Yesterday we went to a little dive bar for Thanksgiving, and we had rocking' good turkey, and enjoyed some rock music.
Hello, again. My dad and I, and sometimes my mom comes along too, have been going out on the town to find some of the best not so well known cheap eats, mostly family-owned, restaurants that we can find. We go out almost every day, finding some new little place, or big place, to tell you about and review the food and prices.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and although we don ‘t normally have a turkey dinner, we decided to go to a restaurant to have one. We looked at many different places with basically the same thing, while the prices were ranging from almost 1000 pesos to the cheapest we found, 250. Which, for a huge plate of turkey with all the trimmings is quite low-cost. The place where we found this deal is The Salty Cesar Gilmar, and is located Fco. I. Maderna 418 in the Romantic Zone. It’s so hard for me to get my dad to go into this zone, but as Thanksgiving is an American holiday we didn’t find any place that was serving dinner that wasn’t in the tourist zone. And I know I also try to write about places ex-pats and tourists don’t generally know about, but I just had to write about it since the food was so good. Also, it was exiting to visit a dive bar, since I’ve grown up watching Triple D, aka Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, yet I’ve always wondered what a dive was and what made it, well, a dive. I still don’t know that, but either way I got a general idea of what dives are like.
The Salty Cesar’s regular menu is actually really varied, and nothing is expensive. They’re open most the day and night, so they have a breakfast menu as well as the lunch/dinner menu. They’re food ranges from burgers to seafood to Mexican and much more. According to many people, they have the best french fries in town, since they’re homemade and double fired. The turkey dinner includes, of course, turkey, but it has both dark and light meat, then there’s also stuffing, mashed potatoes, some warm vegetables, a roll, a little container of cranberry sauce, and a whole bunch of gravy poured all over.
Both my dad and me got the turkey dinner, and to be honest we were a little doubtful that the platter would be that good, since the restaurant was small ,super casual, and well, more of a bar then a restaurant. Don ‘t get me wrong, it didn’t look bad, we just didn’t have the highest of hopes, since bars tend to have microwave snakcs. But, boy were we proved wrong! To be honest even if we had the highest of hopes the food would’ve still probably surprised us. The turkey was surprisingly very moist and really good quality, and normally my dad only likes dark meat, but he liked all of it. The gravy covering the turkey was not starchy at all, like some are, but it was super flavorful and in my opinion had just the right amount of salt. Now, stuffing is my favorite part of Thanksgiving meals, and this one didn’t let me down! You could tell it was full of different veggies, and to be honest it was mixed so well together it was hard to tell everything apart, yet there were some slightly-crunchy pieces of celery, which to me was really nice. Then there’s the mashed potatoes, which were real and homemade, not made form a powder that came out of a box, and quite good, though it’s hard to describe potatoes, and finally the vegetables. They were all still slightly crunchy, which is the only way I liked cooked vegetables unless they’re in a soup, and they had what I think was butter and garlic on them.
After eating our meals we were both stuffed, but somehow I miraculously ate a piece of pumpkin pie! It cost another 20 pesos, but that too was quite un-expensive, since pumpkin puree is really hard to find here in PV, and it’s expensive too. The only place I’ve ever found it is in La Comer. But anyways, back to the pie. It was really thick and really flavorful, but it wasn’t too sweet. Also, you could tell that the majority of it was made from puree, not pumpkin spice, which makes it a lot better in flavor. I’ve had some pumpkin pies that you could tell the flavor was mainly based off of pumpkin spice, which isn’t bad, just not as good.
We got to the restaurant as early as the thanksgiving dinners started, which was at 2, but still then most the tables were full, and that night they weren’t even letting people sit at a table (only the bar) if they weren’t having a turkey dinner. After we finished our meal we headed inside so that our table could be used, and we sat at the bar, so of course my dad got a couple beers. But, we also wanted to wait for the live music to stat playing at 3, which by the time we were done was right around the corner. The band was called Twister, and they played different well-known rock songs, though some calmer than others, such as Hotel California by Eagles. Overall it was a super fun experience, and we gotta come back some time to try the fries, since people claim they’re the best!!
Actually, while we were sitting at the bar the singer from Twister came over to us and started to sing in front of us, it was cool!
Salty Cesar's Phone Number: 322 223 9707
If you enjoyed this article, and would like to recommend a place that you know about, then please let me know. Or, if you are an owner yourself of a place that you would like to see written about, contact me.
And to see the rest of my food reviews go to the Dining Out section here in Vallarta Bay Times.