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Pomodoro… ITALIAN FOR “TOMATO”
By Jeff Becker Photography by Joseph Burgess
 What is it to sit and eat together? Everyday we live, if we are lucky, is marked by the three distinct pauses we take to gather for a meal. Many dinners are taken simply for the sustenance they offer, we consume them and get on with our lives, but others are not so easily forgotten. There are unique moments when the food demands more. It forces us to push back our chairs and marvel. “How good was that?” we ask. Oh, we exclaim, and our hands rub our bellies. The food has but for this brief moment made everything okay. Fleeting, yes, but happiness is a busy girl. We are content. We are full. As Virginia Woolf once said, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
Off the Campestre in Juarez is a small neighborhood restaurant. The exterior is plain; a lone flag bearing the name “Pomodoro’s” flaps in the wind above a small four-car parking lot. In this wealthy part of Juarez, where flash and pizzazz are displayed in every well-lit storefront, this eatery tends to a different flock. Like books, restaurants should not be judged by their outward appearance. Far too often chic interior design is paired with gaudy, shallow food that forgets why we eat in the first place—pleasure. As in life, it is always refreshing to encounter a place that keeps pretension and the gratuitous use of elegance to a bare minimum. It is refreshing to dine in a place where food and wine are the true stars of the evening. Pomodoro’s fills that desire.
Pomodoro’s is the offspring of Pablo Serrato who, along with his brother Melchor Serrato, owned and operated Fratello’s, an Italian eatery in El Paso, for years. Even though Fratellos was held in high regard among El Paso diners, Pablo and his brother eventually came back to Juarez, and it
was there that Pablo decided to try something new. He had noticed that the dining scene was becoming crowded with chain and franchise restaurants that offered posh decoration, while sacrificing the quality and creativity of the food. Pablo didn’t want to follow suit. So he opened Pomodoro’s—a small boutique restaurant dedicated to the pursuit of good food, good wine.
Pomodoro’s, for those of you that follow this article, is for real.
Not long ago I dined at Pomodoro’s with group of collegues. We put ourselves into Pablo’s able hands. Awine man, he was quick to offer us a Bodegas Trapiche Chardonnay 2004 when I told him of my travels to Argentina the summer before. While serving only 15 to 20 tops, Pomodoro’s maintains an extensive wine cellar. With over 140 labels available, Serrato not only sells to diners, but is also a chief distributor to Juarez restaurants. With a number of hard-to-comeby vintages from small producers in Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe, and the knowledgeable Serrato on hand, it was appropriate to start with libations.
We shared the wine with the conversation, learning of Pablo’s background—Italian-Mexican, got into wine from meeting importers and trying wines for Fratello’s. The menu, created by Pablo’s brother Melchor Serrato, exemplifies everything the restaurant stands for. The dishes are not overly flashy or simplistic. Combinations make sense. The food listed there is not pretentious, but sophisticated. The hallmarks of Italian cuisine—the Picattas, Putanescas, Carbonaras, and Marinaras—were all present. Each dish sounded delightful; dish upon dish of food I would actually consider eating. I was pleased.
 When the food came, arranged completely by Pablo, my mind stopped working in words. Language left me. My senses, given full bore, took over. You know these meals. Each bite lights some part inside of you, and, ravenous, you find yourself studying what’s happening on your tongue. You are interested in the food on your fork. You know you are overeating. You don’t care. You are getting annoyed with your girlfriend for eating off of your plate.
The five of us sat and marveled at the food. We complimented Pablo on its preparation, on the thoughtfulness of each dish, on its flavor. The dishes—an Insalate Piccini of spinach mixed with a nice gorgonzola, strawberries, peach, kiwi, pecans, apples, raisins in a mango vinaigrette; a Antipasti Carpaccio di Salmone of mixed cheeses, olives and cured meats; and a Brie con Chabacanos Horneado (Brie capped with Apricot marmalade, pecans, and then baked)—were simply elegant. We discussed what made each one great, where wine came from in Mexico, and any façade of an interview quickly molded into friends talking. Interrupted only by Pablo rising to fetch new dishes from the kitchen. It is a pleasure to watch a man do what he loves. Often, something would come to his mind—a great Mexican wine, a rare liqueur, a nice smoked cheese—and he would leave to wrestle it from whatever nook it was stored to present it to us, smiling.
 The dishes arrived on each other’s heels, Fettuccine Algio Gamberi (with sautéed shrimp, in a sauce of chile de Arbol and sundried tomatoes), Salmon Mediterrano (well-balanced in a Salsa de mango, strawberry, kiwi, and chile Piquin) Pollo a la Pomodoros (stuffed with Jamon Serrano and Queso Gran Padano, breaded, and served in a fine marinara sauce). Pablo brought wine to the table like they were interesting artifacts he’d stumbled upon on a long walk through the woods. He opened a Viña de Liceaga Gran Reserva Merlot 2002 because he wanted us to taste a Mexican wine. He did it with pride.
When finally we could eat no more and stretched out in our chairs, content and slightly dizzy, Pablo ran to the back and returned with a bottle of Absinthe and a bottle of Damiana, a light herbal liqueur of Mexican origin, and insisted we finish our meal properly. “If you come to Pomodoro’s,” he said, heartily, “and you don’t drink the wine, you don’t eat ‘el Final’ then you haven’t been to Pomodoro’s.”
We stepped off into the disgruntled traffic and falling light of a late Juarez day. Our bellies full, Pablo bid us farewell with boxes full of wine bottles gathered at his feet. Afeeling emerges in the wake of a good meal. Writers try to find words for it, they create metaphors, they compare the flavors that have just passed their lips to crisp new snow, a lover’s quarrel, the dance of a ballerina. But what we are trying to say is sometimes beyond expression. Good food is about more than just taste. It is about friends and family. It is the pleasure of sharing in one of humankind’s greatest achievements—food. We shared in it that day. The subtle power of a well-prepared meal melted our fears and anxieties and for a moment we were there together, glasses raised in a toast to the finer things in life.
Pomodoro’s is located at Gomez Morin 7469, Ciudad Juarez. For more information, call 011-52-656-207-2991 or if you would like to try this and other great Juarez dining spots contact us about our new Juarez Dining Club by emailing jeff@mountaindreams.info.
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