“Don’t fix what isn’t broken,” says Mario Hernández Alonso, 66, owner of El Califa de León, nearly a year after the taquería — and grill cook Arturo Rivera — were awarded a Michelin star. Rivera thought he’d won a set of tires when he first heard about the prize. Now he’s left the taquería.

“They dazzled him, bought him off, promised him the sun, the moon, and the stars. They called him a chef. A chef of what?” Hernández says bluntly. He adds that he respects the decision, but doesn’t understand why Rivera was the one to don the chef’s jacket and receive the recognition.

El Califa de León‘s first big boost came in late 1993. On November 28, Luis Donaldo Colosio was chosen to run for president as the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The next day, journalist Gabriel Parra reported the news in Ovaciones and concluded the piece with a story in which he described meeting the politician eating two steak tacos and two rib tacos on the sidewalk in front of the taquería back in the 1980s.

El Califa de León was already popular by then — making in five minutes what many high-end restaurants earned in a month, according to Parra — but on November 29, after that mention, its fame reached a new peak.

More than 30 years later, in May, the taquería received another boost —this one sending it to the stars. When it came back down to earth, it brought one with it: a Michelin star. The award changed the dynamics of the surrounding area. The restaurant next door added a few tables, so customers could sit and eat. Street vendors popped up outside selling official merchandise. Logistics were put in place to manage the line so it wouldn’t block foot traffic. Now it’s a favorite stop for celebrities like Formula 1 driver Valtteri Bottas and U.S. boxer Rolando Romero. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the taquería itself.

In 2024, Hernández said he was surprised to become the first taquería in Mexico to receive recognition from the prestigious guide. At the time, he said he wanted to speak to the Michelin team to understand why them, given that the recipe was nothing more than coarse salt and lime. Later, he learned that kind of information is kept secret.

“The representative told me, ‘This isn’t about a recipe, we can’t share how or why you earned the star, because that would be giving away the formula,’” he recalls.

But that explanation didn’t sit well with him when it came to Rivera. “If the man had gone to culinary school, if he had a chef’s degree, I’d take my hat off to him. But it all happened just because he was born into the business,” says Hernández.

The secret

The cut of the meat is El Califa de León‘s best-kept secret. “It might be the only secret we have,” says Hernández, using one of his hands to illustrate. “If you bite this way,” he says, holding his right palm upright with fingers pointing to the sky, “you tear the meat.” He mimics biting down on his index and middle fingers. “But if you do it like this,” he continues, now holding his fingers horizontally, “you bite deeper into the fibers, and it makes the meat more tender.” He repeats the gesture, and the fingers part effortlessly. “Ninety-nine percent of people don’t know how to cut it. My father worked with meat for over 60 years and found the perfect cut.”

He admits he guards this information closely. When the Michelin star arrived, Hernández had his employees — whom he refers to throughout the interview as his family — sign a confidentiality agreement. Most agreed, except one. “It went to his head. He thought he was a rock star… God bless him,” he says firmly. Still, Rivera’s departure doesn’t trouble him. As he explains, there’s no secret in how the taco is prepared, and the people who do know the proper cut all signed the agreement.

The downside of success

Arturo Rivera’s decision to leave the taquería wasn’t the only issue El Califa de León faced after being recognized by the Michelin Guide. The influx of customers brought problems with neighboring restaurant owners and the street vendors out front. “They went to the city hall and complained. And since this place runs like a mafia, you either fall in line or you fall in line,” says Hernández. His employees had to implement a new system to manage the waiting line.

The sidewalk along Ribera de San Cosme Avenue is wide — about a meter and a half separates the entrances of the premises from the street vendors. Between them, a corridor forms for foot traffic heading toward Insurgentes or Circuito Interior. Behind the vendors, there’s another meter and a half of sidewalk. Now the queue forms here, next to the bike lane. It then curves, weaving between two vendor stands, and the line breaks. The next person steps up in front of the grill, along with seven or eight others. El Califa de León is a small space. There’s no place to sit.

“We entered into negotiations [with the neighboring shop owners]. At first, it was difficult, but we helped them understand that success is contagious — it spills over, it generates,” says Hernández. One of the neighboring businesses added a few tables so customers could sit and eat, while others started selling hoodies, t-shirts, and caps featuring the taquería and the Michelin man — white, round, and jolly.

On May 16, 2024, when Michelin awarded them the star and a swarm of journalists came to speak with Hernández, he said it felt like a dream he didn’t want to wake up from. “It was a phrase that just came to me in the moment,” he recalls wistfully. “The dream continues. If God gives me the chance, I want to earn another star. I’m also thinking about expanding the business — mainly to the United States. And why not? Madrid, London, Paris. Dreams do come true.”

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Earth’s water may be the result of one of the worst known cataclysms. About four billion years ago, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune changed orbits and triggered a devastating rain of asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies into the inner solar system, where they crashed into the Moon, Earth, and the rest of the rocky planets. These astronomical bombs — the scars of which are still visible on our Moon — were loaded with ice. Many astronomers believe that much of our planet’s water has this extraterrestrial origin, and that is arrived at the crucial moment for life to emerge for the first time.

Now, a team of astronomers has discovered — for the first time — crystalline water ice in a young star system beyond our Sun. The frozen water lies within a so-called debris disk — a massive ring of dust and rock — orbiting HD 181327, a star located 155 light-years away that is similar to our Sun. The discovery is important evidence that what happened in our own solar system could happen everywhere else in the universe.

“In this star, we are seeing our own past,” says Spanish astronomer Noemí Pinilla-Alonso, co-author of the study. The work was made possible thanks to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which captured the light emitted by the debris disk and identified the molecules present. The work was published on Wednesday in Nature, a leading journal for top-tier global science.

Until now, water ice had only been confirmed on some of the moons of the giant planets, as well as on dwarf planets and other bodies in the Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond Neptune’s orbit. In 2012, the Hubble Space Telescope had already hinted at the presence of ice in HD 181327, but could not confirm it. The extraordinary capabilities of the infrared instruments aboard James Webb, launched in 2021, have now confirmed the presence of this essential compound beyond any doubt.

Astronomers believe that the debris ring observed around this star could be very similar to the one that existed around the Sun before the giant planets cleared their orbits. The star is only 23 million years old — a brief period compared to the 4.6 billion years of our Sun — and its disk is about three times larger than the Kuiper Belt, extending about 18 billion kilometers.

“Ice on Earth is crystalline; it forms under the right conditions to take on a hexagonal shape,” explains Pinilla-Alonso. “Amorphous ice, on the other hand, forms rapidly and therefore doesn’t have time to organize itself. This is the most common type of ice in the universe. Curiously, in the Kuiper Belt, the James Webb Telescope has shown us that all objects with water contain crystalline water, of the same type now detected in HD 181327, something we didn’t know before and are trying to explain.”

The James Webb Telescope has also allowed scientists to observe the so-called snowline: the boundary beyond which all elements are in the form of ice. In the areas closest to the star, the presence of frozen water is almost nonexistent due to the heat, while in the more distant areas, ice makes up as much as 20% of the total composition.

Astronomers believe that the bodies orbiting within the ring are colliding with each other and generating larger bodies that may eventually become planets. These impacts also scatter millimeter-sized ice particles throughout the system. The presence of carbon monoxide has also been confirmed in this star, and possibly carbon dioxide, alongside essential minerals, explains Pinilla-Alonso, which also resembles our own system.

“We’re probably seeing things very similar to what happened at the origin of our own solar system,” explains Pinilla-Alonso. “Solar systems begin with the protoplanetary disk of dust and gas, then with debris disks like this one, and finally with the formation of planets. Webb has detected the presence of ice at all of these stages. Observing this disk, and likely others to come, allows us to understand the bridges between these different phases for the first time,” adds the astronomer, who has recently joined the University of Oviedo through the Atrae program.

Pinilla-Alonso co-authored the study along with colleagues from the University of Florida, the University of Arizona, and the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the James Webb.

Guillem Anglada, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), who was not involved in the study, highlights its significance. “It’s a very important discovery, although not entirely unexpected,” he argues.

Anglada focuses on the study of protoplanetary disks, and his team has confirmed the presence of ice in these rings using space-based and ground-based telescopes. When the star reaches its first million years, its radiation evaporates almost all the gas, leaving only dust, from which the debris disk forms.

 “This work shows quite clearly that there is a reservoir of ice in the outermost layers that is later spread thanks to the collision” of bodies of dust and rock, which are “continuously” impacting, says Anglada.

The snow line marks a crucial boundary. Ice-laden bodies pushed by giant planets can cross this boundary and end up colliding with rocky planets, forming oceans of liquid water. “This is what happened in our solar system, but it’s just a theory. We’re still far from knowing how it happens, and each case may be different,” Anglada warns.

A catastrophic event like that caused by the gas giants has not yet occurred on the star observed, but it is likely that it could. Preliminary studies suggest the presence of planets in this belt. And even if none existed, the authors of this new study estimate that they could form in about 100 million more years. Meanwhile, closer to home, researchers continue to gather data on the possible presence of a ninth planet in the solar system that could be disrupting the movement of icy bodies in the most remote areas of the Kuiper Belt.

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A SAILOR has recounted the ‘awe-inspiring’ moment a six-tonne orca targeted her vessel in the Strait of Gibraltar.

Speaking exclusively to the Olive Press, Ilona Skorobogatova described the experience as ‘a mix of adrenaline, respect, curiosity, and care.’

In a viral video on social media, the Latvian can be heard crying: “Oh my god, it’s huge! Please don’t! She’s bumping us, she’s trying to hit us to the side!”

Ilona and her skipper had been navigating a brand-new Lagoon 43 catamaran on a 4,000km journey from the French town of Les Sables-d’Olonne to Split in Croatia when the alert was sounded.

READ MORE: WATCH: Scientists are attaching cameras to orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar amid growing yachtie anger over dangerous ‘interactions’

“I had just come off watch, which runs from 3pm to 9am, and was lying down when I heard my skipper: ‘Ilona, I think we’ve got orcas’,” the 38-year-old began.

The interaction started around 10am on May 6 as the half-a-million-euro craft made its way past Barbate to port in Gibraltar.

A group of four orcas were spotted splashing around about half a kilometre out to sea, sending nerves up the spines of Ilona and the skipper.

READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Yachtie warns of killing orca ‘with a tear in my eye’ if dangerous interactions in the Strait of Gibraltar are not tackled this summer

But they stayed calm and maintained course, and for a time it seemed the huge creatures would keep their distance and leave them alone.

“Then suddenly, boom – a hit on the port side rudder,” Ilona recalled.

“We were inside the boat when we felt it, hard and fast. We powered both engines to keep control, get moving, and stay safe. 

READ MORE: WATCH: Vessels in the Strait of Gibraltar are being fitted with sharpened blades to the rudders to ward off critically-endangered orcas

“But she kept coming, swimming under the hull, hitting us again, starboard side this time.

“It was definitely a proper blow, not just a gentle nudge. I’d even say it felt very intentional – like she was really trying to hit the boat with force.”

The whale hit the boat with such force that Ilona had to ‘quickly grab something because the impact was loud and it jolted the whole boat.’

“You could feel the power behind it, it wasn’t just a light tap, it was a real hit.”

READ MORE: Dutch captain speaks of ‘scary moment’ when orcas attack yacht in Straits of Gibraltar off Spain’s coast

The creature then started pushing the catamaran with her full weight – ‘not ramming but shoving the us around – it felt surreal.’

The orca did ‘maybe four or five times over the course of about five to seven minutes – then she vanished.’

The once-in-a-lifetime experience left Ilona unsure whether it had been ‘play or attack’, with the curious creature only using just a fraction of its true might.

They hadn’t felt truly threatened in their sturdy boat, which at 13 metres in length and eight wide emerged unscathed from the orca’s attentions. 

“It was stressful and nerve-wracking, but also awe-inspiring. It was something wild and up-close, and something I’ll never forget.”

READ MORE: Exclusive: Endangered sperm whales are dying in the Strait of Gibraltar – as experts reveal ‘biggest culprit’

Curiously, Ilona believes that the orca which struck them was different from the small group she had spotted initially.

“She came from a completely different direction around 20 minutes later, so it definitely felt like a different orca, not part of the original group we first spotted.”

After it was all over, marine conservation experts from Sea Shepherd France on a routine patrol appeared, checking that they were okay and the orca was unharmed.

Ilona stressed that she ‘understands the fear and frustration many sailors feel, as some boats have been seriously damaged and a few have even been sunk.’

“If you’re out there and your rudder’s gone and your hull’s compromised, that’s terrifying. 

“So I don’t judge anyone who wants to avoid orcas at all costs, it’s a valid fear.

“But at the same time, I think we need to keep a sense of perspective. The number of encounters is still small compared to the thousands and thousands of sailors who pass through without incident.

“I’m fully aware that when we sail through areas like the Strait of Gibraltar, we’re entering their world. It’s where they hunt, where they live, and where they raise their young.”

Ilona underlined that she only has ‘deep admiration and respect’ for the orcas, adding: “They’re absolutely magnificent, intelligent, powerful, and beautiful. 

“I hold a deep love for the ocean and every creature in it. Knowing that orcas are endangered in some regions only makes that respect stronger.”

And she offered her utmost support for the ‘scientists, researchers, and conservationists who are trying to understand why these interactions are happening.’

“That’s the key: not panic or blame, but understanding.

“This experience just deepened my love for the ocean,” she concluded.

“Encounters like this remind us that we’re not alone out there. We’re part of something vast and wild and sacred. And that’s exactly how it should be.”