El Pizon Uni TostadasLocation: Ensenada, MexicoEnsenada is not your typical beach town. It’s l

El Pizon Uni Tostadas

Location: Ensenada, Mexico

Ensenada is not your typical beach town. It’s less postcard images of pristine beaches, and more urban coastline, with car repair shops, junkyards, mega supermarkets and a congested tourist center. Here, you can find all the leather Bud Light beer can holsters, Mexican jumping beans, sombreros and a slew of “American Pharmacies” selling viagra and valium over the counter. But if it’s street food you’re after, the city is a major port and the possibly the only place where I would eat raw seafood from a street cart for three meals a day. Even the cheapest tostada stand is shucking oysters, clams and fresh scallops to order, charging only a couple bucks for what we consider a rarified delicacy just North of the border.

The best example of this kind of briny indulgence can be found on the outskirts of town, on the corner of a dusty gas station at El Pizón. You can find the owner, Alan, setting up his cart sometime between 10am and noon on any given day, unloading his collection of hot sauces and cutting boards so worn down, they look like topographic maps of Mexico. He rolls his cooler full of fresh sea urchin from the flatbed right onto the street, and it’s game-on. Characters come out of the woodwork – it’s like Alan sent it tostada bat signal out into the universe, and the universe responded.   $10 miracle of freshly caught sea urchin seasoned with homemade pico de gallo, cilantro, lime juice and black pepper. This mish-mash is gently stirred to combine all the flavors, then served with tostadas and a side of ranchera music blasting from his impressive sound system. Once seated, Alan proffers up a magazine, frayed edges, the cover’s color faded from the sun to nearly a monochrome cyan, and proudly flips to his portrait, positioned amidst a story on the region’s best chefs.

Alan himself is no minor character in this dining experience; storytelling is part-and-parcel of ordering his proprietary uni platter. To serve uni this fresh, you have to have a hook-up. Once an uni diver himself, the business is a family tradition. The portion we scooped up onto our fresh corn tostadas that day was caught by his sister, who keeps that side of the family business afloat, collecting uni from Baja waters and delivering them to Alan every morning. Alan has traveled as far as Japan with his Uni, selling Mexican product at the famous Tsukiji market. But these days, he stays close to home, receiving a steady trickle of loyal guests and the occasional tourist, looking for the best deal in town: a plate of the most coveted product of the sea, served in the most casual way, “blessed” with a few drops of olive oil.