Sabor - Food and Wine Festival

San Miguel has music festivals, film festivals, writer's festivals and now we have an International Food and Wine Festival, a weekend dedicated to wine and gastronomy, discovering new flavors and honoring those of the past. I hope you will go take a look at the website because there isn't anyway that I can cover all of the activities that were offered this past weekend but I've heard from several people about the Diane Kennedy cooking class, the chef's lectures, the food and wine tasting and I can personally write about one of the Chef's and vintner's dinners.

At 10 restaurants in San Miguel de Allende, there were special dinners prepared by well known chefs in Mexico. We chose to go to the dinner prepared by "Titita" or Carmen Ramirez Degollado. She is the owner and Chef of the original "El Bajio" restaurant in Mexico City. We have been wanting to go to her restaurant in Mexico City so what better opportunity to meet her and her food than this special dinner. We were not disappointed. We had heard that she is a warm, charming woman besides being a great chef and her visit to our table left us feeling like we were her special guests.

Her list of accomplishments is long and I hope that you will go to this website to find out more about Titita and Restaurante El Bajio. We sat on the terrace of La Capilla Restaurant under the shadow of the Parroquia and the lights of fireworks bursting overhead. That alone was magical but the real magic was Titita's food.

Titita is from the VeraCruz area and her food reflects the cuisine from that area as well as the variety of cuisines from all the States of Mexico. Our Menu at this special dinner included:

Taquita de Jaiba estilo Xico
Huatape Rojo de Hongos
Vino: Silvana de Pijoan
Filete de Huachinango con Salsa de Acuyo
Vino: Mare de Pijoan
Pechuga de Pato con Mole Blanco
Vino: Jojaa de Tres Valles
Postre de Vainilla de Papantla

Besides having Titita Carmen as our chef, we also had her daughter, Maria Teresa Ramirez, who is a very talented and acclaimed pastry chef to prepare the dessert. And we had the owner of the vineyard who was very gracious and came to the tables to tell us about his wines.

The evening was a special dining experience. I just hope that all of this interaction between the restaurants in San Miguel and the Master Chefs in Mexico, will move our dining experiences in San Miguel up another notch.