I expected average, I got excellence. If you've been to enough tourist type spots you kind of expect the food to be overpriced, overcooked, and the sauce to be mostly cream and butter without allot of nuance. Someone who knows the area said hey, the place on the hill is the best place in town. So, we went. It was about a 10 dollar cab ride from the main drag, likely inflated because we obviously weren't local, which hey, it was still reasonable enough. So we get there and I think, world class view of the harbor, so at least there's that.

Service was fast to ask for drinks and bring some bread. Oil and vinegar on the table. Bread was fine, nothing crazy good but as a vehicle for the oil and vinegar soaked it up well. It's a fine start but nothing earth shattering. My guest says, let's get some beef capacio. I'm thinking that's not something I'm typically down for, raw beef sounds ill advised in a place you can't drink the tap water. But my guest knows his stuff so I figure if it looks sketchy I'll focus on my caesar w anchovies and avoid the beef. We have some shrimp coming as well so easy dodge.

Beef comes out and it weirdly looks good, like, it might be worth a roll of the dice. Lo and behold I take a piece, sop up whatever lemon caper oil it is laying in and damn, it's delicious. That was unexpected, genuinely didn't expect to like it. Ok, so now what. Well, maybe they fluked it, so I try a shrimp and that's also delicious. Surprisingly layered complexity to an ordinarily ordinary dish. Now, apparently the whole town was once the Bubba Gump shrimp of Mexico and rows of dry docked boats seem like that may be true. So while surprisingly good, maybe it was not the cooking but the freshness. So again, still skeptical that the Italian food in this sleepy town in Mexico could be anything special. I ask the waiter what would he eat, so he directs me to a seafood pasta dish and I'm like, go with whatever your favorite is.

He brings out the dish and first thing I notice is these are fresh made noodles. Clearly not from a box and cooked perfectly al dente. Normally I think the whole al dente thing is a bit snooty and frankly I don't always like it slightly chewy. Sometimes I like a softer noodle but to each their own. Only this time the noodle is perfect. It comes in a hard to describe sauce, not exactly butter cream and just right in seasoning. Again, hard to describe but almost a touch of truffle unam and nutmegi with butter and tiny touch of maybe red pepper flake spice. Nuanced, interesting and each bite craveable for more. This caught me off guard, I wasn't expecting to want to stuff myself but here we are. I end up savoring each bite. My guest equally enjoys a very different type of fish dish, the grouper special. He notes that typically the special most places is a bad idea. It's special but not the good kind of special but here he knows the chef and the special really is special good. So, I was wrong. My rush to be cynical about getting a fantastic Italian meal in a sleepy town in Mexico was wrong. I didn't deserve the meal I got so this review is my penance. I hope you get to try this joint and certainly if you find yourself in Penasco, you should make it a point to get a meal here. Very reasonably priced for what we got and it was on par with the best Italian I've had in Philly or New York.