Where you hear a 10-piece mariachi band ringing out nightly, you hardly expect to find an apothecary. Yet at the Guadalajara restaurant Los Remedios, located on La Paz three blocks west of Chapultepec, they playfully claim to have found solutions — remedios — to life’s most pressing problems.
From its snappy valet parking attendants and university-educated manager to its corps of white-coated waiters, the staff exudes whatever is the polar opposite of sleaziness and they dedicate themselves to addressing life’s most important concerns, which as said university-educated manager Noel Lozano puts it, are “good food, good drinks and security.”
In a country such as Mexico, where “Don’t worry, be happy” should be the national motto (in Spanish, of course), Los Remedios may have found a formula to bring this optimistic ethos to fruition, at least for their patrons, who are mostly well-heeled singles, business people and families with children.
“We put our employees through a selection process,” said Lozano, “because when a customer goes to a restaurant, they shouldn’t have to worry about getting robbed.” (Behind its large, cheerily decorated restaurant, Los Remedios has a bar featuring the same ample menu, plus a DJ or live band playing rock and pop — the type of venue that, due to dismaying incidents that have occured in lower-brow bars, sometimes with the apparent involvement of its employees, is very worrisome to parents of young people.)
A related worry that Los Remedios addresses is security in matters of drunkenness.
“If we see somebody leaving drunk, we might ask him, ‘Where do you live, sir?’ and we call a taxi or the valet may drive him home,” Lozano said. He noted that drunkenness is a concern even when a patron is still in the establishment. “There could be fights with other customers.
So if we see that someone is drunk, we might see about getting that person home.”
As their efforts at responsibility suggest, Los Remedios is no fly-by-night dive. Its parent company, a Mexican business with the Italian name Grupo Forchetta, has had three other restaurants of long standing in Guadalajara, as well as in Puebla, Mexico City, Tijuana, Queretaro and Toluca. The three Guadalajara restaurants were torpedoed by nearby road upgrading (the bane of many small, local businesses) and in one case by the influenza bug, according to Lozano.
After these closings, the new location was found near Guadalajara’s so-called Zona Rosa (the lively restaurant district), and after significant improvements to and around the former home to a string of restaurants and bars, the established Los Remedios arrived in August.
“Patrons from our former locations told us they were glad we reopened, because they hadn’t found another place like this,” Lozano said. He added that he has undertaken marketing studies to make sure his prices, which range from medium to high, are in line with nearby restaurants.
All the sister restaurants of Los Remedios in other Mexican cities have similar, huge, food menus, which consist of traditional beef, pork, chicken, seafood and cheese entrees ranging from the most economical, Albondigas Chipotle (meat balls with chipotle sauce) for 96 pesos, to the most expensive, Camarones Para Pelar (Grilled Shrimp in their shells) for 455 pesos. A number of dishes are for two or more people, such as some molcajetes (dishes of steak or chicken with grilled green onions, chorizo and chistorra sausages and panela cheese served in large vessels made of volcanic stone and brought to the table very hot).
The tacos, tostadas and tortas promise to be a cut above what is generally available and are more economical than other offerings, from Tacos de Suadero (beef shank) for 34 pesos to Tortas de Arrachera (a good, Mexican cut of steak) at 95 pesos.
Los Remedios always has promociones (specials) for women because, in manager Lozano’s words, “where there are women, there are men” — as well as two-for-one specials, birthday specials and Kilo Specials, which include a kilo of meat or fish.
We can hardly leave out the bar menu, which is as overwhelming as the food menu and centers of course on tequila.
“We have 20 varieties,” Lozano exulted, several made by popular houses such as Cuervo and Herradura, plus a few new, relatively obscure brands. Some promociones feature drinks in unlimited quantities (and those tempted to naughtiness are warned that the drinks cannot be shared or taken out). One such special costs 355 pesos per person.
Despite the establishment’s policies on drunkenness, both bar and restaurant percolate with a piquant humor centering around alcohol.
The whimsical and racy decor in the large bar — for example, a scintillating old photo on a wall showing three amply endowed, naked lovelies photographed from the rear while ponying up to a bar — far exceeds the daring in the restaurant’s ornamentation, with its relatively tame dolls and piggy banks hung drunkenly from the ceiling and its cheeky display of pro-booze slogans: “The Alcohol Triplica le Capacite di parlare other lenguajes,” one reads, while another, in Spanish, screams, “WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to believe you can sing well.”
Los Remedios Cantina, Restaurant and Bar, Av. la Paz 2199 at Simon Bolivar, three blocks west of Chapultepec, Guadalajara. Tel: (33) 3615-3281/3462. Open 1:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. Monday to Saturday. Bar open Wednesday to Saturday 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Mariachi band arrives nightly at 9 p.m.