Club Tengo Hambre in the LA Weekly on Craft Beer and Tacos

Baja California Craft Beers in Tijuana 

Check out LA Weekly's Sarah Bennett, fresh back from our Best of Baja: Tijuana Tacos and Craft Beer extravaganza this past weekend. If you haven't been to Baja, there's no better way than to join Club Tengo Hambre, my roving supper club with partners Jason Thomas Fritz of Tijuanalandia and Antonio and Kristin Diaz de Sandi of Life and Food Blog.

Season 2 is off to a tremendous start--look for more of these original events in our 2014 calendar.

Club Tengo Hambre  

Sedlar, Salgado, and Ruiz Serve up Modern Mexican at Los Angeles Magazine's Social Hour on 3/19

If you haven't heard, chefs Eduardo Ruiz(Corazon y Miel) and Carlos Salgado(Taco Maria) are a pretty big deal--no, you didn't hear? Well, then be sure to pick up the March issue of Los Angeles Magazine where L.A.'s best and most trustworthy critic, Patrick Kuh, talks about the quiet revolution happening at these two restaurants. Not to mention, you can read about my first Road Trip for the travel section in which I write about one of my recent Baja adventures.

The two young, trendsetting chefs will join chef John Sedlar tomorrow night (3/19), who was the first Latino chef in the U.S. to blaze these trails over 30 years ago at St. Estephe, and then did a historic repeat by opening the only Modern Latin cuisine restaurant--Rivera--in the U.S.

This story is just beginning, about Modern Mexican in the U.S. led by Mexican-American chefs--all three grew up with the matriarchal cooking of their grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and cousins and have absorbed a lifetime of flavors, techniques, and cultural cues filtered through the practice of cooking in the best kitchens in the world.

You are invited to taste the future of Modern Mexican in the U.S. tomorrow night(3/19) at Rivera in 3 courses with Los Angeles Magazine Dine editor Lesley Barger Suter and I for only $40.00--it's a steal--exclusively for our Social Hour series. Viva la revolucion!

Modern Mexican Cuisine @ Rivera with chefs John Sedlar, Eduardo Ruiz, and Carlos Salgado
Wednesday, March 19 @ 7PM, $40 a person
Rivera, 1050 S Flower St #102, Downtown Los Angeles, call (213) 749-1460 for reservations

We Fought the Law and the Foie Won, March 6th at 7PM--4 Courses of Foie Gras by chefs Javier Plascencia, Jason Knibb, Walter Manzke, and Ryan Steyn

This Thursday, March 6th at 7PM, Club Tengo Hambre will be escorting guests across to border for reasons that have historically defined Tijuana as a border town to get what you can't get in the States--for a 4-course foie gras (banned in California) dinner. Tijuana has always been Mexico's illicit playground--like Las Vegas but with teeth!

The foie gras dinner is almost sold out, so if you want to taste the forbidden offal as prepared by masters: chef Javier Plascencia (Mision 19), chef Walter Manzke (Republique and Petty Cash Taqueria), chef, Jason Knibb (Nine-Ten) , and chef Ryan Steyn (Latitud 32), you'd better hurry. At a mere $130, it's a crime(Elliot Ness might come a knocking).    

Burlesque Dancer, Rita Ravell ( Tijuana After Midnite-1954)


As Mexico's first "city of sin", Tijuana played host to gambling, dog and horse races, cabaret shows, prostitution, and any other vice that could bend the wills of norteamericanos. Celebrities like Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, the Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby, and Charlie Chaplin rubbed elbows with gangsters (even Al Capone himself) at the Agua Caliente Casino, and at Caesar's Restaurant, where Caesar Cardini himself made his signature salad to order. All made possible by the Volstead Act (1920-1933).

Tijuana's famous Long Bar, the Mexicali Beer Hall in the 50's

They went that-a-way


For 13 years, the U.S. Treasury Department waged a pointless war on alcohol in the United States that gave rise to an international criminal organization run by Al Capone.

 Captured shipment of alcohol being destroyed during prohibition--sound familiar?


During these years, Tijuana thrived by giving the people what they wanted--a stiff drink!

 Foie gras protestors

On this occasion, it's the California foie gras prohibition that is drawing diners to order the banned product in places like Las Vegas--any state but California, and now back to Tijuana. You won't find a better deal in the 2nd closest foie gras outpost--Las Vegas--where even a pair of bit-sized foie dishes will run you around $100 at a place like L'atelier de Joel Robuchon. The foie gras for this dinner comes from a farm in Guadalajara--chef Javier Plascencia says it's as good as the foie gras that was being produced up in Sonoma, CA.

If you live in north of the border--in the San Diego and Los Angeles metro areas--Tijuana once again is your ticket to satisfaction. Join us in Tijuana for foie gras prepared by an all-star line-up of chefs of the Californias.

We Fought the Law and the Foie Won, 4 Courses of Foie Gras at Mision 19, featuring Plascencia, Knibb, Steyn, and Manzke
Thursday, March 6 @ 7PM
Mision 19
Tijuana, B.C.
$130 person, includes dessert and 2 glasses of wine
For tickets, go click here.