Soon after, he opened up something of a small diner along the road and in 2012 launched Finca Altozano - an open-air dining room with farm-fresh food - which is one of many well-regarded restaurants in Valle de Guadalupe. We have great ingredients in our backyard. We have the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean that give us really good quality seafood and fish. “I fell in love with the energy of the place, the people, the wine,” Plascencia said. Javier Plascencia, chef and owner of highly acclaimed Animalón, first started cooking here at summer wine festivals in 2000. Well-heeled Mexican nationals, especially from Mexico City, also made their way north.Īt the same time, the region’s gastronomy blossomed and renowned Mexican chefs built restaurants that have helped popularize Baja-Med cuisine, a local fusion of Mediterranean, Asian and Mexican influences showcasing the fresh seafood of Baja California. Soon after, the region exploded in popularity and became a magnet for tourists - some of them Angelenos getting away for the weekend or daytrippers from San Diego. Badan said she still doesn’t understand how a restaurant could be built on land zoned for agricultural use. The new restaurant was just the latest iteration of the uncontrolled development that has encroached on this rural hamlet, which now has 10 times the number of restaurants it did in 2001. “And, there is the music,” she said in exasperation. It’s the kind of place made for Instagram, where out-of-towners snap photos of themselves next to resident zebras or waiters dressed in safari-inspired outfits serving decadent cocktails. Now, it’s a restaurant and bar, part of a proliferation of businesses meant to serve and draw in tourists to Baja’s trendy wine country. For years, the neighboring land was a carob tree ranch. The bass started up.Ī loud thumping emanated from her new neighbor - a chic, open-air dining establishment - abutting her grapevines. Moments later, the chirping birds went silent. ![]() Natalia Badan, matriarch and owner of the winery, walked her family’s land and surveyed the vineyard and organic farm her Swiss-French parents built with rocks and mud in the 1950s here in Baja California. Sunset closed in on the 70-year-old vines at Vinicola Mogor Badan on a spring afternoon.
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