Dinner and Mariachis at Tres Gallos
May. 9th, 2024 06:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerLos Cabos Travelog #9
Downtown Los Cabos - Sun, 5 May 2024, 7pm
This evening we've enjoyed dinner at Tres Gallos, a Mexican style restaurant in Cabo San Lucas. It was recommended by our hotel concierge. Yes, we sought recommendations for a Mexican restaurant here in Mexico. This town is full of tourist traps designed to lure white-bread American tourists. Places like Señor Frog's are packed with tourists wearing Harley Davidson t-shirts, listening to Kid Rock, and pounding shots of cheap tequila, thinking it's all an authentic "South of the border" experience.
So here we are instead at a local restaurant that's less than half full, where the menu contains some Mexican cuisine staples like tlacoyitos you don't regularly see in the US, and the music comes from a mariachi group.
Still, the clientele are mostly tourists. That's kind of unavoidable in a town like this. At least there isn't a cruise ship in port today; otherwise this place might be packed.
We enjoyed the mariachi music with dinner. The group played a wide repertoire of US and UK classic rock tunes. They covered CCR, Van Morrison, Clapton, Santana, etc. "They know their target demographic," Hawk quipped.
By the time the mariachis came to our table we'd already discussed what our request would be. "La Bamba!" we asked.
I felt a little self-conscious about that; isn't that just another tourist favorite? I wondered. A foreigner's notion of the local culture, like thinking that Outback steakhouse is at all Australian? But then the band jumped into it with great gusto as the server staff all briefly stopped what they were doing and clapped and sang along with it. I remembered, oh yeah, even though the modern version of La Bamba was recorded and published in the US, and made the US charts, it's actually a traditional Mexican tune, specifically a traditional mariachi tune, and it was adapted to the style of early rock and roll by a talented young Mexican-American singer.
Downtown Los Cabos - Sun, 5 May 2024, 7pm
This evening we've enjoyed dinner at Tres Gallos, a Mexican style restaurant in Cabo San Lucas. It was recommended by our hotel concierge. Yes, we sought recommendations for a Mexican restaurant here in Mexico. This town is full of tourist traps designed to lure white-bread American tourists. Places like Señor Frog's are packed with tourists wearing Harley Davidson t-shirts, listening to Kid Rock, and pounding shots of cheap tequila, thinking it's all an authentic "South of the border" experience.
So here we are instead at a local restaurant that's less than half full, where the menu contains some Mexican cuisine staples like tlacoyitos you don't regularly see in the US, and the music comes from a mariachi group.
Still, the clientele are mostly tourists. That's kind of unavoidable in a town like this. At least there isn't a cruise ship in port today; otherwise this place might be packed.
We enjoyed the mariachi music with dinner. The group played a wide repertoire of US and UK classic rock tunes. They covered CCR, Van Morrison, Clapton, Santana, etc. "They know their target demographic," Hawk quipped.
By the time the mariachis came to our table we'd already discussed what our request would be. "La Bamba!" we asked.
I felt a little self-conscious about that; isn't that just another tourist favorite? I wondered. A foreigner's notion of the local culture, like thinking that Outback steakhouse is at all Australian? But then the band jumped into it with great gusto as the server staff all briefly stopped what they were doing and clapped and sang along with it. I remembered, oh yeah, even though the modern version of La Bamba was recorded and published in the US, and made the US charts, it's actually a traditional Mexican tune, specifically a traditional mariachi tune, and it was adapted to the style of early rock and roll by a talented young Mexican-American singer.
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Date: 2024-05-10 10:27 am (UTC)