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Restaurant Review - Andar de Paella, Merida

This past Monday my Cooking Group and I prepared enough food to feed over 40 Veterinarians, Vet Techs, and Volunteers at the 3rd Annual Spay n Neuter Campaign.  After delivering the food we were taking ourselves out to eat.  Tom and I wanted to introduce these guys to Bruno Bistro.

We got to Bruno's only to discover that they were closed to attend to some remodeling.  
Yipes, now what!  
Monday is notorious for Restaurants being dark, or closed.

As we were walking back to our vehicles we passed this!


Cute eh?

calle 21 #62 x 10 y 12
colonia Mexico, Merida
9999-27-7198

So Why Not we sez and in we trooped!


Cute front room with bar


It was still quite early for the lunch crowd to start arriving, it was just about 1PM, so there was still some opening prep going on.

Regardless, they led us to our own private little room, which was quite nice!

there were some other tables, but we were the only ones seated in this area, in all honesty we were the only ones in the whole place.

So first things first, Tom asks for the Wine List,  here's the wine list


I LOVE this!  
Ask what they have and they show you! 
Perfect!
No list from which you order, and when you ask, they say they don't have it, this is it!


OK, one the menu the also offer among other drinks, pitchers of Sangria, and pitchers of Clericot, 
Interestingly - story has it that clericót was born when the Roman Empire took over France and Great Britain; territory that had been dominated by the the Celts. The Celts had the custom of celebrating New Year on October 31, which was the last night of Samhain (the celebration of the end of Harvest Season)

And coincidentally, for the Romans this is the same date they paid homage to the goddess of fruit trees. The result of this overlap was a festival rite fusing elements of both cultures.  Celebrated by drinking a kind of cocktail, a mixture of fruit and wine that charmed the mind until it was as if possessed by a restless spirit.

We ordered and drank 2 pitchers of Clericot! 
I think I went home with that restless spirit!

OK, back to the Restaurant Review.

Luis, our waiter was very cordial and efficient.  He tried his best with our language impaired group to explain the menu, which is taken from the cuisine of Spain and therefore more heavily Castellano Spanish than Mexican Spanish.
We ordered a few Tapas, and all agreed it would be fun to come in just for drinks and tapas.

We all highly recommend the mushrooms with chile ajillo.

We then each ordered something different,  It was all good, actually is was all great.
lechon pochado al romero, a monster pork joint, poached, in what I think may have been beer

detail of the garnish; mashed potatos with fresh asparagus, fried leek strips and parsley.
bacalao vizcaina, sort of a salt cod veracruzano, Tom liked it very much!
pulpo a fiera, lovely tender chucks of octopus, sort of an olive oil and paprika sauce.  It was very good, but a bit heavy.
these are both Salmon dishes, one in a red wine reduction, the other a Sidra reduction. Sidra is a sweet sparkling wine with an apple-y flavor.  We suspect both were Sidra reduction, but really SO tasty. and beautiful crunchy peppers, and fried leeks.


this is the Camarones en salsa cabarles, which is a really lovely goat cheese sauce

The food was fabulous, the service was terrific, as we were leaving we notice el chef and family sitting and we complemented him on the food.  I think he was a bit surprised by us.  He asked if we lived here in Merida to which we all joyously replied Si! 

He invited us back!   We will take him up on that offer!