Chef Juan Manuel Galvan Lopez |
Five years ago, San
Miguel de Allende was a tough place to find a good, vegetarian dish, other
than beans and tortillas, but now, things have changed as the city’s best chefs
are putting new and exciting dishes on their menus; many of which are vegetables.
Chef Juan Manuel Galvan Lopez has a new menu at La Dona
and many of the dishes we tried were vegetarian… and really delicious. Remember, this chef was the first one to
put roasted cauliflower on a menu - in a wood fire oven marinated in dehydrated
tomato chimichurri with seasoned Gorgonzola cheese dressing. It’s still
the best cauliflower in SMA.
Our favorite new dishes were
many - the Portobello mushroom tartare,
mushrooms and roasted shitake lined with vegetables from the garden with
Pineapple, avocado and citrus sauce; the picture-perfect calamari with a shrimp
stuffed pasta – an unexpected flavor that surprised and delighted our palate; the
Buffalo Burrata on
tomato jam with roasted cherries, balsamic honey, praline seeds and baby arugula
and the San Mike salad: a mix of organic lettuce lined with Jamaican reduction,
strawberry sorbet, blackberries, roasted peaches, sliced almonds and slices
of provolone cheese.
La Dona’s partner, Miguel Sacal Micha,
says if you plan to serve great pastries, you need a pastry chef and we totally
agree. La Dona’s new pastry chef is Liliana Ofelia. Some
of her new dishes included a plantain semifreddo
covered with campechanas, dulce de leche, banana sauce and caramelized cashews
and an Oreo cookie brownie filled with rich, dark chocolate ganache,
raspberries, grain salt with gelato and oreo cookies.
We’re also a meat lover too and can’t get enough of La Dona’s Pork Chamorro cooked for four
hours over low heat, barbecue style accompanied with rustic mashed potatoes. And
of course, we also like the lamb chops; a specialty dish of La Dona.
Several of chef Juan Manuel Galvan Lopez’s dishes will be on our new
restaurant list at the end of May - a special section at the end called What’s
New on the Menu, which features new dishes that chefs will be adding to their menus
this summer. Stay tuned.
La
Dona
San
Francisco 32, Centro
San
Miguel de Allende 37700
Sunday
1:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Monday
– Wednesday 1:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Thursday
– Saturday 1:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Phone:
415 688 3131
Chef: Juan Manuel Galvan Lopez
Pastry Chef: Liliana Ofelia