Walks We Took in San Miguel
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It might seem odd to have an entire page here in the Mexico trip devoted to eating, but we did a lot of that while we were here. Either Fred or I usually took our cameras when we went out to eat in the evening (Theresa only prepared breakfast and lunch and we were on our own for dinner), and so we accumulated quite a few pictures of those outings. But let me begin with a few of the pictures we took of and at our meals at Casa Pina.

Our Meals at Casa Pina

At Casa Pina, Theresa prepared us breakfasts and lunches. The breakfasts were usually the same menu, while she rotated through six different menus at lunch.

We almost always ate at the large dining table just outside the kitchen in the open living area. The weather was pretty temperate for most of our stay, and there were only a couple of days when it was chilly or rainy and we chose to eat in the indoor dining room.

On the menu each morning were whatever pastries one of us had gone out to get that morning (there were a couple of excellent bakeries right near Casa Pina, and either Richard or I went out to pick up a selection each morning), a platter of sliced fruit (the selection that Theresa purchased each day was pretty amazing), fresh orange juice, coffee, toast, and eggs and sausage made to order.

It was really quite a feast, and it was always a pleasure for us all to sit down together. Greg could have had breakfast at the place across the street where he was often staying, but instead he came over to join everyone else. In the picture at right, Fred is taking the photo, Richard and Penny are at the left, Greg is at the end of the table, and then I, Mohamed, and Chase are at the right.

I mentioned elsewhere that Greg was a little too generous and accommodating when he invited his friends to come down for a week; there were some weeks when he had more guests than bedrooms, and he went and got another place to stay just across the street.

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Breakfast was always a time for conversation and laying out the events of the day. On the particular morning that this movie was taken, Fred and I and Mohamed and Chase would be heading out for a guided tour around San Miguel, while Penny and Richard planned to visit the area of San Miguel where the artists and art shops were located.

Greg, as was his purpose in coming down here, would be off to his half-day of Spanish lessons, and in this movie he is discussing one of the intracacies that he learned about the day before.

While I am not much of a breakfast eater, I have to admit that everything that Theresa prepared was top-notch, and I particularly enjoyed the variety of fruit that we had.

As I mentioned, lunch was a rotating menu, and everything was delicious.

Again, we always had lunch at the outside refectory table in the open living area. Even on days when breakfast was inside, it warmed up enough to make dining alfresco very enjoyable. On the day these pictures were taken, Theresa had made Green Chile Chicken.

Of all the items that Theresa prepared, I think the Green Chile Chicken was my favorite. It was a chicken breast covered in a sauce made from green chiles and seasonal vegetables, with a topping of a sour cream sauce that she made herself. The chicken was accompanied either by Spanish rice or mixed vegetables, and there was usually a side of homemade pico de gallo and tortillas.

Another popular dish (and I think Greg's favorite) was what Theresa referred to as a "shrimp cocktail" but which was, in reality, kind of a tomato-based shrimp stew served in a large bowl- again with rice and tortillas and pico de gallo as accompaniments.

Another excellent dish was Theresa's take on classic Tortilla Soup. While this is a staple in any Mexican restaurant you might go to, everyone does it differently, and Theresa's was some of the best I'd ever had- very thick with lots of chicken and vegetables.

I think, however, that one of my favorites of hers (aside from the guacamole, which is another staple everyone likes) was her pico de gallo, made with fresh onion, tomato, green and red chiles, and lime juice. It is the one recipe I just had to bring home.

Eating Out in San Miguel

Theresa was off on Sundays, so if we wanted breakfast we went out to get it, and that's what we did the first Sunday Fred and I were there.

Casa Rosada

Casa Rosada is a boutique hotel here in San Miguel de Allende that is located just a hundred feet or so from Casa Pina. It is situated just behind the Parroquia, and has its entrance on the street we take up to the square and the Jardin Allende, which is less than a block away.

Casa Rosada has a restaurant and bar that offer both inside dining and a beautiful patio, which is where we went for breakfast on this beautiful Sunday morning. Mohamed and Chase had already left to head back to Mexico City, so it was just Fred, myself, Richard, Penny, and Greg. To get to the patio and the restaurant, one walks through the hotel lobby and then up some stairs to the patio level.

The Casa Rosada restaurant is located in a beautiful central patio, in the shade of bougainvillea and leaden grass; from the patio we could easily see the Dome of the Parish of San Miguel Arcángel. Here are some of the many pictures that Fred and I took on the patio from various angles:

It wasn't just the scenery on the patio that meant eating here was a pleasure, but the food was quite good also. A couple of us even got our pancake fix.

Casa Nostra Restaurant (Rooftop)

In the evenings, whoever the guests happened to be took Greg out for dinner- hardly enough to repay him for arranging for the beautiful accommodations. We ate at a wide variety of places, and at some of them either Fred or I took pictures. One place that Greg particularly liked was called Casa Nostra- a multi-storey restaurant with a rooftop dining area and run by an effusive expat from Spain.

The restaurant was quite close; we walked down Aldama to the next intersection and then turned left and walked two blocks. The door for Casa Nostra is in the reddish building at left in the right-hand picture.

The Entry to Casa Nostra

As taken from their website, Casa Nostra is "a new sensual experience where we would like to invite you and open the doors of our home." And in truth the building doubles as the multi-level restaurant and the home of its owner and his family.

The Stairs Up to the Rooftop

On entering the building, one walks down a tiled hall that did seem as if it was in a private home, until we got back to a small courtyard where the commercial kitchen seemed to be located.

Then we found stairs up to the rooftop, and you can see Penny and Fred ascending them, going past a display of art glass reminiscent of Chihuly.

Again from the Casa Nostra website, the concept at Casa Nostra is "to offer culinary, art, and design emotions in a classy and cozy environment." In that, I think, they succeeded. Just before I, myself, went up the stairs, I paused to take a picture looking from the courtyard back towards the entrance.

When I got up to the top of the stairs, I found the views to the southwest to be pretty incredible.

This is the late afternoon view to the southwest.

Here I am looking north towards the building's front, as our party is being seated at the table Greg, Richard, and Penny favor. This is their second time to eat here, and there will be a third, as it turns out.

I think that one of the attractions of Casa Nostra to Greg, Richard, and Penny was the effusive owner, whom they had met the first time they were here last week and who came to greet us again this time.

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I have to admit, the owner was very engaging, and we learned a lot about his background and the restaurant itself. I made a movie as he explained some of the dishes on the evening menu, and you can use the player at left to watch this movie.

As you might expect, he explained that his objective in starting the restaurant was two-fold. First, he wanted to share the large number of international gourmet recipes he had accumulated and developed in Europe and here in Mexico, and pair them with wines and drinks- all freshly prepared and using local and organic ingredients.

Mohamed had our obliging host take the group picture at right.

But he also tried to support local businesses and giving back to the community. His restaurant(s) have been supporting several non profit organizations in Mexico and the USA that work with "special needs" children. Among these organizations are CALI in Queretaro, an institution helping down-syndrome students achieve an independent life; Casita Linda (Patronato Pro Ninos), an organization that helps support foster children; and Escuela de Educación Especial, a school for deaf children.

These were very laudable goals, and we were happy to support them with our patronage.

I am not a gourmet by any means, and couldn't quite figure out what some of the menu items were, but I did recognize a lamb shank, and it was extremely tasty.

That's not my lamb shank in the picture above, left; that's a whole mushroom appetizer that Chase ordered. (Not that you couldn't have figured that out.) And here are a couple of casual pictures Mohamed took during the evening:

Towards the end of our time here, I noticed the sun was setting and so I got up and returned to the back of the rooftop near the stairway to get a panoramic view of that sunset over San Miguel:

Carajillo San Miguel (Rooftop)

The Carajillo San Miguel is a charming rooftop restaurant in the block just west of the Parroquia. It has views of the Parooquia in one direction (east) and of the Church of the Immaculate Conception (northwest). As soon as we came up the three flights of stairs to the rooftop dining area, we were greeted with spectacular views in all directions. This view looks northwest towards the Church of the Immaculate Conception:

I'm not sure whether Greg had been to this restaurant before; actually, I'm not sure how we chose many of the evening places we went. But almost every place we went had a rooftop area or was at least open to the outdoors.

We found a large table pretty easily, in the bar area that was also open to the outside on two sides.

Another part of the rooftop area was this comfortable seating area, and I suppose you could have drinks and supper here if you wished. Incidentally, that's a mirror on the wall.

Fred and I took turns taking pictures of each other:

The restaurant served an eclectic menu that featured tacos and various kinds of sandwiches. They also had a selection of specialty drinks.

The Parroquia

As I said, if you looked to the east, you could just see the top of the Parroquia on the square. That's the view at the left, looking across the open area just outside the covered area where we were sitting.

The Church of the Immaculate Conception

The better view was to the northwest, though, and just as we were preparing to head back to Casa Pina, the two towers of the Church of the Immaculate Conception were lit up, making a really dramatic picture.

The Inside Cafe (Rooftop)

One evening during our first week, the four of us (Penny, Richard, Fred, and I) took Greg to a place Penny had seen online called The Inside Cafe. This was a bit of a misnomer, since we sat outside on the rooftop.

This little aerial view will give you an idea of where the restaurant was located. It was a few blocks north of the square and Jardin Allende, and a bit west of the Templo del Oratorio de San Felipe Neri- one of San Miguel's larger churches.

There was another church, one we visited with Greg on one of our walks, the Iglesia de San Francisco, a bit to the southeast of where the restaurant was. Both of these churches were visible from the rooftop dining area at the restaurant.

The restaurant had a varied menu, but I think the reason it caught Penny's eye was that they had a selection of Thai and Asian foods- something you don't find a lot of in San Miguel, apparently.

This was the first time I'd noticed the Oratorio de San Felipe Neri; I think I may have seen it on the skyline from some other rooftop restaurant we'd visited, but I might have thought it was the Iglesia de San Francisco.

Located near the east end of Insurgentes (street), this multitowered and domed church dates from the 18th century. The pale-pink main facade is baroque with an indigenous influence. A passage to the right of this facade leads to the east wall, where a doorway holds the image of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (Our Lady of Solitude). You can see into the cloister from this side of the church.

Inside the church are 33 oil paintings showing scenes from the life of San Felipe Neri, the 16th-century Florentine who founded the Oratorio Catholic order. In the east transept is a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe by leading colonial painter Miguel Cabrera. In the west transept is a lavishly decorated 1735 chapel, the Santa Casa de Loreto, a replica of a chapel in Loreto, Italy, legendary home of the Virgin Mary.

Although rarely open, the camarín (chapel behind the main church) has six elaborately gilded baroque altars. In one is a reclining wax figure of San Columbano; it supposedly contains the saint's bones.

The view from our table on the rooftop was to the east, and you can see both churches and some of the hills to the east of San Miguel town:

The restaurant was a nice one, and not too expensive, and the food (we had dumplings) was quite good. After Theresa's breakfasts and lunches, neither Fred nor I were typically very hungry in the evenings, so we usually shared something.

Here we are at our table at the Inside Cafe.

Towards the end of our meal, the moon rose over the hills to the east. Click on the moon that is rising just over the hill.

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When we'd finished and got ready to leave, I had the thought to film our leaving the restaurant. I probably should have filmed our entry and the route we took to get to our table, but I didn't realize until we got there what an interesting trip it would be from the entry off the street to our rooftop seating.

So I decided to film the reverse, and if you will use the player at left to watch the movie I made, you'll see why I thought it worth recording.

Cafe de Santos

Another place we ate was Cafe de Santos, which was only a one-minute walk from Casa Pina on the way to Jardin de Allende.

Cafe de Santos wasn't a place to get a full meal (although they served them) but more a place for a snack and a coffee or a beer. We went there just once with Richard and Penny, and then again when Greg wanted to get something to take back to the house.

In the picture at left of the four of us (taken by the owner who was also our waiter), if you look through the window beyond Penny and Richard, you will see the little corner park with the fountain and bronze "small stellated dodecahedron". (That figure, incidentally, was about six feet high and wide, and was a dodecahedron (a regular polygon with twelve faces, each of which is a regular pentagon) with five-sided points attached at each of the hexagonal faces.

Just on the other side of this very small plaza is the top of Aldama Street, and of course Casa Pina is just a few doors down that street.

The rest of the pictures that we have from this particular eatery are just candids, like the two shots at left and the one below.

Pork Belly (and Quince)

A little further up the street from Cafe Santos towards the square was a place that we also patronized more than once, because it was the only barbecue we found anywhere nearby, they had great seasoned fries, we never had to wait to get in, and it was very reasonable.

The building that houses Pork Belly is three stories high. On the ground floor, there is an open atrium with a little fountain in the middle. The fountain isn't usually on but its two levels filled each day with flower petals. There are perhaps six tables here in the atrium, some of them with umbrella covering and one under an actual overhang. There are also a couple of shops on one side of the area, and the bar for Pork Belly is in one corner.

Down a short walkway at one corner of the atrium are a couple more shops and the stairs the lead up to Quince, the second-floor, full-service restaurant. The kitchen for Pork Belly is beyond those stairs. While I'm on the topic, at the top of the stairs at Quince is the hostess desk and a small waiting area, the Quince kitchen, a small bakery counter that supplies desserts for Quince or for takeout, and the indoor portion of the restaurant. Finally, there is another set of stairs that leads up to the rooftop dining area for Quince.

From the Pork Belly website:

"Located in the center of San Miguel de Allende, Pork Belly Restaurant offers signature cuisine where pork plays a central role. We work with local and organic ingredients where we offer surprising and traditional dishes that remind us of childhood."

Again, from the Pork Belly website:

"We offer a space full of smell, flavor and color, a family atmosphere to taste regional and international dishes with quality local ingredients combined with original cocktails with liquors from different corners of the country. We offer a lot of dishes where pork is the base, such as baby back ribs, smoked bacon or pork chop. But that's not all that Pork Belly has to offer. There is something for all palates, options for different meats and fish and many vegetarian options, all combined with delicious original cocktails. Pork Belly Restaurant has become a mandatory stop on a visit to San Miguel de Allende."

On one visit, I thought I would go up to see what Quince was like. I didn't feel comfortable trying to go through the restaurant and up to the rooftop because there were people waiting for tables. So I contented myself with taking a panoramic picture out the windows of the waiting area. This view looks south:

Sollano 18 (rooftop)

Sollano 18 was another close-by restaurant where we went to eat one evening. It is just a few doors up to the top of Aldama Street, a right turn, a half-block walk, and then a left turn into Sollano Street. Sollano 18 is just a few doors north, and it is yet another rooftop affair.

Sollano 18 is just southeast of the square, so from the rooftop dining area there are good views of the Parroquia and the Iglesia San Rafael.

You can see the towers of both churches in the picture at left (with the Parroquia obviously being the larger of the two).

In a second, similar picture at right, you can see the Parroquia and the other two domes in that complex. You may remember that we had breakfast at the Casa Rosada a few days ago, and in the pictures from that breakfast you can see the same two domes. In fact, the patio for Casa Rosada is in the group of tall green junipers that you see in the image at right.

Sollano 18 is a restaurant run by the Vincente chain of individual restaurants of different styles and cuisines that are in cities across this part of Mexico.

We had our waiter take a picture of the five of us here at the restaurant having dinner.

Sollano 18 was San Miguel Allende's newest restaurant of note; it opened just two months ago in a converted residence. I must say that they did a very nice conversion on the house, and I can also say that the food and service were quite good (Fred and I had their signature Waygu beef burgers). And of course, being on the rooftop, there were nice views as well.

The Vincente Group has seven restaurants either open or in progress; Vincente Asador De Brasa (the chain's official name), is known for its grilled meats; the quality of the beef is silver from Canada and the Waygu is from Australia. One of their best steaks will set you back $150(for the whole meal).

But that was the most expensive item on the menu; most of the menu was in the $10-50 range, with lots of meals topping out at $15. One of their "house specialties"- the Short Rib Soup- was listed for 135 pesos. At about 20 pesos to the dollar, that's only about $7.

One diner had commented online that their biggest and best dessert on the menu, the White Chongos ice cream with Campechanas and caramel, was 290 pesos ($15) but that it "feeds 4-6 people or a hungry group of waiters". Similarly, items like our burgers and some large salads were about 150 pesos ($7.50).

The portions were pretty generous, and another online commenter suggested that lunch diners should split entrees with their companion (or bring the leftovers home). The way I look at it, any dinner meal under $10 is a bargain these days, especially when it’s from a top quality restaurant that serves high-quality food.

Centro Bar and Restaurant

One evening during our second week when Darrell and Lisa were here, Greg had gone back to his lodging but Lisa wanted to get a late bite to eat, so we walked over to the square to see what we could find. We ended up at Centro Bar, located right at the southwest corner of the square, just across from the Allende mansion.

I happened to have my phone with me, and so a couple of pictures recorded our meal here:

Here are Darrell Blandford and Lisa Belli. Darrell, Greg, and I were the first three people to work on Data Junction, twenty-five years before it was eventually sold to Pervasive Software Inc.

I asked Darrell to take a similar picture of Fred and me, and the result was pretty good, I thought.

As you can see, there are lots of interesting places to eat in San Miguel Allende, and many of them have rooftop dining areas where you can get a great view with your meal.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	Walks We Took in San Miguel
	The La Gruta Spa
	Return to the Index for Our Mexico Trip