Dinner at Rachel and Larry's

N 28*58.510 W 113*32.820 We had a great dinner last night of fish tacos, rice and beans washed down with a margarita (two in Bob’s case) at Rachel and Larry’s, a restaurant on the beach immediately north of Daggett’s Camp where we’re staying. Rachel and Larry’s has been around for a long time and is famous, both in the Baja travel books, and among travelers we have met, for having the best fish tacos between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas, which is quite the accomplishment since there are almost as many taco stands between Ensenada and Cabo as there are people – OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. We walked into the restaurant on the upper floor of the building, and it gave the impression of an abandoned fraternal order hall: lots of plastic tables, metal and plastic chairs, a ladder in the middle of the room and some blueprints. Outside on the deck were a few more tables and chairs with small piles of bent nails scattered around. Larry, owner of the eponymous restaurant, was behind the bar opening a bottle of wine. He appeared to be a not-very-healthy, or sober, 80-year-old, talking to a guy who looked over at us and asked, “Are you here for dinner too?” We said yes, we had heard that the fish tacos were good. Larry then said, “OK, I’ll call the cook and ask her to come.” Apparently Larry operates in “just-in-time mode” – he waits until the customers show up before he calls the cook to come to work. We ordered a margarita, for which Larry is famous (Rachel, his deceased wife was the one who was famous for cooking the fish tacos – we don’t know from whom she got the recipe), and the cook showed up with a young daughter in tow. Without ever offering us a menu, Larry said “You want the fish tacos right? Do you want them with or without rice and beans?” Larry was our server for the evening, and frequently came out on the deck to our table with a cigarette and drink in hand, and told us stories of the early days at Bahia de Los Angeles, back at a time when the only tourists were men who flew in to the nearby dirt airstrip for deep sea fishing excursions. He also had a telescope mounted on the deck railing and encouraged us to look at the bright “star” near the moon which he explained is actually the Space Station. He showed us an aerial photo of his home that shows a single building along the shore with no other structures to be seen for miles around. This is much different than it would look today in photos from the air. It turns out that Larry and Rachel’s reputation is well-deserved, and Concha, the Mexican cook, was rightfully proud of the food she prepared. We loved both the fish tacos ($6) and the margaritas ($3.50), and we left pleasantly full and slightly tipsy to walk home along the beach by flashlight.