Slow Baja - Ruben Hernandez Founder BCB Tasting Room in Tijuana

Episode Date: May 10, 2020

Ruben Valenzuela Hernandez is the owner of the BCB Tasting Room in Tijuana. With 42 beers on tap and another 400 in bottles, BCB is a mecca for craft beer drinkers from both sides of the border.  In this podcast, we discuss the booming craft beer scene in Tijuana, the rise of the Valle de Guadalupe, Bichi Wine, tacos, and Ruben's favorite restaurants. Please note we taped this conversation in January 2020 before sheltering-in-place and social distancing due to COVID-19 was in practice. BCB Tasting Room Calle Orizaba 10335 Fracc. Neidhart 22020 Tijuana BC +52.664.656.9405

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza. Handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Hey, this week's show is with Rubin Hernandez, the BCB tasting room and down in Tijuana. We just had a great time talking about food and beer and the craft beer scene. so I hope you enjoy the show. I started in opening a bar and a beer, and was your family into distributing beer? No, just like the beer passion we have.

We started like a home brewing. And as a home brewer, we always love to do new things. I'm an engineer, electronic engineer, and I used to work at a broadcasting station, the TV station. and from Televisa maybe you hear about it. Sure, yeah, sure. And in 50 years, I do both the beer and also the engineering. Homebrew.

Yeah, home brew. Just for fun. Just for fun. For your friends. For our friends because we love the beer. Okay. And later, we start with a distribution company. And we also have a permit, a license in San Diego.

That's why we have a lot of beers. from San Diego also, or from the United States. Later, the people don't know about craft beer. There are a few places before us who start selling craft beer, but not like we do. Not like we do. And we want the people learn about the, you know, the keg, the beer on top. Usually they have cans and bottles,

but they don't have a lot of a lot of keats. or beer on top. And we start with that culture here in Tijuana. Hearing things about Tijuana, the beer culture is vibrant here. It's really happening. Yeah, Tijuana is like I told you. It's a lot of San Diego influence. In San Diego, it's one of the craft beer capitals in the United States.

It also happens here in Tijuana is the capital of beer in whole Mexico. Let me ask you something about local sports. So I just saw that the Tauru, Tijuana Tijuana's baseball team signed to Omar Vizkel. Yeah, the guy who plays a lot of seasons in Cleveland, huh? Yeah, and his last seasons in San Francisco, and I used to see him driving around my neighborhood at night after a baseball game to go to a restaurant because he lived very near to me.

So what is your sport? Are you a football fan? Are you a baseball fan? Soccer. What's your sport? I like all sports, but I prefer baseball. Baseball? Yeah, for me, baseball is the best.

And did you have a favorite player growing up? Tony Gwynn. Tony Gwynn. All right. So you're a local boy. There's nothing wrong with Tony Gwynn. Yeah. When I work in a TV station, we're going to make the Spanish language baseball in San Diego.

And I remember pretty well in 2001 when Tony Wins retired. Oh, it was amazing a spectacle there. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, again, Rubin, I really appreciate you taking some time. talk to me about beer, talking to me about BCB, Tijuana, and your favorite taco shop. And I'm looking forward to coming back here and seeing you again.

Anytime you want. Okay, Amigo. Thanks. Thank you. We're talking wine now with Rubin, so we're going to keep on talking. Okay. So I just ask you about the beechi and the natural wines, and it's so interesting that I thought we'd plug back in and keep on talking. Yeah, you know, the Vichy is one of the first natural wine in Mexico.

And, you know, when they start with the natural wines, they don't know how to make the treatment from the wine. And later, we understand, they understand how to do it in a cold storage and everything. Right now, the wine is really, really good. Yeah, and you were talking about they have a restaurant here on Revolutione, but don't, don't the, doesn't one of the brothers have a restaurant in Mexico City, I think? Yeah, they, they, you know, the, you know, they, The guy who is the high-end chef, Jairteyes, they have a couple restaurants in Mexico City. Yeah. But he's from Tijuana.

Yeah, right. And they have the winery in Tecate. Right. And as I understand, hard to visit. But in the restaurant here, what's the name? Do you know? Verdi crema. One more time.

Verde and crema. Verde and crema. Gotcha. Okay. They used to have the bus line here in the city. Yeah. Like MTS. Right.

And they opened here in front of us, the restaurant, but the owner of the land. You know, the contract, the rental contract expires, and they change the location to the Revolution Street, in the Fourth Street and Revolution. So what I'm understanding in the amount of time we've been talking to you, it's a small town here in Tijuana. If you're making beer or you're making wine or you're a chef or you own a restaurant, Everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows everybody. I wish the people who are listening could see Ruben's smile here. He's just got a great, genuine smile.

He obviously loves what he's doing, loves what he's talking about. So if you're out with your girlfriend, where are you going? We talked about tacos earlier, but what spots in Tijuana? Or where would you say that somebody who's coming to Tijuana, where should they go? Okay. We started early in the morning. we go to, you know, for tacos also from Biria tacos. Baria?

Biria. Biria, yeah. You know, it's a classical tacos in Tijuana. Also, if you want something more organic, we go into Alba Verde, is a good restaurant for take a breakfast. And later, if you want a good meal, a good dinner, you can go to Verdi Krebren also. This is one of my favorite restaurants and also my friends. Or you can go to a cold, it's K-O-O-L.

It's a new restaurant in Tijuana who have like a fusion of Mexican food. A new, like a new Mexican food is really, really good. The chef Osvaldo Flores is very, very nice guy. So what I think is that Ted and I have to come back here. Baja visitor and Slow Baja have to come back here and spend a day eating, drinking. Eating and drinking all day long. And we need a hotel so we can sleep and then get up and do it again the next day. Yeah.

Yeah, you need like at last three days to mostly understand. You know, you can visit a three-day visit in a city is not enough for any city in the world. But in Tijuana, with three days, you understand how we eat all days. 36 hours in Tijuana. So we're talking, we're starting with tacos, and then we're moving on to where are we going for lunch? For lunch, we can go, you know. More tacos? No, no, in the night, tacos.

Tacos, okay. But very, very late night. But in lunch, in dinner, we can go and visit a lot of places. There is another high-end restaurant, Mission deigno. It's really, really good. We can go with Casa Placencia, with a lot of Mexican classics.

We could go to Saverios. We can go to, you know, to Telephonic Gastro Park. We drove by. Yeah, we drove by today. Of course, we didn't stop, unfortunately, because it was 10 o'clock in the morning, but I'd like to go.

Yeah, it's really other place. We have a lot of options. Yeah, I need a guide like you. Somebody who enjoys life, likes to eat and drink and smiles a lot. Yeah, yeah. I can be your guy here. Any friend of Tony Gwyn is a friend of mine. Ah, yeah, of course.

So we will make a plan and we'll come back and we'll eat and drink with you for a couple of days. Okay. And I'll write about your city and tell everybody where we should go. We could go together and spend the three days drinking and eating. I want to know when you're coming to San Francisco. I go usually to San Francisco during the summer. When it's cold there. It's, yeah.

It's hotter, warmer, but sometimes you have a lot of fog there. Yes, we have some fog. Yeah. Usually there is the new releases in many breweries during the road. Usually we drive because we go to Paso Robley to Firestone to visit, you know, Chuck Silwa. And also we visit the breweries around, like Albana. you know, red barrels. So it's a good road trip.

You're going from here, you're driving up the coast, you're hitting all the hot spots, and then coming to San Francisco, and do you keep on going to Russian River and up all the way up the coast, Mendocino? Mendocino also. Yeah, wow. That sounds like a good time. Yeah, sometimes we go. It sounds like a TV show to me. Sometimes we go to music.

Wait, you were in TV, you told me. Yeah, I work. I'm not in the, you know, the screen, but. We need a Volkswagen bus and a. film crew. Yeah, maybe a suburban is most comfortable. Okay, a suburban. Gotcha. Yeah, I like the winery is also there. In El Dorado, we have a good friend, a Mexican guy who owns a winery.

I don't remember the name of the wine, but it's in El Dorado, Cowding. It's really, really good. It's one of the, only the Mexican fabulous who owns a winery. And what do you think of what's happening here in the Valle de Guadreux? Laudalupe. I mean, we were coming here 30 years ago and there was, you know, only big, two or three big, big, big old, old wineries. The wine was it very interesting. And now you have so many. It was 170 maybe wineries. Yeah, there are more wineries than breweries. More wineries than breweries. Of course. Yeah. But what do you think of it all? A lot of winters without winery, as usual. But, you know, one of the pioneers there in the Valleaupe was Camilo Magone.

They used to work in Chetto winery. Right now he owns his own winery. And it's very, very interesting wines. It's the older guys. And they always... You see, how you can say, do you adapt to the new era? Yeah, they've adapted to the new era. The new ways.

It's the only guy who sell us a wine and cake. We ask a lot of people who, if they want to do it, and Camillo Maggi was the only guy who wants to do it. And right now we sell a lot of wine here also from Camillo on top. And, you know, the seed of the gastronomy scene is also pretty good, Javier Placencia. Jaita is to start there. It was the first restaurant there. Laja is the name of restaurant.

And Javier also made the Fink Altosano. It's a really, really good place. And they also have a high-end restaurant there. The name is Anibalon, like a big animal, animalon, with a... under a big tree, about 500 years tree. Wow. You have an outside meal. It's usually, you know, it's a tasting menu.

It is really, really good. So what would you tell a tourist from the United States about coming to Tijuana? How would you suggest that somebody could come here, experience your city? What advice would you have? my advice to the guys who wants to come to Tijuana is don't listen the news forget about the Netflix series that happened that in the real world you can come with you know with a great expectation because of course we're going to how you said when you have big expectations and you go to a place and it's not so good

you tell but I know if you come to great expectations of course you want to uh how you said yeah so you have great expectations but you're saying that here those great expectations will be met yeah yeah you can bring your big expectations for a great meal and a great beer and a great wine and all that yeah that's what I want to say yeah bring your expectations because they'll be met yeah of course if you have less expectations about tijuana you're going to be a great surprise here. Great. Well, again, I think we've gotten very, very lucky that we walked into a quiet room at

BCB just that we could talk on our podcast. And we met Rubin here, and we've gotten some real insights and inside information about the gastronomical scene here in Tijuana. And we look forward to coming back and eating, drinking, and spending 36 hours with you. So don't be surprised when I come and I hit you up. And we're going to eat and drink and be merry. Our breakfast is going to be around 1 o'clock p.m. because we're going to eat very, very late. Yeah, we're going to be up until 4 in the morning.

Yeah, of course. All right. Ruben, well, thanks again. I really appreciate your generosity. From Slow Baja, we're going to say goodbye from the BCB brewery. Thanks, Ruben. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing, sharing, rating, all that stuff.

And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.