Pioneering a Locavore Restaurant in Baja Wasn't Easy

Solange Muris and her husband Benito Molina are the owners of Manzanilla in Ensenada, Baja California. They are a part of a group of Mexican chefs who built the current food scene there, and this year they celebrate the 15th anniversary of their restaurant.

The culinary scene in Ensenada is having a huge moment. But it wasn't like this 15 years ago. We had to work a lot to get there.

It's been 15 years since Benito and I decided to open our own restaurant, Manzanilla. Unlike many other chefs, we never felt the desire to move somewhere else, like Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, or any other beach town. We just walked around Ensenada looking for a place until we found one and said, "This is it."

The name of the restaurant stems from a trip that we made to the Bahía de los Angeles, south of Baja California, where we ate the delicious manzanilla (chamomile) olives that we now serve here. Everything happened really fast. We left Santo Tomas, where we used to live, in March. By July 31 (my birthday) we were ready to open the doors of Manzanilla with the first grape harvest—which, of course, was complete chaos, but so fun at the same time. We never doubted ourselves; we just decided to dedicate our lives to a restaurant.

The other day, I opened an old folder—it was covered in dust because I hadn't touched it for years—and found our first Manzanilla menu. It was very short. There were oysters and freshly caught fish, which are still on the menu today. There was almost no meat, because we brought it from the US, as there were no good suppliers here at the time. It was was a menu made with 100-percent local and fresh products.

We were really breaking boundaries to reinvent Baja Californian cuisine in Ensenada.

Fifteen years ago, nobody would come here. But then Hugo d'Acosta and his wines started to put Baja California on the map; it was after that when we decided to open a restaurant for ourselves. It wasn't easy, because the curiosity to travel around Mexico and find other places to eat well didn't really exist back then. There was no social media, and it wasn't easy to get people to know you.

There were only two other restaurants in the area: one was French, because in those days the trend was to eat foreign food; the other one was called La Emotelladora Vieja, which is where I was working back then before we opened our restaurant. (It's also where Benito and I met.) But we had something very different to offer, not only to the local scene, but to the country as well. We would completely focus on the freshness of local products and the important role they play as such. We avoided importing our ingredients, even though that was considered to be something refined and desirable back then.

Benito and I met in the kitchen, and that was ideal for both of us. If I had gotten married to an architect or a teacher, it would've been a very complicated life, because the kitchen schedule is a true horror.

I think the main strength of Manzanilla is the fact that there are two heads and four hands running it. We complement each other and that makes us better. But everyone in the kitchen knows that the last word is always Benito's—that's just so we don't confuse the guys that work with us. Having two bosses? That'd be terrible! Besides, our work dynamic is to play and to experiment. That is what makes our coexistence more fun and helps us to avoid problems. Of course, we don't always agree, but we never got to the point of a having a major fight.

We are very lucky—first because the products are wonderful, and second because the lifestyle here is amazing. The people that come visit us from other places are delighted by our vineyards and eat our seafood and go to our amazing restaurants (Corazón de Tierra, Laja, La Guerrerense, etc.). Every cook that has visited us leaves here fascinated. To get fresh fish in Mexico City, for instance, you have to wake up at dawn, go across the entire city, put up with traffic, and fight to get the best products. Here, you can go to the fish market at any time and buy fish straight out of the sea.

In the last 15 years, we've seen the cuisine change in our beloved Ensenada. Today, 70 percent of our customers are local and the rest are tourists. Nobody used to come to visit us from the middle of Mexico. Now they do—they travel just to eat Baja's delicacies. There was a time when we were punished by the tourists from the north, mainly from California in the US; all the bad news about the violence that goes on in our country made tourists stay away. But they are coming back. In fact, most of them come exclusively to eat and drink. That makes it clear that our culinary game is different now, to the customers, to the chefs, and to the restaurateurs, too.

In addition to us, there are lots of people that have been cooking for many years here. Sabina Banderas, founder of the most famous seafood stall in Ensenada—La Guerrerense—has been serving the best tostadas with oysters and ceviche for 40 years. She has my most absolute admiration. When I leave on vacation for a week, all I can think of is in Sabina and her food.

But there's more to the scene than just the oldies. There are a lot of young people revolutionizing cuisine here. I really respect young people who are getting together to push baja med food (a fusion cuisine from Tijuana and other places in Baja California) because they chose living our exquisite life over having a million-dollar business.

People around this movement do their work from their heart. A friend of mine that said that he could have bought a Corvette, but decided to invest that money in learning how to make wine. Now he is happily dedicated to his vineyard.

That's how things work in Ensenada. A person who runs a fishery does it because he truly loves the sea. The scientist who comes here to study our species does it because she cares about the diversity that she can find here.

The people of Ensenada simply have a different way of enjoying life.

As told to Sofía Cerda.