Pedro Jimenez: A Mexico City-born-and-raised communications professional turned mescal producer/bar owner with the faraway contemplative gaze, slightly weary and bemused demeanor of a man with little to prove and even less interest in doing so.
Braden LaGrone: Sprung from the fetid loins of Shreveport and the Lafayette, Louisiana-area swamp lands, a veteran bartender who cut his teeth in New Orleans, with the forward-leaning carriage and knife-like gaze of a young boxer charging out of his corner swinging for a first round knockout.
These are the main players in an unlikely, remarkable partnership which may be helping Guadalajara raise its cocktail game and provide a gleaming North Star for engaged, polished and friendly quality of service offered by its bars and restaurants.
Above all, Jimenez and LaGrone are two zealous Knights Templar on a quest to reintroduce into Guadalajara’s mainstream the Mexican — and, more importantly, Jalisciense — libations that have been for decades passed over in favor of class-signifying, velvet rope products imported from Europe or the United States.
Finally, it’s a tale of two watering holes living cheek to cheek, one a raucous mescaleria (Pare De Sufrir, owned by Jimenez) with a battered, manually-rotated disco ball throwing shards of light on an unfussy crowd drinking cold beer and selections from a list of exhaustively curated mescals, many of which are bottled by Jimenez’ own brand, Mezonte — the other a handsome cocktail bar (De La O, co-owned by, among a few others, Jimenez and LaGrone) that, despite its comparatively polished veneer, shares with its neighbor a spirit of relaxed camaraderie and a dearth of pretension — a breath of fresh air in the tiresomely contrived world of the high-end cocktail bar.
Jimenez and LaGrone first met three years ago after the latter attended an event put on by small local tequila producer Fortaleza. There he rubbed elbows with other beverage sector professionals, among them Misty Kalkofen, an industry veteran from Boston and a higher up at Del Maguey, a mescal giant recently acquired by mega-conglomerate Pernod Ricard.
“Misty told me, ‘you have to meet Pedro Jimenez at Pare de Sufrir,’” recalled LaGrone, seated next to Jimenez in a small cafe adjacent to Pare de Sufrir one afternoon. “Misty and I went and ... it more than changed my life. I agreed that I had to meet this guy.”
Jimenez proved to be elusive, but the relentless LaGrone finally managed to pin the business owner down on a Saturday evening.
“My last night in town [before returning to New Orleans] he finally shows up and I just accosted him,” said the sandy-haired bartender with a smile. “I attacked him! I told him Pare de Sufrir was the craziest, most awesome thing, easily the best bar I’ve ever been to, da da da da da, and that he should come to my bar in Nola and do a mescal event.”
Jimenez’ presentation in New Orleans of agave spirits made by small producers was a success. Thus, the foundation of his and LaGrone’s relationship was laid.
It wasn’t too long after his new friend’s visit that LaGrone decided to gather up his bar tools and decamp from the damp, crumbling southern U.S. state capital for the hot, crumbling central Mexican state capital, handily landing a job managing Bar Pigalle, right around the corner from — where else? — Pare de Sufrir.
Jimenez came to own a mescal bar by a less professionally-based route than that of his partner. But while he never did time in the kind of demanding hospitality trenches that tempered and refined Lagrone, Jimenez, who still works a day job in the communications and film industries, came to love mescal while still in short pants.
Jimenez described a revelatory trip taken with his family to Oaxaca when he was 15 years old.
“My parents went to visit some archeological sites, while I went to a bar nearby. I tried everything they were offering tastes of: crema de mescal, mescal with and without worms. I was just very curious about it.
“It changed something in me. It was very different from anything I’d ever tasted. It was exciting, exotic. Every time that I tried another spirit after that, and then went back to mescal, I said, ‘No, this is my spirit.’”
This formative experience was the start of a fascination with quality agave spirits that would see its ultimate fruition decades later in Pare de Sufrir, opened by Jimenez and his wife Maria in 2009.
The initial raison d’être of the establishment was rooted, essentially, in selfishness.
“I moved to Guadalajara 12 years ago. Back then, being a mescal lover, I couldn’t find a single decent mescal. The only things you could find were Guisano Rojo and Tonaya, which used to be good mescals until they were industrialized.”
“He told me,” inserted LaGrone at Jimenez’ side, “that he was suffering from a lack of good mescal, so he opened Pare de Sufrir: ‘stop suffering.’”
Eventually, Jimenez’s passion for un-commercialized, un-adulterated agave spirits drove him to start his own brand, Mezonte. Through the company, rather than producing his own product, Jimenez acts as a sort of curator, doing exhaustive leg work to hunt down traditionally produced mescal and bottling it under his label. He’s the Alan Lomax, essentially, of mescal.
Jimenez, it should be known, is very transparent when it comes to giving credit and distributing profit; the firm is, in fact, registered as a non-profit organization. And his focus is staunchly local.
“We’re focused on Jalisco and Michoacan,” said Jimenez, who added that Jalisco has more distinctly named agave spirits than any other state in Mexico. These varieties include, of course, the world famous tequila, but there’s also tuxca and vino de mescal in the south, tepe and tuchy in the north, and barranca in the center.
“In Oaxaca there’s the biggest diversity of agave species. But it’s all called ‘mescal’. The different here is, they call it something different according to region. This really represents, through the spirit, the cultural diversity of Jalisco.”
Highlighting and promoting regional nuance and diversity is a mission for both men, who see the current over-exploitation of a single agave variety in Oaxaca, espadin, with very jaundiced eyes — a repeat, perhaps, of what occurred in the 1990s with the blue agave variety used in tequila, when large producers ran supply ragged with reckless over-planting and harvesting before maturity, among other methods that boosted profits but which proved short-sighted.
Jimenez couldn’t have found a more perfect partner than LaGrone, who waxes almost militaristic on the subject of Jalisco agave spirits, in addition to libations such as pulque (fermented from agave but not distilled), tepache (a ferment of pineapple) and tejuino (fermented from maize and sugar but non-alcoholic).
“I had already known the work that Braden was doing at [New Orleans bar] Cure and [GDL bar] Pigalle, and was like, man, he’s the perfect man for the job,” said Jimenez. “Here in Guadalajara the bar scene is really green. It’s not even half what’s happening in the States. I was thinking he could shake things up a bit.”
I then steered the conversation to the food menu’s inception, and who might be its chief author.
“Nothing is done by just one person at De La O,” replied LaGrone. “But [business partner] Isaac Redman did most of the leg work on the menu.”
“I remember the discussion of how it was going to be, like botanas [snacks, tapas],” contributed Jimenez. “Very simple stuff, like when you go to the ranch to visit your aunt and she says, ‘you should have told me you were coming! Lemme see what I can give you.’”
LaGrone, who grew up poor in Louisiana, sees the cuisine of Mexico and that of his home state as kindred spirits, both born of necessity. The conviviality that exists around the consumption of food is also something both cultures share, according to the bartender.
“[In Louisiana] we had these bugs that were living on our rice field, so we decided to cook them up and eat them, just like chapulines here,” explained LaGrone.
Looking around De La O’s softly lit interior decorated with leafy plants, cacti, odd objets d’art and charmingly obsolete gizmos of bygone centuries, you notice that the small crew of employees shuttling platters of frijoles enchorizados, aguachile and panela con chicharron to simple wooden tables are mainly on the younger side. Asking about this, the conversation came back to the idea of both preservation and helping Guadalajara become a world-class cocktail destination, with Lagrone emphasizing the importance of passing his and Jimenez’ passion for Mexico’s drinkable cultural patrimony on to the next generation, in addition to imbuing his green but eager acolytes with a solid foundation in the craft of bartending.
It’s that craft that LaGrone thinks needs fine-tuning among more than a few bar employees at several GDL establishments — some quite well known and respected by Tapatio drinkers — which shall remain nameless for tact’s sake.
Thus a possible project for the Louisianan down the road may be a “proper, NYC-style cocktail bar.”
But for now, he — and especially Jimenez, who said in response to inquiries about what comes next for him, “I’m done” — are concentrating on what amounts to their calling, that is, bringing Mexican drinking culture back to the Mexicans they say long ago forsook their local tipples for ones well beyond their borders.
“Be prideful. This is your tradition, your people, your culture. Revel in it.”
Pare de Sufrir, Calle Argentina 66, is open Thursday-Saturday, 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. (hours may vary). Visit their Facebook page for more information.
De La O, Calle Argentina 70, is open Thursday-Monday, 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. (hours may also vary).