My son from time to time, knowing my obsession over food stuff and food activities, thinks to ask me what my favorite food is. Of course, at that very moment, it is impossible to think of just one thing. Favorite foods, like picking a favorite restaurant, are so subjective, based on such things as the time of day and how carb-deprived you may be right then when asked the question, as to be completely arbitrary.
For example, a great restaurant experience, such as I had at Barley Swine last week, could be so spectacular because of a number of reasons: a bad day made good, the unexpectedness of it, the really cute male wait staff in their jeans and black shirts and the loving way in which they described the kick ass, gorgeous food (such as those paper-thin sliced watermelon radishes....oh....see below), and the timing of the seating at the bar. Whatever. Yet, that same experience, my guy friend who had gone with me one week later would not even remember where we ate. There are many problems with this, but we won't go there.
Note the lovely "watermelon radish." It's the thing that looks like a watermelon.
Yet on New Year's Day, I would, after an exhilarating bike ride on a chilly day in Austin under icy blue skies and a wind that made the hills really hurt, join my friend Melissa and her husband for (late) breakfast. The choices were Peruvian brunch or "Mexican Dive."
I hoped they would pick the spaceship restaurant on a freeway frontage road. They did. Los Jalisciences, Taqueria No. 3. And there, amidst the spectacular hot sauce and another spicy green avocado like sauce, and a basket of those thick chips, not the flimsy flaky lightweight chips, and the Christmas glitter, shiny decorations and posters, and the jukebox playing a tune every now and then, I recalled one of my favorite foods of all time: Mexican Breakfast.
(Now, when you drive up to this type of building, you just know you are in for a good food time.
The pool for the motel is just off to the right.
The fact that Melissa, teacher of global cuisines and master of all things Mexican cuisine related (or maybe Oaxaca-related is more accurate), approves (at least when the kitchen as their A game on), and says that the hot sauce is "really good," well, I'm in.)
The only really hard question was what to order of the classics:
Migas, Chilaquiles, or Huevos Mexicanos.
There were plenty of other choices, but for me these are the only real options if you're having Mexican Breakfast.
Which reminds me that this love is longstanding and well-documented - way back to the late 1980s. Much like my French family in Tours for my Junior Year in France program introductory phase to Paris - who first called me "gourmande" - the family I stayed with in Cuernavaca, Mexico when getting some extra help for Spanish proficiency for my M.A. in Latin American Studies, found my love for Mexican Breakfast very endearing. I don't recall the Spanish word for "gourmande" being used. I do recall an extra helping of tortillas and maybe more huevos being put on my plate....I think they just loved how much I loved breakfast. And love it, enthusiastically and vocally, I did.
The ladies from Ohio staying there with me at this house for our study program were aghast at the spiciness. They spooned on the homemade salsa very, very carefully, if at all. Me? I was over the moon. The purpose of chips and of these eggs was, seriously, just to soak up this treat of homemade Mexican salsa, in Mexico, in this house of great generosity and kindness - and great food. So when Ohio Ladies said "No more, no mas," I said "Si si, me gusta muchisimo. More please!"
At Los Jalisciences, I ordered the chilaquiles, recalling another M.A. culinary experience in the late 1980s of having chilaquiles, with chicken, at a journalism professor's house. What's not to love about thick, homemade strips of tortillas, soaking up tomatillo salsa, for, like hours, and then cheese and chicken layered in there. Melissa enlightens me that although I ordered huevos for my chilaquiles, the classic chilaquiles dish is just using leftover tortilla strips and mixing in the salsa, over and over, until the tortilla strips have soaked up the sauce.
Really, could I have ordered anything worse when I had just hidden the bread knife to keep me away from the Poilane bread in my recommitment to low-carb? No. But order them I did, enjoyed them I did, and then much enjoyed reminiscing with Melissa about the late 1980s when I first met her and all the great food memories since.
I did not eat for the rest of the day.
Comments