Café Café in Ensenada, Mexico – San Diego Daytrips

This is probably the smallest attraction we’ve ever featured on USA Travel Guide, but my visit this past October left such an indelible impression, I had to give’em at least an afternoon short. The next time you’re in Ensenada, Mexico, maybe cruising the Baja or daytripping out of San Diego, take the chance to visit Café Café on Primera Calle.

You might miss it. At a glance, the logo is virtually illegible, but it’s worth the leg work to spy it out. Amidst a tourist-raddled mélange of gift shops, patio restaurants, street hawkers and “pharmacies”, Café Café is a warmly decorated coffee art house exuding effortless authenticity and charm. It’s the diamond in the rough.

Sure, there’s crap all over the walls, but uncommon for a Mexican tourist town, this crap ain’t crap. Café Café specializes in local and national folk art, including the prized back-lit candleholders and other crafts of the Tzotzil and Huichol peoples. The collection – cased, walled, or sprawled – is quietly enormous. There’s an awe-striking, handcrafted treasure everywhere you look.

Even if you’re not an art buff, Café Café is absolutely worth a visit. Delicious beverages aside, you won’t want to miss a chance to meet Memo Ramirez, who opened the place with his wife over 17 years ago. A consummate proprietor and breathless art enthusiast, Memo is everything that humdrum tourist traps are not: real.

Energy, passion and just a little poetry flowed through his words as he dove into a description of the new gallery, an exhaustive collection of paintings from Spanish-Mexican surrealist Remedios Varo. So rare in shops along a main tourist drag, my first impression of his words wasn’t “Hey, you should buy this!” Rather, it was “Hey, come check this out!”

Unfamiliar with her work before, our group walked out with something like five paintings. His fervor became our satisfied purchase.

Café Café has a second-story music club where Memo likes to feature alternative artists (”Not alternative rock. Just alternative.”), and I’d love to get back there one day to see a show. Pretty much any write-up you see on the place mentions that mid-90s punk band Sublime once played there. For what it’s worth, it seems like the kind of place they would play.

When would you visit Café Café? Well, a lot of Mexican Baja cruises dock in Ensenada, so that’s an obvious choice. But, there’s no reason to wait for a time so specific. Ensenada is an easy drive from San Diego, so we say make an afternoon trip of it.

The Hotel La Jolla is currently one of our favorite hotels in San Diego (well, La Jolla). Starting your drive from already scenic La Jolla, through San Diego and then on to Mexico will make for a rewarding journey indeed.

Have fun!

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