Slow Baja - Chef Javier Plascencia On Surfing Todos Santos And His Restaurants Jazamango and Jazamango Cafe

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

In our second conversation with Chef Javier Plascencia, we discuss his restaurants Jazamango and Jazamango Cafe, and the bounty of Todos Santos. We go deep on his devotion to surfing, how he's happiest in a pair of trunks with sand between his toes, and his fanaticism for handmade corn tortillas from old-world organic corn. Check out his farm-to-table restaurant Jazamango. Follow Jazamango Restaurant on Instagram. Check out his pet-friendly restaurant Jazamango Cafe. Follow Jazamango Cafe on Facebook.

It's Travel Talk with Slow Baja, and I'm delighted to be in Toto Santos today with chef Javier Placencia, and we are at his Haza Mango Cafe, and we're just going to talk about who Javier is when he's in Toto Santos, what the Toto Santos magic is. The Pueblo Magico, Toto Santos is an amazing place, and Javier has two restaurants here, and we're just going to get down to who he is in his shorts, in his flip-flops, sand between his toes, all that stuff. Enjoy the show with Chef Javier Placencia. Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja.

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Pick yours up at Benchmarkmaps.com. Is there a saying in Spanish, that's the same as progress, not perfection? Progress, not perfect. See? Claro. Progression, no perfection, something like that. But what do you say? When you're looking around your restaurant and you're saying,

oh, man, I wish they had done this. I wish they had done that. It's just hard. It's hard. It's not hard. I mean, we have good staff. They understand what we... What we're looking for, what are... What we are looking for with this space or any space, you know.

It just comes down to hospitality, good service, good ingredients. But, you know, in Spanish you say, Al Ojo del Amo en Gorda del Caballo. Okay, now you're going to give me the translation. For my audience, it doesn't seem. It's like when the owner, the horse gets, what is there? Alojo del Amo, when the Amo means like the boss or the hefe or the,

in this case, the guy who takes care of the horses. When he's there, the owner of the horse, the horse, the horse, It's healthy and fat. You know, when he's not, it's the horse, it's something like that. Hey, Javier. Cheers. I don't know.

Is it too dangerous to do this now? The orange juice is beautiful, freshly squeezed, of course. It's the best. I love the oranges from this area. It is the best. Holy Toledo. We need a little bit of vodka. Well, if you can find some, that's okay with me.

Hey, I just want to say thanks. Javier, good to see you again. We're here in Toto Santos at Hasmango Cafe. And I just wanted to catch up with you because we're going to be in the same place at the same time, which is rare. And I want to ask you about you. I want to ask you about who are you when you're in Toto Santos? Who am I when I'm here? Well, I'm the same person, but I just, I transport to another, another, I don't know, time zone or another world. Here I feel very comfortable. This is the lifestyle that I really, really like and enjoy. I can come and work in my sandals and my shorts.

I feel free. There is this sense of you're still in this beautiful, slow-moving Baja town, but still we have, you know, have, you know, a good amount of tourists, good tourists, people that I like or enjoy serving to, people that come and are looking for adventures, surfing or yoga or trekking, a bicycle, anything, and lots of foodies, people that are looking for real, for authentic, really good ingredients and and that's the people that we love to serve. It's people who get it, who understand.

People who get it and understand and respect. There's a lot. People that come here respect a lot, the space, the locals, and that's what it's all about, I think. So what is it about Toto Santos that is special, or what is it about Toto Santos that brings in that person? It just, it's a magical, it's a magical place. It's got something special that really draws you.

I have lots of friends, chef friends, industry friends, family friends, family members that when they come here for the first time, I mean, they just don't want to go back. They fall in love with this little town and what it is surroundings. And they either want to come back every year or they want to build their home here or they just want to spend a lot of time down here. And it's just a special magical place. I don't know what it is exactly. It's just it's in the air, man.

It's in the ocean. What is it being in the ocean? I want to ask you, I know you surf and you're traveling all the time and cooking all the time. You have to be working on relationships and finding money and all that stuff. But what happens for you personally when you've kicked your flip-flops off, you've got your trunks on or your wetsuit and your boards under your arms and you just start walking into the water? It's the best feeling. It's the best feeling ever. What I love about this place is I'm super close to the ocean. I mean, I take my ATV to the beach.

I can even ride a horse, you know. It's just that feeling. And having an amazing wave so close to your home or to your work, it's a great feeling. Yeah, just to get out of the water after a great session and just walking to work without even taking a shower, that's a great thing for me. steel with sand in my toes and water, ocean water, coming out of my nose.

You know, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser down to Baja, and when we go, we go with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use, Baja Bound Insurance, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, do you have a 4x4? You love off-road racing. You've got to join Slow Baja in the Nora 500. It's Ensenada to Ensenada three great,

days, October 7th through 10th. Kurt LaDuke, off-road Hall of Famer, leads the class. If we can do it in our old truck, you can do it. Get your street legal four by four, get into the safari class, and I'll see you in Ensenada. More info at nora.com. That's www. N-O-R-R-A-R-A-com or on on Slow Baja. When you're out there surfing, do the waves dictate the board, or are you always long-boarding, or are you short-boarder? Are you aggressive off the lip, or are you just catching a wave, making a turn. You know what? Of course, I got older.

I got bigger, fatter, slower. So I struggle a lot. For those not sitting in front right here watching Javier's in very good shape. So I don't know what shape he used to be in, but he's in very good shape. No, for me now, I'll tell you a little story.

When I was younger, in my 20s, 30s, and I used to surf a lot in Rosarito and K-38 and Calafel, all those. places. I used to see when I was going into the water and there were guys coming out, you know, older guys, I used to just talk to them and say, hey, how was it? And they will say, I was great as long as I'm in the water, you know, that was a great thing for me. And older guys, you know, say, shit, man, what do you mean? I mean, did you rip? Did you, you know, how many

waves did you get and all that? And now is the same for me. when younger guys see me go into water and say, how was it? As long as I'm in the water and just catching a few waves, I'm great. But, you know, it's just that. I have different kinds of boards. I have short boards that are thicker now, wider because of my weight. And you can depend now on a lot of, I mean, the surboard industry,

it's becoming, I mean, as scars and everything. everything else, you take advantage of the, you know, the new generation of boardmakers and the boards that we have now, all the hybrids. So I can, I still don't want to become a loan boarder. I mean, that's that between either a short board or a loan board, but I have a, you know, a hybrid. We're not going to see you out there on a soft top soon. No, no, no, no, no. Ten foot soft top. I will never, never. But, I mean, I, I, I, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I mean, I, I, I, I, I enjoy my time out there.

I have like a 2-70. I have a 6-5 that I recently got chaired by a Wahawking friend of mine. Thicker and just it's a fish. It's an old-school type of surf. I'm surfing just to ride the wave and go with the flow. But yeah, that's what I enjoy. I just came back from Latikla in Michoacan. That was my first time there.

and I brought my fish, my 6-5, and I just couldn't surf it because it was big. So my friend led me, he's 7-0, a little thick. It was perfect for me, for my weight, even my size, and I got one of the best waves of my life. It was perfect. It was solid, ate food, and it was so beautiful. So you're not fooling around. You're going out with the big boy stuff? I wouldn't go out in bigger ways.

12 feet, 15 feet, no. No, I'm not comfortable. I'm not in the shape that I should be to be surfing in those ways. But, you know, a good eight food is great for me. Yeah, well, that's big. So getting back to the statement of when you used to talk to old guys and they'd get out and they'd say, you know, it's just a good day because I was in the water. Is there a cumulative effect on your mind and your body of just being in touch with the water?

Yeah, it's very hard to describe that feeling if you're not a surfer or if you're not a person who enjoys being in the ocean. It's something very special, very special that I feel, especially when I'm out there with not a lot of people, and especially if it's a late session, watching the sunset and staying out there till dark. I have some memories that I will never forget of certain surf breaks that I've been like really in touch with the ocean and with the earth and that feeling it's it's amazing but it's hard to describe it so getting on to business at hand here how's a mongo how are things now we haven't spoken for I don't know six months or something right seven eight months maybe now since I saw you at Finca altazano

So tourists seem to be here. Yes. Business looks like, you know, new houses everywhere and people are here. So we're in the Hussmango Cafe, which is behind the Klein Gallery, yeah? Yeah. We just opened this like eight months ago. We found this beautiful space. We're behind a really nice gallery that has been here for a long, long time.

and this is a house that was built I think it was built on the 50s and just the greenery and the garden is amazing, it's beautiful I fell in love with the space and I talked to the owner and see if you could rent it to us

to do just a small cafe that we can serve our breads that we bake at Hasamango and our pastries coffee and we did a little bit of breakfast and then now we're doing lunch people love the space the food is it's it's really good it's all ingredients sourced from different farms around here like this wonderful orange juice that we're drinking and yeah this mango season right now so we're

doing a lot of of stuff with mangoes and yeah I love this space very it's very Tos Santos you know people come here without any shoes after a serve session or a yoga session and it's just it's very nice Samango, the restaurant is doing amazing. We are now a place where people sometimes just plan their trip around the restaurant, which is very cool. I have many, many clients and friends that just either they come to Cabo or La Paz and they make a day trip down to Tos Santos just to go to the restaurant and spend some time there.

And we have a wonderful staff. We're making tortillas now by hand. We're doing a Nxtamalization. We bought a little machine because we couldn't find any good tortillas here in town. Here in Tos Santos, people are used to eating flour tortillas. And we couldn't find any really good corn tortillas. So we decided to bring in corn from Central Mexico, Harlem corn, and bought a Nxtamal machine.

And now we're grinding and making our own tortillas. We have our bakery where we are very popular with the breads because we started with our wonderful baker three years ago, David. And he's doing an amazing job. It's all the Madre Masa, which is natural yeast and fermentation. And the work got around, so people buy a lot of bread from us. And the garden, the farm is doing amazing. And it's just one of those restaurants that is getting better and better every year.

it's it's it's grown up now it's we have uh i feel very proud of of that of this restaurant and i feel very comfortable here um get get you can get very creative and and it's just you know it's a great place can we can you go deep Javier like in a deep freaky deep um tangent about what truly handmade tortillas are like Oh, it's, it's, if you never had just a freshly made mass, I mean, coming out of the Nixtermal machine. So you're grinding the, like Finkal Tizano does, doesn't? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got the corn kernels dried.

We cook the, yeah, we bring them in from Kereda, Central Mexico, and Waxaca. Depends on what's available. Now when my trip into Michoacan, one of my visits, was to a farmer that grows an amazing white corn and yellow corn that they love over there. So we're going to start bringing some of that corn because it's natural, it's organic, it's what we're looking for in a good tortilla. And we want to support those small farmers. So tell me how deeply you have to go to get this authentic, this thing that's the foundation.

of Mexican food now. But you have to bring in your own corn, then what? Yeah, we bring our own corn, we store it, and then we cook it sometimes overnight or really early in the morning. After it's dried. It's called the process of nextamalization, where you cook it with cod,

which is limestone, is that what you call it? The powder, the chemical. But it's not a chemical. It's a natural. And then we do that process which is called Nxtamalizar. And we cook it with water. And then we, after the cooking process it's done, we grind those corn kernels. And that turns into mass.

And then when you have the masa, you do the, you make the tortillas. And that process is done every day because it's a natural ingredient. it doesn't have any preservatives or anything, so you have to make them every day. But when you do... Oh, the flavor... When you do, when you hear that woman slapping them in her hands, and then she puts it in the little press with the wax paper and presses it, and then picks it up and then presses it again,

and then peels it off and flips it and puts it right on the hot grill? Yeah, it's... Come on, man. No, it's... Come on. It's another world. Once you taste that, you will never want to go back to any commercial tortilla. Then that's what I'm getting to.

Recently, I had, we did our festival here at the Santos and Pescalero Food and Wine Festival, and we invited a three-star Michelin chef from Los Gatos, David Kinch from Van Ressa. And when he came in the kitchen, when I was showing him around the restaurant, we had the lady pressing and cooking the tortilla. and she offered him a freshly made tortilla with just a little bit of salt and oh you should have seen his face he got the shields he got like he's he wanted to cry really like he was fuck that's and her sushi chef this really nice girl from from Mambresa she never had that experience and she was like wow blown away and that's what it is it's it's it's it's it's it's it's

Very simple process. I mean, a tortilla is a tortilla, but it's the base of Mexican cooking. Without it, without corn, with nothing. Sin maiz, no a paiz, we say in Spanish. Hey, Javier, I appreciate some time with you. I know you're a busy guy. On that profound message, we're going to leave it right there, buddy. All right, man.

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