La Guerrerense

La Guerrerense is a street cart on the corner of Avenida Lopez Mateos and Alvarado in central Ensenada, and it is the most celebrated piece of street food in Baja California. The business was founded in 1960 and has been run since the 1980s by Sabina Bandera, who took it over from her family and turned it into a destination that draws visitors from across Mexico and the United States. Anthony Bourdain declared its sea urchin tostada the best street food he had eaten, and the attention that followed did not change the format: a cart, a stack of tostadas, a queue on the pavement and a few plastic stools. The method is simple and exacting. Fresh shellfish, most of it landed that morning at the Ensenada fleet a few streets away, is spooned raw or lightly cured onto a crisp corn tostada, then dressed by the customer from a battery of house-made salsas that Bandera prepares herself and which have grown to more than a dozen: peanut and chilli de arbol, almond, soy and sesame, habanero, tamarind, and a dark salsa negra among them. The sea urchin tostada and the pismo clam tostada are the two to order first; ceviche mixto, smoked marlin, scallop and octopus tostadas follow. Everything costs between 60 and 140 pesos, so a substantial meal for two rarely passes 400 pesos. Payment is cash, there are no reservations, and the queue at weekend lunchtime can run twenty minutes or more. Service is Wednesday through Monday from 10:30AM until around 5PM, closing on Tuesdays and often earlier when the shellfish runs out. There is no dining room: customers eat standing at the cart or on stools on the pavement, in bright coastal daylight, with the port a short walk downhill. The family also runs a sit-down restaurant nearby, but the cart is the original.