Caffe El Triunfo: Finding Culinary Silver Lining in Mining Town Rubble
From Food GPS: http://www.foodgps.com/caffe-el-triunfo/
"On our drive through Baja backcountry between La Paz and Cabo, we stopped in El Triunfo, a dusty, desolate mining town that could easily double as
the setting for a Wild West gunfight, or possibly a zombie apocalypse. Instead, Northern California native Marcus Spahr treated us to a flurry of
wood-fired foods featuring local ingredients, in a truly unique setting.
After villagers left El Triunfo to work in Todos Santos sugar cane fields, they left the once-thriving silver mining town in shambles. We passed time
waiting for our food by wandering through remnants of smoke stacks, crumbled brick walls and rusted machinery.
Spahr has worked hard to make improve the space ever since he opened Caffe El Triunfo. He’s incrementally improved the cafe both indoors and out,
laying new brickword, adding stone slab tables and planting cacti on ledges. We sat on the patio, under a brick and wood roof, with the sound of
roosters in the distance.
Spahr is a longtime biker with tattooed arms and twin dangles below his beard. He was born in Oakland, grew up in Ventura County, and started ranching
up north near Cobb Mountain in California’s Lake County. He moved to Todos to farm things like mango, avocado, grapefruit. He ran Cafe Todos Santos
for 16 years, beginning on October 7, 1993, and sold to chef Angelo Dal Bon from Tre Galline. He opened Caffe El Triunfo four years ago, looking for
new challenges, better food, a better setting, and place to build a wood burning oven.
Spahr brought out slices of two different breads: pan con santos with walnuts and dried cranberries; and crusty bread with rosemary, garlic and white
cheddar.
House Salad (100 pesos ~ $8) incorporated crumbled goat cheese, cherry tomatoes, organic lettuces, dried cranberries and candied pecans with pitcher
of tart balsamic dressing.
We walked over to Abarrotes La Escondida, one of El Triunfo’s variety stores, and bought a wheel of queso fresco (70 pesos), which they weighed on a
worn scale.
For his crisp-crusted pizzas, Spahr uses a sourdough starter that dates to 2002. His Margherita Pizza (180 pesos) incorporated only tomato, basil,
fresh mozzarella made at a ranch in town, and a house made tomato sauce that Cafe Santa Fe owner Ezio Colombo taught him. He punctuated the pizza with
a judicious amount of shaved Grana Padano and a drizzle of olive oil infused with dried chile de arbol.
The other pizza – El Trinufo (240 pesos) – showcased some local flavor, including smoky chipotle marinated arrachera (skirt steak), sweet corn
kernels, and crisp, spicy jalapeno slices. This pizza had cracker like edges, and good give in the middle.
It also probably would have been good to try the ravioli, since Spahr described the process for learning how to make the pasta, or possibly the
wood-fired pork sandwich.
Caffe El Triunfo’s sticky bun lived up to its name, with deep yellow color from egg yolks, a liberal dose of cinnamon and ribbons of sticky, chewy
caramel.
We finished with espresso, which Spahr and his employees pull in the front room on a three-group lever machine, that operates using propane.
Spahr has managed to breathe new life into El Triunfo, and it’s only fitting that he’s featuring wood fire, since flames once helped to smelt local
silver to its most valuable mineral essence, a short walk from the caffe’s back door."
Our visit to Caffe El Triunfo was part of a Baja California Sur tour sponsored by Baja.com.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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