The Tanager Blog

By 6pm — after our regular afternoon of puzzling and napping at Casa X — we made our way to La Capilla, which is frequently regarded as one of San Miguel de Allende’s finest restaurants. Based on location alone, I’d have to agree. Situated on Calle Allende snug up against the towering La Parroquia, the restaurant utilizes a courtyard and an old, crumbling side chapel as its dining space (pictured below). Our plan was to have a glass of wine, do some birdwatching, walk around at dusk and come back for dinner. Yes, that’s right. I said birdwatching.

We had heard from a Canadian couple that a pair of barn owls was nesting in an alcove above the restaurant. At nightfall, the parents could be seen flying out to hunt for their chick. Seeing the mother and father owl proved elusive (at least on this night), but the chick was a noisy little one. From the restaurant’s patio you could see its white, fuzzy little profile on the alcove edge, its screeching for food an odd accompaniment to the fine dining happening just below. Abrasive shrieking aside, I found it magical. Certain birds have a way of adding mystery to an old place, and the owls’ hole-in-the-wall home lent the church a haunting quality.

San Miguel de Allende not only had these nesting barn owls, but also a nightly appearance from thousands of white-faced ibis (pictured below), who would migrate in flowing V formations over the city at sundown. The birds were extraordinary, perhaps because nobody else seemed to notice them.

La Capilla would also serve the best dish of our entire Mexico trip. It was a simple yellow pepper and tomato soup that got increasingly complex with each spoonful. Bold and rich tanginess defined the pepper side while nutmeg, smoke and a touch of heat defined the tomato side. The bowl looked like a yellow-and-red yin-yang with an artistic swirl of white cream down the middle. Getting a little of all three elements in one taste was the most transcendent food experience I’ve had since Italy.

It was also Holy Thursday, a day that lacked the pageantry of the two days that book-ended it. Still, it was no less moving and compelling. Each year in the evening of Holy Thursday, the faithful commemorate the Last Supper by going from church to church to have their feet washed. Lines braided from the church doors out onto the streets at Oratorio de San Felipe Neri, Templo de San Francisco and La Parroquia. Coming from a place where lines like these were more synonymous with buying concert tickets, I couldn’t help but be moved. Devotion wasn’t just something you claimed, you practiced it, even if it meant standing for an hour, washing your feet, then going and standing in another line for another hour and repeating.

We strolled around town in the mild night, circumnavigating El Jardin a few times to the sound of wheezing toys, giggling children and mariachi music. This old town was amazing at night — a place where kids had no bedtime and the temperature was perfect.

A full moon rose over the hillside to the east and crested the church towers. The next day would be Good Friday, and I was getting nervous about shooting the event. I had no deadline, no assignment, no client — this was all self-imposed pressure to do the spectacle justice.