UNTIL recently, before a customer was abducted outside its front door, La Meson Principal del Norte was known simply as a great place to get meat, usually roasted on a spit in northern Mexican style.
But ask a hotel concierge in the city of Saltillo about La Meson these days and the gastronomy may not come up first. "Be careful," one whispered. "That's where they got the gringo."
It was outside La Meson that Felix Batista, an American securit
y consultant who specialised in resolving kidnappings, was himself abducted on the evening of 10 December. He has not been heard from since.
After weeks of silence, his wife and sister held a news conference in Miami this week , urging his captors to release him. "I don't understand how a man who has always loved Mexico and its people so dearly can be made to suffer in this manner," said his wife of 31 years, Lourdes Batista.
La Meson's waiters have been interviewed by investigators, as have Mr Batista's dining companions. But exactly what happened to him remains a mystery, another unsolved case in a country overwhelmed with kidnappings and killings, many tied to the traffickers who have turned Mexico into the world's busiest transit route for illicit drugs.
Mexican authorities say the anti-kidnapping expert was at a table with several others when his mobile phone rang. He got up to talk and then returned to the table looking unnerved. He told his companions that someone would meet him outside to deliver a message and that if he did not return, they should call a colleague in Miami. He handed them some of his personal items before leaving, said officials, still uncertain about the nature of the call, although they believe drug-traffickers were probably involved.
Authorities say Jose Pilar Valdez, a local corporate security specialist who had invited Mr Batista to give seminars in Coahuila State, may have made the call. Mr Pilar was grabbed by armed men hours before and severely beaten. But he was eventually released.
Investigators believe the men who grabbed Mr Pilar might have used him to ensnare Mr Batista. But the surveillance camera video showed Mr Batista chatting with the men who took him away as if he might have known them.
Mr Batista is the third anti-kidnapping specialist to have been abducted in Coahuila State. But the authorities are not using the word "kidnapped" as no ransom demands have been made.
On 14 May, 2007, armed men grabbed Enrique Ruiz Arevalo, the state's top anti-kidnapping official, as he was eating breakfast in a restaurant in Torreon, also in Coahuila State. He has been missing ever since. When Gerardo Valdes Segura was named his successor about a year later, a group of men came for him, too. He remains missing.
As for Mr Batista, he had just told some of Saltillo's entrepreneurs how to avoid kidnapping and how to endure it should they be seized. If he is following his own advice, he is exercising to keep his spirits up, trying to establish a rapport with his abductors and not speaking much about his personal life.
Eateries where arrests and even murder are on menuLA MESON is hardly alone as a restaurant unwittingly linked to Mexico's crime wave. Across the country, many places are probably known less for their menus than for the people arrested there, killed there or, in Batista's case, picked up midway through his meal.
There is the Vips diner in Mexico City, where Sandra Avila Beltran, suspected of being a third-generation drug-trafficker known as the Queen of the Pacific, was detained as she sipped coffee with friends.
There is the Tijuana seafood restaurant where the authorities found a barrel containing decomposed body parts outside – and then a body in the dining room.
And scattered around the country are eateries supposedly frequented by Joaquin Guzman Loera, Mexico's most wanted man. More than once, the story has circulated of Guzman's armed men storming into restaurants and ordering customers to hand over their mobile phones and continue eating as if nothing were awry.
Only after Guzman had entered, eaten and gone on his way were the phones supposedly returned.
