And something on waiters from Houston..
Tag: style?
Mariachi Grill
It’s owned by Colombians. Who know little about Mexican food. The place is nice (table cloths, multiple stemware, multiple forks, and they have a decent bunch of mariachis..)
However, the puerco chile verde seemed like the pork had been precooked (and not in the salsa verde), the frijoles y arroz were so-so and they had that ridiculous “solamente en Richmond” white glop as a sauce. I ask again, whose idea was this? Even the mejicanas who are the meseras are baffled by it. Porque?
The meal wasn’t bad, but El Vaquero does much better.. here’s the plate I had.
The mariachis did know some obscure tunes and I put something in their tip jar. That was pleasant.
But the place is pretty gringoized. Lots of synthetic looking margaritas. Ergh.
Too many ads, Herr Mozart!
The current issue of STYLE WEAKLY killed a passel of trees. It’s nearly as big as a phone book and (I’ll guess) 75% of the content is ads.
And MEXICO best in RVA? Hijole! Glop city.
Foodies are Punks. (The Gourmand)
(From The Paris Review) ::
The term *foodie* is an infantilism.. it’s a diminutive; the sort of term that a child would use, like doggie or duckie. Or kiddie-winkie.
Serially, folks:
One could do a PORTLANDIA for any city with a “scene”. I lived in Austin for 20 years and in Richmond, VA for 21. Clueless hipsters are nothing new, kids.
Linklater’s SLACKER did not have the big yucks that PORTLANDIA does, though. Or the budget.
& Richmond claims to be the third most tattooed city in the US. This is probably due to all of the trust fund kiddies who spend their patrimony on skin “ort”. Too many layabouts.
Spelling TACO with a “que?”
The letter K! is seldom used. Taco is hardly a loanword…
Spanish uses the Latin alphabet like most European languages, but the letter K is used only in a handful of loanwords to represent the sound usually written as C or QU.
Back from KCMO (again) & ASK A MEXICAN.
OK, folks, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one can get a go-cup of menudo at panaderias (Mexican bakeries) in Kansas City. And the panaderias don’t use that foul tasting excuse for shortening that the folks at Sabrosita use. (Was it aviation lubricant from the days of the Contra incursion? It really tastes synthetic. Ikk.)
Here’s a photo from Bonito Michoacan, a Mexican grocery, meat market, & eatery in Kansas City, KS.
You guys crack me up. Arguing about big-boxing the Fan. I’m sure very few of you have cruised down Jeff Davis and gone to Big Apple Market (a ‘hispanic” market run by Koreans). I’ve suggested this but some of you think you need to hire Blackwater operatives to go to the non-bolillo (non-whitebread) parts of this burg.
I can’t wait until ASK A MEXICAN shows up in STYLE WEAKLY. But I’ll have crossed the Mississippi by then.
Die, Foodie, die!
Being a “foodie” is so over. (snork)
from Jason Sheehan (a former chef, now a food writer in Seattle):
Patrick wrote a post, collecting his thoughts about Mexican food, quote-unquote traditional cuisine and foodies. In it, he decided that what was needed was a movement–a revolution, albeit a small one. He wrote:
“At the core, a strong belief in local ingredients, deconstructed classics, or authentic flavors scores a win for most restaurant-goers. It’s tempting to take the foodie philosophy and expand it to all restaurants and markets. As review sites like Yelp and Urbanspoon expand, diners have become more critical (myself included) and more resistant to eateries that go against the grain of New American, French styled, locally grown/caught/farmed cuisine…Traditional has become a euphemism for unchanging, which in the context of the foodie fight for authenticity, seems contradictory. Do foodies want locally produced goods or authentic spices found only in Mexico? Should a restaurant try a French technique on an Irish dish or only boil down vegetables into a stew? Should we deconstruct meatloaf?”
Preach it, brother. Bring it on home…
“Therefore, I put out a call to all open-minded eaters. Join me in the anti-foodie movement. Rather than project our vision of food onto the restaurants, take food on its own terms. We are in America-nothing we produce here can be completely of another place. Even the most “authentic” Mexican food in California is from California…Anti-foodie is not about hating on the foodies. We are all still foodies-this is a foodie post if there has ever been. I will still go to Chez Shea and love the carefully constructed courses. I will continue to marvel at Art of the Table’s ability to improvise based on the daily catch and kitchen leftovers. Of course I would still thoroughly enjoy an evening at Crush, sitting in modern chairs I would never have in my house, but are surprisingly comfortable and the perfect spot to enjoy a dish.
But that doesn’t mean stepping away from the Tex-Mex, Teriyakis, and fried chickens of the world. We live in Seattle, one of the best food cities in the country. The restaurants here have a history all their own and their unique styles provide the variety we crave (it’s the spice of life, right?). It might be a good time to step back and see the context in which we eat food.
Frankie Laine & Judas Priest/Doris Day (or “How Lovely Cooks the Meat”)
Here’s a bit of music from a different time and place. It’s got a lot of feeling, don’t you think? Maybe Bobby Flay and Paula Deen could use this as a theme song; or Bourdain & Sandra Lee.
Chickenfoot Soup 