Mezcal Spotlight: Friday Mezcal & Cigar Club

By Jonathan Lockwood

A YEAR of monthly Mezcal Spotlight articles? Almost every one aimed at a local, mezcal-focused establishment? That wasn’t exactly the plan...

But if we go back to right around 10 years ago all these mezcalerías just didn’t exist. So I started my own thing: the Friday Mezcal & Cigar Club.

I’d only been in San Miguel de Allende for a couple of years, and it didn’t take long to realize I needed to get out more. I’m grateful for voiceover work, but four and a half days alone in a booth starts to get to you. So the actual plan was to knock off work early on Fridays, slip into Centro and meet a friend or three for a cigar and some sips of mezcal from my flask. Then I’d meet Cecilia, my girlfriend-now wife, for dinner, and we’d wind our way around town. Stopping in at such memorable spots as Santo’s Crudoteca and The Beer Company, among others. Then something unexpected happened: people kept joining us, and before long it wasn’t just my little Friday routine anymore. Pretty soon more than 20 were meeting up, and it’s not uncommon to get 35 and even 40 some weeks!

In the beginning I just looked for a terraza that didn’t mind if a few of us puffed a puro. But our first regular hangout in 2016 was Salón Oaxaca on Insurgentes, owned by my friend Mario Iribe-Benitez, a native Oaxacan who often had beautiful mezcal. When it closed, we made it Alejandro Vasconcelos’ Mezcal-Art next to the old immigration building; that lasted a while. Sometimes we’d get the downstairs room at Los Milagros Terraza. We enjoyed our time with Javi at Don Lupe Grill, did a brief stint at Alfredo’s El Xoconostle just off the Libramiento and a couple of years at Chuy’s Parrilla y Tacos on the way to Cieneguita. That one was out a bit, so it felt like we had our own, private club.

Alas, nothing lasts forever.

For over a year now, our happy home has been Trina Cantina Contemporánea near the end of Stirling Dickinsen. The guy in charge is Enrique Díaz, and we couldn’t ask for a better layout. The main room is good and spacious, but just outside is a large open space that works perfectly for us. Open to the air, so non-smokers aren’t getting smoked out, yet it’s covered, so we don’t get rained out.

After a while, it became clear this is the kind of thing I enjoy... Good conversations with people who appreciate them too. And it can be great to have one with a nice cigar and hearty mezcal.

You’ll find a reasonably diverse group there, which only makes the dialogue more interesting. Out of curiosity, I just looked at the numbers: 50% from the US, 23% from México, 15% from Canada and 6% each from either Europe or Australia/New Zealand/South Africa.

Now a little music can be nice, but the loud stuff doesn’t mix well with the conversation we’re there for. So another likeable feature of Trina is that, while Annie is doing her full-on karaoke night Fridays at 7:30 p.m., it’s inside, so the music wafts out nicely, but doesn’t drown us out. Although after 7 or 8 mezcales, maybe it should? I love the food options at Trina too. You get a great burger, a Lou Campese-inspired pulled pork sandwich–lots of taco options, burritos, pescadillas and probably my favorite, quesabirria! If you’re looking to introduce yourself to some absolutely smashing mezcales, we’ve got an arrangement for that too. Everything from a nice, calm Espadín to a rip-roaring wild ensamble.

But you’ll have to contact me personally for details!

We meet each and every Friday at 4:00 p.m. Earlybirds in our group are often the first at the restaurant. And while several leave by 7:00 p.m. or so, plenty of us stick around. We even have regular latecomers. So it started as a way to get out of the studio for an evening. Somewhere along the way it turned into something I count on every week. It’s become a bit of a standing table, in a city that seems to collect people from everywhere. Different backgrounds, different stories, same general idea of a good afternoon. And somehow, it keeps working.

Jonathan Lockwood is a Mezcal lover, explorer, and collector and writes the Mezcal Maniac Substack. mezcalmaniac.substack.com