From California to Baja: chasing Ensenada’s legendary fish tacos

Did we ride 1,500 miles and cross an international border just to eat fish tacos in the birthplace of the fish taco? Yes. Yes, we did.

We went searching for warmth and fish tacos. Field research. Highway 1 down the coast, overnight on the central coast, then blasting down 101, pushing for the border, and finally getting warm in LA. The 5 south and then Mexico kind of snuck up on us.

That giant Mexican flag, the Bandera Monumental, visible from miles away. Last US exit. International border 500 feet. The freeway ends, and lines form.

Serious dudes appear. Mexican-plated Harleys. Loud. Purposeful. We fall in line, split to the front. Cameras, sensors, plate readers. No humans. We crossed through the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere like it was nothing. The serious dudes are gone, flat out, before we even process what just happened. We pull over and switch the speedo to kilometers. It felt oddly comforting for big metric fans like us.

Tijuana in the rearview. Ensenada ahead.

The road to Ensenada runs fast along the coast, blue Pacific on one side and dry hills on the other, and sweeping turns, and a mix of huge, slow-moving, rusty metal-hauling trucks and clean, fast cars all sharing the same stretch.

No signal. No map. Just signs for Ensenada and a heading generally south. We found the hotel after riding around for a while. Checked in. Sorted the phone. Went looking for tacos.

Tacos Fénix — La Tradición

We ate at a few places in Ensenada. This was our favorite.

Fenix has been around since the 70s. A sidewalk stand, canvas canopy, red Coca-Cola plastic chairs, busy but not frantic. A tablecloth on the counter reads La Tradicion. A guy with a portable radio is rapping in Spanish to a crowd that is largely ignoring him. Nobody seems bothered by this, including him.

We had tried to find Fenix earlier in the day. Wrong street, close but no. Fixed the phone, sorted the signal, tried again. There it is.

Two Pescado. Two Camaron. The fish was the better call.

Beer battered, fried perfectly. Light, fresh, hot. No malt vinegar, no fries, no chips. But if you dropped that fish into a basket at a good fish-and-chip place, nobody would complain.

They hand your tacos on a styrofoam plate, tortillas, the fish, nothing else. Everything else is on you. 

And everything else is right in front of you.

Squeeze bottles lined up in formation. Mayo, chipotle mayo, another chipotle mayo, something yellow you’re not entirely sure about, something red that is probably Valentina. Metal bowls of salsa verde, salsa negra dark and smoky, salsa roja bright and chunky. Radishes, diced red onion, pickled onion with carrot, shredded cabbage, and something green we couldn’t identify.

When we contemplate salsa at Grandview HQ, tasting sessions are held privately and sipped carefully and deliberately. Something we couldn’t and wouldn’t do in public.

Here we just piled on what looked good — trying to hit each one.

Then something registered. This salsa verde. This roja. Familiar. Not identical but close. The kind of close that makes you stop chewing for a second.

We’ve reviewed more than fifty Taco Trucks, Restaurants, and Food Carts across Richmond. We eat so much Mexican food that we actually had to go to Mexico to see it for ourselves. Wanting an adventure. Wanting to ride motorcycles too fast. Standing at this sidewalk stand in Ensenada, it was hard not to think about what that journey looked like compared to the one that brought this food north in the first place.

We haven’t been to Ensenada since elementary school. Nothing was familiar. Not the streets, not the neighborhoods, nothing. Last time we were here, a Pescado Entero was ordered for us. A Whole Fried Fish. When the waiter slipped it in front of us, we leaped out of our chair.

This time we stayed seated. Ate everything on the plate.

Down the street, we found Tacos Castillo Fish and Shrimp. Yelp’s third-best fish taco in Ensenada. They were really good, too. Quieter than Fenix. Three guys running it.

We always approach these situations the same way. Do they know we speak English? Do they think we speak Spanish? A brief standoff. Then we hit them with dos... tacos... de... pescado... por... favor.

Getting home

Most of the time, when riding, we keep our phone in our pocket to avoid distractions and let whimsy guide us. It is a good system until it isn’t.

Left Ensenada in the morning. Blasting up the toll road, warm, moving fast. Tijuana on the horizon. Then the wrong turn. Forty-five minutes of roundabouts and low-grade stress. Our Mexican insurance was expiring at noon. Exactly what we had wanted to avoid.

A rider pulled up. "Over the bridge, take the second right, and you’ll see the Sentri lanes." Gone before we could say anything. Signs appeared. We followed some riders through the medical crossing lane. Gathered at the end before getting the final go-ahead.

The agent looked up. He already had our plate, barely glancing at our ID. Is this your bike? Did you bring anything back? Where are you heading?

Home.

A few questions. Waved through. The relief was immediate. We made it in time. We didn’t crash, we didn’t break down. Still had hundreds of miles to go, but none of it mattered. We pointed north and made some noise. 

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