Log0020

Laja

There is a once great restaurant south of the border. A place where you could go and dine in a garden. Amongst lavender bushes and vegetables, herbs and cacti. Under beautiful trees you could watch the sunset, while the sous chef picked ingredients for your dinner ahead. You’d drink wine from the grapes, grown on vines along the road. And the food? It was every bit as good as the scene. Such a place it was, this once great restaurant, south of the border.

It was two years before I returned to the Valle. Naturally I had images of sitting out in the setting sun. Sipping the local varietal and being immersed in the quiet.

But as fate would have it, the road for this restaurant had kinked. The restaurant game is tough, unresting, and unrelenting, wherever you are in the world. It takes no prisoners. The moment you try to relax, the gears faulter, and the missteps are felt. Unfortunately, the missteps were everywhere. Once ranked among the best restaurants in all of Latin America, this restaurant could no longer even satisfy the armchair reviewers and their keyboards. The comments I read were scathing, but equally justified.

For myself the juxtaposition was stark. Arriving at a completely empty restaurant we asked if anyone else was dining that night. We were assured more people were going to come. They did not. In fact, we ate alone all night but for two friends of the waiter who showed up mid evening. It was not 10 minutes before he had grabbed a bottle of wine and pulled up a chair to join them.

Unlike the first visit, there was no garden seating, so we ate inside. I was interested in what became of the garden, eating leafy greens that had lost their magic. I became increasingly interested when, instead of being served lamb as before, the chef had prepared fresh rabbit. How could one not draw a certain conclusion?

Eating inside would not have been all bad, if not for the faint beeping of a fire alarm in the bathroom. Twice we’d mentioned it. Twice we’d been told nothing could be done. It was out of reach. For all this, it added to the experience. Not the experience I had expected, nor the one I remembered, but instead one that I wouldn’t soon forget.

Halfway through the evening the chef surfaced from the kitchen. He circled the bar before leaning on it and staring into the distance. His restaurant was dead. The magic it once had; gone. His energy for the place; entirely evaporated. As he rested on the counter beside dozens of polished unused glasses, he just watched our table. We felt his gaze. His dark eyes captured everything but fixated on nothing. It was a long time before he returned to the kitchen. Long enough for me to feel the mood of disinterest as he looked out across the empty room.

Ultimately, I felt sad. Not for myself and certainly not for my experience. I felt sad for the people that worked here. The chef and waitresses, the bar man and gardener. At some point this place took a turn. It was met with disinterest. And in an industry as cutthroat as this, disinterest is terminal.

When we got up to leave, I wondered what would become of this place, this once great restaurant, south of the border.