In my hometown of Castro Valley, occupying prime real estate within the Castro Village shopping center, a Mexican restaurant named Don Jose's dishes out their unique brand of cuisine from South of the Border. It is, to put it succinctly, a terrifying journey into the heart how bad "professionally" prepared food can get. I think it only ever got business because CV residents came in droves to get hammered at its margarita bar, though I've heard the food has improved enough in recent years to warrant a visit as long as one keeps expectations down to Earth. My traumatic last visit some time ago to Don Jose's involved a plate of nachos smothered in very dry, stringy chicken, off-color guacamole and ballpark-quality nacho "cheese". You know, the stuff that comes in an industrial use two gallon tin can. To call it a grotesque perversion of one of my old comfort foods wouldn't be going far enough.
Tito's on E.14th in San Leandro was the only other ostensibly Mexican eatery to ever approach Don Jose's abominable culinary abortions...until yesterday. I haven't typically been eating lunch in SF after my morning shift for KQED's pledge drive thanks simply to the appetite suppressing powers in a cup of Farley's strong stuff, but I knew I'd be tooling around the city until the evening pledge shift began and it seemed reasonable to keep myself fueled until free food came my way. The Mission having its reputation as a Mecca for cheap, tasty Mexican being what it is I felt I would peel away from the norm of El Farrolito or Taqueria Cancun and try something new. Deeper into the neighborhoods east of Mission St. I found...you know, I'd better not say its name lest the owners hire thugs to hunt me for sport. I'll leave it nameless and say that you should avoid the Mexican restaurant on 21st and Treat.
It looked like any other innocuous divey Mission taqueria with its gaudy plastic flowering vines, maps of Guatemala and metal chairs stolen straight from a Catholic church pot luck all parked beneath formica-clad pressboard tables. No cause for alarm, really. I ordered a combo plate featuring beef flautas and settled in with my book, but was distracted when a Mexican builder with extensive tattoos went out to his Ford Econoline van (parked fully on the sidewalk and practically blocking the restaurant's entryway) and gunned the sickly engine full bore. The deafening mechanical clacking of a grossly mistimed engine made my ears bleed while the exhaust shooting into the door simultaneously choked me. This goes on for fifteen seconds or so, but it's OK, everyone in the place is having a great laugh at it.
A day laborer walks into the eatery apparently looking for work. I can't understand him, but he sounds respectful. There's plenty of "señor" and "por favor" peppered around. The owner then seems to lay into the man with a vengeance and the laborer slowly turns on his heels and exits, stopping once to look back at the owner with a face filled full of pity and the deepest contempt. Very uncomfortable for me.
And then the star of the show: my food. The flautas were filled with the stringiest, gristliest beef I have every eaten, no hyperbole. The rice tasted like it had soap in it. The beans were fine. The menu indicated a side of sour cream and indeed a little porcelain cup of white gelatinous stuff was brought out, but it wasn't sour cream. It was mayo. What. The. Hell.
Without a word or a hint of a facial expression I paid $8.11 for the meal(?) and left. I must have got through something like fifteen pages of my book. Don't remember a thing about it.
During the KQED evening pledge shift my stomach felt like it wanted to claw its way out of my body and check into the hospital, I felt so bad. The starchy and delicious mac n' cheese we had catered took the edge off somehow, but the feeling of dread among my internal organs didn't abate until around 11PM.
I don't want to be dependent on Yelp to make my culinary decisions for me. What a terrible way to live life, never risking anything and only going with the flow. This may have been one exception, however, as my Yelp search turns up, this place's taco window is rated an unbelievable-to-me 5-stars! There are a couple possibilities: first is that Yelp users can not be trusted, which is entirely possible; and next is that their tacos are brilliant while everything else falls flat, or craters violently. I, for one, will never be returning, thank you very much.
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One final bit. I was rudely peering over some dude's shoulder on BART yesterday while he read the op/ed page from...some national newspaper and saw this political 'toon. It pissed me off, needless to say. Having hope is fine, but the nation and indeed the world can't just foist their dreams and wishes onto a single man's shoulders then sit back and expect them to be made reality. From the moment the ballots indicated a win for Obama that's what has happened across the globe, nobody seeming to understand that the man is not a deity or a magician who can gesture away the evils of the world and herald in a golden age. It takes the strength and brains of millions to move such mountains--right now about half of America lacks a shred of the latter. If the artist's intent was to indicate the loss of hope because of the current state of healthcare reform then he's missed the mark. Don't confuse the lunatic attacks on reform by ignorant mouth-breathers with some non-existent loss of hope or effectiveness in the administration. If anything, I for one am losing hope (I mean, moreso than my nominal levels of contempt for the homophobes, racists and chicken fried steak-eating masses) in the intelligence of the American people to participate in politics when they continually rally against their own interests (the current healthcare "debate" being just the tip of that iceberg).
Getcher head out of your ass, America.
--Matt
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