Baja California has become known as an epicurean Mecca in recent years. Visitors return home full of quixotic stories about the fish markets filled with highly prized, delectable treasures from deep in the Sea of Cortez. There are marisqueros (seafood specialists) on every street corner hawking life-changing ceviche, quaint vineyards in the Valle de Guadalupe producing Mexico’s best wines and a community of chefs who champion a new style of ‘Baja-Med’ farm-to-table dining. For anyone that’s mildly interested in Mexico, food or wine, Baja seems to have it all.
For someone like me, who worships all three, a pilgrimage was always on the cards. So when my business partner and I found ourselves in Los Angeles a few years ago for Tacolandia, one of America’s largest taco festivals, we had no excuse but to jump in our battered rental car and whizz down the sun-drenched Pacific Coast Highway. We went through San Diego, over the frenzied border in Tijuana and down the astonishingly picturesque coastal road to the Baja Peninsula.
Our destination, Ensenada, is world-famous for its seafood. The bay here has a unique microclimate created by the cold Alaskan currents in the Pacific Ocean, which provides the perfect home to over 5,000 micro-invertebrates and some of the most revered seafood in the world.