mini-museum of masks and a curvy casa with a view of Atotonilco

1. Construction of this property—a five-suite bed & breakfast and art gallery—was started in May of 1998 and completed in October the following year. It was envisioned as a true colonial home, with all the rooms spilling onto a large center courtyard and fountain. This home was designed to take full advantage of San Miguel’s mild climate, featuring many outdoor living spaces and some of the most spectacular views of the town below.

The owners are collectors of traditional Mexican masks and also represent a group of Mexican artisans and artists. As a result, this home and gallery offer a unique look at Mexican craft and culture. The tunneled entrance alone is worth the visit! In 2006, an extra wing was added to house an outstanding collection of masks and artifacts, a mini-museum, which can be visited by appointment only.

2. A riot of color, a plethora of sensual and undulating shapes and a flood of design treats await visitors as they enter under a curvy canopy separating the main house from the studio/gallery. A softly flowing water wall falls gently to a pebbled base which leads to the entranceway. An abundance of delights greets visitors once they are inside.

Windows are curvaceous, as too are the walls, lighting fixtures and kitchen islands. Soft colors blend in concert from wall to wall, room to room, and while large in size, every room has been designed to emanate a feeling of coziness and warmth. The master suite encircles and is open to part of the garden, with indoor and outdoor showers encased in colorful tile mosaics. What should not be missed throughout are the bathroom sinks—each one diverse and stunning in concept and mostly unrecognizable as sinks! There are four guest bedrooms and comfortable furnishings are placed throughout. You will view numerous collections, from Japanese ikebana baskets and antique teapots to contemporary ceramics and glass to excellent Mexican folk art. The dogs even have their own private dog-washing bathroom! Impossible to describe it all here; it is worth a return visit for a private and detailed tour. With eight acres of land hugging the Río Laja, the owners are still working on details outside, but of special note is the infinity pool with its extraordinary sculpture by Jerry Rothman. The Santuario de Atotonilco can be seen from the rooftop deck. A gallery is choc-a-bloc full of treats, including over a hundred vintage Mexican textiles, antique Mexican furniture, historic photographs and distinctive folk art.



No Tours on October 4 or 11

After September 27, the House & Garden Tour skips two weekends and resumes October 18, because processions close the streets for two consecutive Sundays. On October 4, the town celebrates Día de San Miguel. October 11, San Miguel celebrates the Feast of San Francisco. Join the tour October 18, when we return to the regular Sunday schedule.

Bonus discount!

House & Garden Tour ticket-holders receive a bonus 10-percent discount at La Tienda, applicable to certain items on Sunday purchases.

House & Garden Tour
Sun, Sep 27, tour departs at noon
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
US$15 or 150 pesos
Breakfast at Café Santa Ana starts at 9am





Food & Wine
Gangs of San Miguel de Allende
By Richard Lander

Every Gang in San Miguel has a focus, such as wearing one color or following Betty Friedan. The Foodie Gang’s focus is food—its consumption, study, preparation and news—and not just any food, but Mexican Food. Foodie Gangs exist all over the world, but to be part of a San Miguel Foodie Gang, you must take an intensive three-day workshop on Mexican Food.


Day One: Recanting and Mexicanizing

The day starts with each member recanting ever having eaten at Taco Bell, Del Taco or any Mexican restaurant chain back home. This is the beginning of the “Reject American Fast Food” mantra that starts a Foodie’s rethinking.

Then they are told about the Goddess of Mexican Food who lives among them—Diana Kennedy. In a special ceremony they are given their own copies of the Good Book. They look through the book and stumble on all the new words.

After a good read, each new recruit is called to the front and given a food specialty—burritos, tamales, epazote, pozole—and a coach to learn the correct way to pronounce it. For homework they are told to go out into San Miguel, buy the item and bring it to class.



Day Two: Show and Tell and Eat

With their new specialties plates, recruit stand, show their new specialties and tell where they bought it. If anyone says Mega or Gigante, ridicule begins and the lesson on authenticity starts.

The recruits are shown a slide of an authentic place to buy tamales.

Gasps are heard and several recruits flee the room, knowing in their hearts they aren’t Foodies because they thought these stands were places where you discarded tamales, not where you bought them.

Those who remain are herded into air-conditioned buses and told they will be eating their specialties at the Tuesday Market with Imodium chasers. The Tuesday Market will be unlike anything they have ever experienced in their lives.

As they leave the parking lot and head toward the Tuesday Market, there is clearly terror in the eyes of the Foodie Recruits as they sit for the first time in a plastic chair under a blue tarpaulin with their coach and are handed their specialties on plastic plates.

They are instructed to eat with their eyes closed. They finish by remembering an episode of Fear Factor. 


Quickly they are herded to the buses and taken back to the seminar center to rest, collect their thoughts and journal the experience. Several members of the Spiritual Gang are on hand to counsel the recruits whose world was put off balance by the experience.



Day Three: Recognizing an Authentic Restaurant

This day of the journey from Taco Bell to Tamale Stand is a day of journaling, cooking from the Good Book and learning what makes for an Authentic Restaurant and how much to pay for a meal.

What makes an Authentic Restaurant? Participation in food preparation, no separation of cooking and eating areas, no chairs but picnic-table-like seating arrangements, no menu, no English spoken, rough wooden walls to allow insects to escape, no Americans or Canadians in the restaurant, earthen floors and pet dogs.

Upon graduation, each new San Miguel Foodie has become an expert in their types of Mexican Food and an expert on where to eat it. Many will join Trip Advisor or other online travel advice sites and write reviews of where to find their specialties. A lucky few will do reviews for Atención.


This article is published with permission from Richard Lander’s blog, “Gangs of San Miguel de Allende.” Visit http://richland.wordpress.com/  to learn more about the numerous “Gangs” running rampant in San Miguel.





Sardinian cuisine for a long life
By Mary Murrell

Giulio Alfio

The number of years we live depends on the genes we inherit and our lifestyles. So which is more important? Research shows lifestyle is a much stronger predictor of our longevity than how long our parents live. Genetics appear to have a much smaller role than how we live day to day.

In a quest to understand what makes people live longer, Dan Buettner and his team of scientists traveled around the world studying what he terms “Blue Zones.” Buettner’s bestselling book, Blue Zones, describes the lessons we can learn about longer, healthier lives from the men and women who have lived the longest. In Sardinia, a large island off the western coast of Italy, many people live past the age of 100. The phenomenon is so common, islanders often greet each other with, “May you live to be 100.”

Blue Zones exist in Japan, Greece, California, Costa Rica and other parts of the world. Like Sardinia, all the zones have high proportions of people who live to very old age. A key focus of Buettner’s research is to understand common lifestyle characteristics across the zones that lead to longer, healthier lives.

Many of the same characteristics in Sardinia are found in other Blue Zones. Sardinians value close family and community relationships with an emphasis on spending time with friends. People get large amounts of daily physical activity, often walking during the day for several hours, and smoking is low frequency.

The diet of the average Sardinian is an important part of good health. Daily consumption of fresh vegetables, fruits and grains is high. Their diet includes pasta dishes, whole grain breads, goats’ milk and hard cheeses (like Pecorino Sardo). Meat comes in small portions, from grass-fed animals. Along the coast of the island, meals often include a great variety of fresh fish and other seafood.

Two aspects of the diet are somewhat unique to this Blue Zone—unusually high consumption of legumes like fava beans and a particularly healthy Sardinian red wine often accompanies a meal.

Sardinian wines, especially those made from the native cannonau grape, have very high levels of polyphenol, which helps to keep the heart and blood vessels working well. In 2007, Jacob Gaffney, writing in Wine Spectator, cited British research showing the highest levels of polyphenol occur in red wines from the south of France and wines from Sardinia.

If you want to try Sardinian cuisine combined with other Mediterranean influences, you are in luck. In 2008, a young Sardinian chef, Giulio Alfio, and his wife, Ana Brenda López, opened Mare Nostrum in San Miguel. Giulio calls his approach “Slow Food,” with all dishes made to order from local ingredients. He wants his customers to feel like guests in a Sardinian home, where they can relax with their friends and enjoy flavorful, healthy food.

Don’t expect heavy red sauces and lots of garlic many of us have come to expect when pasta is on the menu. Although tomatoes are part of many dishes, they are likely to be fresh ones. Raviolis come stuffed with duck or eggplant, with sauces like Gorgonzola cheese and nuts, camote and cream, or butter with red sweet peppers.

The menu offers seafood and beef dishes, but you won’t find pork or chicken. The chef likes to serve meat only from free-range, naturally fed animals and so far he hasn’t found a good source for pork or chicken.

The beef he serves is produced on a ranch near Celaya, where the animals are completely grass-fed. For the beef lover, choose from two preparations of a choice filet. Try it cooked to order or as a combination with Serrano ham and seasonings, cooked in wine, the chef’s version of Saltimbocca alla Romana.

The impact of Sardinia’s history is easy to see in the unique combinations of ingredients and flavors. For example, select one of the three fresh pastas made daily for Trofie di Turquia—a combination of fish, chopped tomatoes, pasta and brandy. Or try La Perla—pasta with oysters, white wine, garlic, parsley and goat cheese.

Camarones tres Continentes is a good example of how ingredients in many dishes at Mare Nostrum trace their roots to the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Europeans who came to Sardinia. Shrimp cooked with coconut milk, cilantro and chopped tomato is served with rice and vegetables of the day.

Many dishes at Mare Nostrum are classic preparations taught to Giulio by his aunt, who he describes as his most important teacher. He also worked with chefs in restaurants in his hometown of Olbia, on the Emerald Coast of Sardinia, and trained in a formal cooking school run by the Sardinian government.

Today, although Sardinia is part of Italy, it is one of only two regions in the country designated as a “popolo,” or a distinct people. (The other region is Venice.) When I asked if Mare Nostrum is an Italian restaurant, Giulio said, “It is not Italian. I prepare Mediterranean cuisine. The food of Sardinia is the foundation of my cooking and I have built upon it. Many cuisines have touched Sardinia over the years and I have selected from them.”

So how did a Sardinian chef choose to come to San Miguel? The story begins when American forces in North Africa captured a Sardinian soldier during World War II. Imprisoned in a POW camp in the US, he was released after the war ended. He decided to immigrate to Mexico where he met a young woman from an Italian community near San Miguel called Chipiloc. They were married and raised a family in another small village nearby, La Perla, where Italian immigrants also had settled.

Ana Brenda, who runs Mare Nostrum with chef Giulio, is the granddaughter of the Sardinian prisoner of war and his Italian wife from Chipiloc. Ana met Giulio in Sardinia when she traveled to visit her grandfather’s family. They married and decided to come to Mexico to open a Sardinian restaurant in San Miguel.

Mare Nostrum is located at Umarán 56 and is open every day except Tuesday from 1pm to 10pm. For reservations, call 152-7420.