BY DANA GOODYEAR<\/p>\n
LETTER FROM TIJUANA about chef Javier Plascencia and the movement to rehabilitate the city\u2019s reputation through its food.<\/p>\n
Tijuana, situated in northern Baja and separated from San Diego by the world\u2019s busiest border crossing, has long been seen as a curious outpost, a city too far from mainland Mexico to be truly Mexican and too culturally distinct from San Diego to be American.<\/p>\n
Unlike other Mexican states, whose food traditions go back hundreds of years and are rigidly codified, Baja has no established regional cuisine. Plascencia\u2019s mission is to define one and, in the process, to turn Tijuana into a site of gourmet pilgrimage.<\/p>\n
Given the city\u2019s recent history, this is a particularly challenging task. Mexico is regarded as the world\u2019s kidnapping capital and even though conditions have improved, the popular perception of Tijuana as unsafe remains. This past January, Plascencia opened Misi\u00f3n 19, a forward-thinking restaurant with world-class ambitions.<\/p>\n
Like other chefs of his generation, Plascencia is inspired by materia prima: ingredients raised in the area he considers his territory. Tijuana was founded in 1889. When Plascencia\u2019s father, Juan Jos\u00e9, was born, in 1939, it had twenty thousand people; now, with 1.5 million, it is the third-largest city in Mexico.<\/p>\n
Prohibition in the United States turned Tijuana into a tourist destination. The tourist industry created a vogue for international, Vegas-style restaurants, staffed with Italian waiters and French cooks. Caesar Cardini, an Italian restaurateur with places in Sacramento and San Diego, moved his operation to Tijuana in the early nineteen-twenties. He opened Caesar\u2019s, a bistro with a long wooden bar and a black-and-white checkered floor.<\/p>\n
The first successful culinary export from Tijuana was the Caesar salad. Juan Jos\u00e9 grew up going to Caesar\u2019s: his godfather, an Italian restaurateur married to his aunt, had been one of the original employees. Juan Jos\u00e9 apprenticed himself to his godfather, and gradually taught himself to cook. In 1969, he and his wife, Martha, opened what they believed to be Mexico\u2019s first pizzeria, Giuseppi\u2019s. Giuseppi\u2019s, which now has five locations, is still a mainstay of family dining in Tijuana.<\/p>\n
The Plascencias raised their children to work in the restaurants. Tells about Javier\u2019s childhood and upbringing. In 1988, as Javier was finishing school, Juan Jos\u00e9 and Martha decided to open a more formal restaurant, Saverios, and Javier started working there, as an apprentice to the chef. Discusses the increase in crime in Tijuana in the aughts and the attempted kidnapping of Javier\u2019s brother, Julian. Tells about Pablo Ferrer\u2019s efforts to create a local market for the produce of Baja, California.<\/p>\n
Mentions other chefs in the movement that is sometimes known as \u201cBaja Med.\u201d Writer observes Plascencia cooking. Describes a bus trip made by a group of Los Angeles food connoisseurs to the first annual Baja California Culinary Fest, which Plascencia had organized.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Can an adventurous chef remake his city\u2019s image? BY DANA GOODYEAR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mision19.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}