A hole-in-the-wall taqueria is among the first restaurants in Mexico to be awarded a star by the Michelin Guide — an accomplishment its owner credits to “love and effort.”
El Califa de Leon is one of 18 restaurants given either one or two stars in the inaugural Michelin Guide Mexico unveiled on Tuesday.
The longstanding family business specializes in just four types of tacos and has room for only a few customers at a time in Mexico City’s San Rafael District.
Photo: AFP
“This taqueria may be bare bones with just enough room for a handful of diners to stand at the counter, but its creation, the Gaonera taco, is exceptional,” the Michelin Guide said on its Web site.
“Thinly sliced beef filet is expertly cooked to order, seasoned with only salt and a squeeze of lime. At the same time, a second cook prepares the excellent corn tortillas alongside. The resulting combination is elemental and pure,” it said.
The Gaonera — which costs a little over US$4 — was created in honor of the celebrated Mexican bullfighter Rodolfo Gaona, whose nickname in the ring was “El Califa de Leon.”
Photo: AFP
The restaurant was founded more than 50 years ago by the parents of current owner Mario Hernandez.
“My father said: ‘Do you want me to tell you the secret of the meat?’ There is no secret,” only “love and effort,” the 66-year-old said outside, his voice full of emotion.
Hernandez said his father taught him to always take care of quality, customer service and prices, because “life is a wheel of fortune with high times and low times.”
On Wednesday, the usual office workers and other regulars were outnumbered by dozens of journalists and gastronomy experts attracted by the Michelin star.
The tacos “are really delicious,” 19-year-old gastronomy student Hector Lancastre said, adding that the international recognition was “well deserved.”
Two more upmarket Mexico City restaurants were each awarded two stars.
Michelin praised Quintonil for “an enticing melding of excellent local product, impressive execution and great creativity to produce refined compositions” and Pujol for a place where “tradition and invention go hand-in-hand in the likes of scallop ceviche with egg salad or grilled Baja coast rockfish with butternut squash puree and sherry foam.”
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS