Restaurant With A View

I learned a long time ago that for truly magical moments, get thee to restaurants perched on hillsides...on tops of buildings...hovering over cliffs...

So on our second night in Puerto Vallarta, we cabbed it up and down narrow streets into a residential neighborhood, finally winding up at El Palomar de los Gonzales. The view from this place is so breathtaking, we had to stop for a moment in the bar first to have a drink and take in the sights. (Yes, any excuse to add a margarita to the mix.) One of these days, I should (stay sober long enough to) ask about the history of El Palomar, for I suspect it originated as a family home (hence, the pool.)

Anyway, once we'd sated our appetite for view ingesting, we allowed the maitre d' to seat us. I'm not sure, but when he heard this was my second visit, he seemed much more amenable to giving us the table we'd picked out from above. In fact, you can see it (the unoccupied one, third from the left) in the photo. There, we ordered...let's see...what did we order?? Oh, yes. First a salad with house dressing. Omigod, the house dressing!!!! We were told it contained vinegar, lemon, and pepper. That's all??? Does this mean I TOO could whip up such splendor? All I could think of was how it would taste as a dippin' for French Fries (which, sadly, I did not order). For a main course, we ordered steak and lobster. Mmmmm. Excellent. And even more excellent with a musical duo playing haunting music as a backdrop.

To top things off, we ordered special Mexican coffees--the kind where they make a huge a production of it at your table complete with pyrotechnics. Yum.

Here now, for your viewing pleasure:





And, this too:



(Okay, so it came out pretty dark--anyway, that's the Mexican coffee drink-making process. Trust me.)