MazReal The Movie

MazReal Productions announce a new experimental short movie (temporarily titled MazReal The Movie) currently in pre-production soon to be filmed in an around Mazatlán this coming Mexican winter...................

Featuring Mariela Mexia, Javier Díaz Dalannais and Tere Chaides. Three of the most exciting actors working out of our city. Directed and written by Matt Mawson with collaboration by Dave Robb, Nan Robb in the art department and producer Carol Lewin

Check out the website and follow in all the excitement here: mazrealtwo

Editor: This blog has been given a 'family friendly' rating so responding to concerns from members of this fine community we have replaced the original image that has caused debate and added a cute pic which has nothing to do with the forthcoming short movie that draws on subjects of ancient Mesoamerican sacrifice and bloodletting and the history of violence in this fine country. So those people sensitive to exploding eyeballs and casual violence can be forewarned to stay away.

This image was in fact taken on our recent African safari to a dairy farm where those people sick of seeing big ferocious animals tearing each other apart red in tooth and claw on game reserves can go and see milk production and little calves with big eyes waiting to be fed. In fact our researcher gave the cute little critter his finger to suck and it bit it clean off.

Centro Mazatlán Restaurant Roundup

Foodie  Quincy 'Porky' Mondragon reporting:

You can't swing a cat* in Mazatlán without it hitting a restaurant, eating house or bar. Mazatlán expats of all persuasions from all these fabulous countries - ex totalitarian states, monarchies and weird republics that we represent can consider ourselves extremely lucky because there is a restaurant on our doorstep that will cater for our exotic palates.

We all know that expat news magazines exist only as an excuse for the editors to eat out every day and get their bills paid by the restaurant so consequently the reviews are always positive and the subsequent advertising revenue keeps them afloat. So we sent out, incognito and in disguise our food photographer cum expert eater and regular glutton, Quincy Mondragon, to get an objective look-in at what is on offer in Centro. As you can see he tells a positive story and paid is own way. Well......sometimes.

Il Mostro

Il Maestro, that charming restaurant down some steps hidden behind trees on the 'quiet' side of the Plaza continues to charm diners with its superbly consistently fabulous ambience and one must not forget it also serves food  - Italian food and the chef, The Great Fabrizzio, is an artist who uses pasta in a truly fabulous expressive way. 

Pasta is an expression of Neo-Realistic starch and is well understood by The Great Fabrizzio at Il Monstro. His fettucine, though wry and puckish in an almost mischievous way, owes a lot to Barzino (that other conceptual minimalist chef at Pepino and Herschels's on the 'noisy' side of the plaza) , whose use of fettucine as an instrument of social change is known to us all. The linguine on the other hand is quite delicious and not all that didactic, true there is a persuasive Marxist quality to it, but this is hidden by the sauce. Spinoza(That avant-garde post modernist pasta chef at the third of the Great Three Pasta Artists of The Plaza whipping up dishes at La Tramoyses's virtually opposite Il Minstrone on the 'uproariously loud' side.) on the other hand has had great success in espousing his Marxism by subtly including it in the tortellini (yum yum yum).

I tripped and fell down the steps knocking over tables and diners whilst looking for the great Il Minstro behind its cover of trees and began my meal with an antipasto, which at first appeared aimless, but as I focused on the anchovies, the point of it became clearer. Was Fabrizzio trying to say that all life was represented here in the antipasto with the black olives as an unbearable reminder of our mortality. Fabrizzio has always worked better with chicken and one can say that his Chicken Parmigiani says more about our involvement in Afghanistan than any book can. (Barzino, however, always worked better in veal than chicken or even fish and it was a shocking oversight by that great ERM! magazine when reference to him was omitted in their cover story of Rauschenberg).

The cozy interior of the delightfully charming Il Mostro on The Plaza

I had heard from the chef, The Great Vasili at that wonderful Russian restaurant, Molinka's, that Fabrizzio hesitates when it comes to his spumoni so for the main I tentatively went with the spaghetti vongole which before his psychoanalysis, clams held great terror for The Great Chef and he could not bear to open them and consequently blacked out. But his later attempts prove he has regained his lovely touch after Stravinsky's influence with his Concerto in D for strings. In point of fact the vongole is now a great example of atonality.

For dessert I had tortoni and I was reminded of Wittgenstein's remark: 'The Monads have no windows.' How apropos! The prices at The Great Il Monstro, as Charmion Von Wiegand once told me, are "reasonable without being historically inevitable." I agree. 

So can we prove the existence of God using Liebniz's philosophical pasta model that:
(a) some pasta is linguine
(b) all linguine is not spaghetti
(c) no spaghetti is pasta, hence all spaghetti is linguine?

No, how ridiculous! By this logic one would have to say the 'fetuccini and the linguine are not the rigatoni.'

We can conclude as Gødel declared over and over "Isn't this spaghetti wonderful." And a meal at Il Mostro proves just that.

A n elegant couple of expats in typical evening wear supping at a table al fresco at the charming Il Mostro

Hits: Philosophical food that imputes the very notion to Krishna.

Misses: Working conditions reflect English factory problems and the waiters are made to serve 10 hours a day with napkins that don't meet current safety standards.

More fine dining after the jump

Expatriate Pastimes

It is always good to get away from Mazatlán for a few months so one can laughingly look back down into the petri dish and gain a fresh perspective on the expatriate population living there and how they pass their time. In my experience of being a professional expatriate and expatriot all my life I know that expatriates have a natural missionary zeal (ie. the conversion of much of Africa, China and Latin America into the Christian and other dodgy faiths) and like to partake in social get togethers sharing their hard earned knowledge over tea and moonshine and try to get you into all manner of secret societies and crazy cults. 

Mazatlán is full of expats from every country north of the border and one or two from elsewhere and here's some of them........

The MazReal photographer took this fantastic photograph of some the wonderful expats living in Mazatlán. They laughingly agreed to get together in this group pic on the beautiful Olas Altas beach

The overspill from the beach spilled out into the Plaza Machado where we captured them again having a wonderful time standing around cheering something probably the fact that the new clock erected at the Plaza is now showing the correct time at least once in every 12 hours.

Here are some examples of what they get up to in their spare time and a small example of the societies and clubs they belong to in this fine city of eternal noise, dust and dried prawn smells:

More expat shenanigans after the jump............