Cabo San Lucas: C

Palmilla
Los Cabos Corridor
Cabo San Lucas
Baja California Sur
Mexico
+52-624-146-7000, and ask for C

Date of Last Visit: Thursday, July 26, 2007

The Victim: Mom

The Damage: $140 or thereabouts.

The Background: Have you read my About page? On it, I note that I will shove aside my Ethics policy (not accepting freebies) if Charlie Trotter invites me to dinner. (Mr. Trotter, if you didn’t know, is the proprieter of the eponymous restaurant in Chicago, one of the best restaurants in the U.S.)

Well, after dinner at C at The One & Only Palmilla, I’ll be removing that mention of Mr. Trotter. Charlie, you are dead to me.

The Drinks: We have a drink in the Palmilla bar before dinner. A Margarita for me, and a glass of Chardonnay for mom. The tab? $46. Now wonderful GBP/USD exchange rate aside, this is a rip off. Maybe they’re trying to price undesireables out of the resort, but give me a freakin’ break. $46 for two drinks and some (granted complimentary) STALE pretzels is highway robbery. But the view is nice. Although I get a little seasick, watching the waves crash on the rocks.

The Restaurant: There are large mixing bowls hanging from the ceiling. Well, actually, they look like UFOs. It’s really weird. I like the music though.

The Starter: We go with the Bento box. I ask our servers if that will be enough for two and they seem to suggest that it will not be enough. I am still sort of full from my FANTASTIC meal at Las Ventanas, so I ignore the server’s advice and we just order one bento box to split.

And you know what? It is the perfect amount of food for two people. There is a slice of beef that I cook up on a hot rock. There are two slices of tuna roll. There’s some seafood salad, and there’s some shrimp tempura. (The tempura is undercooked…it’s a wet mess. Delicious, but wet.)

The Mains: I ask the server for his recommendation and he points me to the grouper. It is served as little rolls, wrapped in an onion-y substance and on a bed of mashed potatoes. To be honest, I don’t think they should serve mashed potatoes in Cabo. It’s such comfort food, and it’s 99 degrees Farenheit outside. Give me something light and refreshing! Please! But no, it it mashed potatoes and then some mushroom reduction. It’s very wintery fare. I feel cheated. And very full. And the Grouper is dry.

Oh, and I forgot t o mention that they have Bluefin tuna on the menu. Isn’t this a no-no? Isn’t Bluefin overfished? Hasn’t even Japan agreed to cut back? I ask our server where the Bluefin comes from and he says it’s local, which I don’t think is true, but probably does clarify that they are serving Pacific Bluefin and not Atlantic Bluefin. But regardless, I am a bit disappointed that Charlie Trotter has elected to serve the Bluefin at his Cabo restaurant.

And lastly, my mother’s salmon is partially raw. Words cannot express! And I am too much on vacation to make an issue of it.

But honestly, for these prices? I don’t think so.

The Wine: I order a class of Nobilo Sauvignon Blanc, which retails for less than $10 a bottle in the US. It’s on the menu for 230 pesos PER GLASS. That’s approximately $20 a glass. Now I know that shipping wine to Mexico is not the same as shipping it to Chicago so I do expect a little premium. But this seems ridiculous.

But the good news? They forget to put the wine on the check. Being the honest person I am, I point this out to them, and they give me the glass for free. Serves them right.

The Truffles: They bring us two little trays of truffles which are very nice.

The Bill: Now this is the funny part. In the confusion over the wine and the bill and the time it takes to flag someone down to point out the missing wine and whether or not they even take Amex, we get a little confused. My mother has had her AMEX on the table for a while. They come and look at the bill and they give me the wine for free. My mother signs the check and we leave. While I’m in the bathroom on our way out, it occurs to me that there was something wrong with the transaction. We signed a piece of paper. We showed them our AMEX and asked if they accept it. They brought us truffles. They even held out our chairs as we left the table.

But I swear to God that they never swiped the card.

And I am right. I go back out to our server and ask him to check the bill. He assures me everything is fine. But then goes in the back and is gone for what seems like ages. He returns and says he needs our room number. But we are not staying in the hotel! I give them our AMEX again and they disappear with it and finally the transaction is complete.

The Verdict: Not so impressed with C. I have been waiting to eat under the leadership of Charlie Trotter forever. But between the wet tempura, the raw salmon and the dry grouper and general wintery fare, I say eh.