Il Massimo - Ensenada - Birthday Dinner

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The trip still hasn't ended.  I need to share with you the best Italian restaurant in Ensenada. The town lacks some high end restaurants.  We had had our fill of fish tacos and seafood.  That's what they do but it is a tourist town where people come from San Diego and disembark from cruise ships. 

We had searched quite a few places and checked TripAdvisor as well but there just didn't seem to be anything that would do for my 62nd birthday.  We had passed a place on the malecon or across the street from it and it looked like a cute little house.  It was called Il Massimo.  When we got back to our Airbnb we checked it online.  It looked a bit austere but had great reviews.  We like Italian and so we called for a reservation.

What a wonderful place.  The lights were low, it was romantic and there were locals eating there.  Always a good sign and some were government officials. 

The menu is just right.  We don't care for pages and pages of food items as it usually leads to a SysCo truck in the back unloading prepared foods that go into a microwave or a deep fryer.  We lucked out on this occasion.

Here I am enjoying a wonderful bottle of La Cetto Nebiollo 2016.  Truly an excellent grape and makes a delightful wine.

We started off our dinner with a caprise salad, different colors and tastes of tomato and cheese with balsamic and olive oil.  Very tasty.  They served homemade bread and in house pesto.  

Kinds of pasta are made fresh every day and they use a variety of flours for each one.  This was semolina flour, thick and  heavily textured served with chicken and cream sauce.  

We split two dishes, this was an arrechera.  Sounds pretty simple but it was a thick cut, cooked to medium and well-seasoned.  We compared it to the steak Kevin and Ruth treated us to at the steak house in Saltillo but with a different seasoning but the same quality of meat.

The chef, Massimo, whipped up a quick birthday dessert that we both savored after such a fun and interesting meal.  We really enjoyed this place and it deserves five stars for the food alone.  I love a chef who cooks for his guests and Massimo did that for us.  It was as if we had invited a chef to our house to cook for us.

After dinner, we asked Massimo, who is from Rome, for a picture posing with him.  A really nice guy and I hope that anyone who reads this blog has dinner at Il Massimo.  When we take our Baja rv trip, we will be sure to stop again and have another fantastic meal.

So, as you can see, this is how I entered my 62nd year of life on this planet.  I hope there is more to come and for many more years.