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............

Expats Come In All Shapes And Sizes.........

The IS the end you know. MazReal and all its journalists and hangers-onners and slaves and stevedores and rent boys and female sharp-shooters and chauffeurs and gay body builders are de-camping and heading back to Europe to earn some real money. Not plastic stuff like you get get in hot humid countries but real wonga made out of rags like you get in temperate climates.

Our shiny, slippery plastic stuff has run out and we have to get off our asses and do something called 'work'. The word that strikes fear into the minds of most people and the end product of which is dosh, loot, spondulics, green stuff, filthy lucre which the government takes away in tax that goes to support our wonderful health service and education so everyone may have access to medicine and learning.

Some people call it Socialism and that is another word that strikes fear into the minds of most people living north of this Mexican border whereas the rest of the world see it as a nice word. A word that is designed to help other less fortunate people, people who people again north of the border would term lazy people desirous of hand-outs so they don't have to get off their collective asses to work. Anyway I cannot imagine any of those naughty Tea Party-type people with those naughty extreme and selfish thinking minds living here in Mazatlán south of the north border.

Tijuana is the border crossing of yore that many expats would have crossed but not before taking advantage of all that that fine city has to offer before passing into conservative Protestant America.

I have always been wary of living amongst expat communities as I was raised and spent much of my early life in one as a result we tended to avoid the community or at least take time sounding out people whose views and ideas are compatible. So the longer we have been here the more we have ventured out and seen what a great bunch of people live here. There are individuals we avoid like the plague by hiding our faces, wearing false beards, ducking into doorways and sprinting to other side of the street to get away from but they are far and few between and generally only appear with the cool weather.

These are the stories of twelve of the varied and colourful members of expat community we have residing in this fine city of Mazatlán. You may have even seen them or partied with them or drank with them.

Here's one of them - The short-arsed, hairy bearded lady originally from Benson Arizona. George Jenson is her name. She is always hanging out on street corners nonchalantly leaning on things and just banging on about this and that and throwing vicious accusations around most of it selfishly untrue and thoughtlessly made up. Luckily she is only seen here in winter months otherwise I would have hounded her out of town to live a life of sleaze below decks on a shrimp boat . After a few months at sea she would look like Charlize Theron to a grubby shrimp sailor.


more expat shenanigans after the jump

Art - Mexican Artist's View Of Disney Land

Disasterland is Mexican artist Rodolfo Loaiza‘s ode to pop culture, cosmetic surgery, drug use, and obsession with celebrity reflected back at us via some of The Walt Disney Company’s most valuable trademarks.

Narcocorrida?

Hugh Cornwell from the Stranglers sings his song - Golden Brown - a song about heroin (he said so himself) with a Mariachi Band. So it seems this is  Mariachi narcocorrida

Mazatlán Photography

Photography for Nextel Latin America by Matt Mawson | Make Your Own Book

Following on from the last blog, in this here book are my favourite images from the completed photographic projected commission by Landor San Francisco for the Nextel Corporation Latin America. The project encompassed photography in Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Peru. These images will be used on all the advertising and marketing for the communications company over the whole of Latin America. So in the next 6 months some of the Mazatlán imagery seen in this book and the rest in their library may be seen on billboards and bus shelters and the web.

Mazatlán Photo Fest

The fresh face of Helarte Ice cream and Mazatlán

MazReal is fortunate to have on it's books a number of very famous documentary photographers who contribute to some of the world's most important picture libraries and work freelance with some of the world's largest corporate clients. (One or two them can be seen drunk to the right of the screen on our staff photo) Here we allowed one of them to work with Latin America's largest telecommunication company through an ad agency in San Francisco. Obviously we took a great percentage of the photographers fee which only goes to pay for our vodka and blinis and chauffeurs and dog-walkers and bum boys straight off the container boats fresh from the Philippines.

Artists

So here you see a good example of the creative talent we have in this fine city and I am not only talking about our expensive photographer. Here are actors, chefs, artists, entrepreneurs, mothers, sports persons, farmers, shopkeepers, surfers, musicians and other fine upstanding citizens.

Thanks to everyone who was part of this.

Photo Fest #2 will out soon.

Hector of Molika - Chef

 More great images after the jump...................


Editor's note: The writer added a piece about inducing people to be part of this with huge accounts of cash. That was untrue and we have sacked the writer for adding unnecessary colour to the article and kept the money for ourselves.

All images ©2012