Baja California has a great number of awesome dishes, some of them being the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the state. One of these is lobster and what a better person to talk about this subject than the owner of La Casa de la Langosta and current President of the National Chamber of the Restaurant and Seasoned Food Industry (CANIRAC) Rosarito, Alan Bautista Plascencia. He showed us how to prepare a lobster: after cleaning it, the lobster is seasoned with salt and pepper, and then fried until its sweet spot.

Alan said that the lobster served in this restaurant was the California Style Spiny Lobster, a species that can be found all the way from Northern California to Baja California Sur. It should be noted that even though there are 100 different species of lobster, this particular species is the most requested one in European and Asian markets due to its flavor, proving once and for all that Baja Californian seafood is one of the greatest products of the state.

Like many Tijuana families, Alan’s family has members from other parts of the country. His grandfather, originally from Jalisco, started to fish in Puerto Nuevo and traveled to fish in Ensenada. There, he met his wife, originally from Colima, where she lived in a coffee hacienda where her parents taught her traditional Mexican cuisine.

Once Bautista’s grandfather went to the coast with American tourists in a fishing trip, they came back quite hungry, so his wife offered them beans, rice, flour tortillas, and seafood they brought from the sea. No matter which ones they brought, they were always fried in lard and served with other dishes.. It should be noted that, back then, everything was prepared in oil kitchen, so they did not have electricity, gas, or fridges to preserve food for long periods of time.

This dish started becoming more and more famous until today, as it is now one of Baja California’s most representative meals. So far, La Casa de la Langosta has won two awards where it was named “Mexico’s Best Restaurant”, the most recent one in 2021 where it competed against other traditional dishes such as enchiladas and chiles en nogada.

Baja Window cohost, Scott Koenig, said that he couldn’t think of a more famous Baja Californian dish than Puerto Nuevo style lobster since it combines influences from Northern Mexico like the flour tortillas and Baja Californian seafood. Both he and Olga Sánchez de la Vega tasted a traditional lobster burrito with beans and rice as well as a fried version of a chimichanga.

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