Burger Lounge

The 16th-century Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado (c. 1510-1554) was serving as governor of an important province in New Spain (Mexico) when he heard reports of the so-called Seven Golden Cities located to the north. He followed the Sinaloan coast northward, keeping the Gulf of California on his left to the west until he reached the northernmost Spanish settlement in Mexico, San Miguel de Culiacán , about March 28, 1540, whereupon he rested his expedition before they began trekking the inland trail.

However, thirty-nine years later when the Spanish again visited the Southwestern United States, they found little evidence that Vázquez de Coronado dining in coronado san diego had any lasting cultural influences on the Indians except for their surprise at seeing several light-skinned and light-haired Puebloans.

Vázquez de Coronado set out from Compostela on February 23, 1540, at the head of a much larger expedition composed of about 400 European men-at-arms (mostly Spaniards ), 1,300 to 2,000 Mexican Indian allies, four Franciscan friars (the most notable of whom were Juan de Padilla and the newly appointed provincial superior of the Franciscan order in the New World, Marcos de Niza ), and several slaves, both natives and Africans.

This French-inspired bistro, located in the iconic, circa 1889 Carez Hizar House on Loma Avenue, serves rustic dishes to transport you back to the Old World with locally produced ingredients, assuring you enjoy the greatest flavors of Southern California.

One component carried the bulk of the expedition's supplies, traveling via the Guadalupe River and Gulf of California under the leadership of Hernando de Alarcón 3 The other component traveled by land, along the trail on which Friar Marcos de Niza had followed Esteban.

A string of Indian settlements built near what is now west-central New Mexico (near the Arizona border) by the Zuni Pueblo tribes inspired tales of the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola, the mythic empire of riches that Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was seeking in his expedition of 1540-42.