Parripollo
We shouldn't be too hard on such people. After all, up north, restaurants are either expensive or they're some kind of fast food franchise. In either case, the facilities are slick and the product predictable.
Not so in Mexico. Here it's a rare restaurant that has anything like a reassuring appearance. An inexpensive place might be housed in a converted auto lube bay, poorly lit by a few hanging light bulbs and furnished with a half-dozen dented sheet metal tables. Places like that scream to us ex-suburbanites: "Stay away! Stay away!"
Yesterday, my friend Patty took me to one of her favorite restaurants, out on the Dolores highway. The name is Parripollo, a play on parrilla (grill) and pollo (chicken). So you don't have to ask what's on the menu.
Doesn't look like much, does it? I must have driven by it dozens of times and not given it a second look.
It appears to be a converted private home, it has simply awful graphics in its sign, nor does the standard-issue Corona sign help. And they really need to lose the orange and green fence.
Patty parks her red pickup truck out in front. We seat ourselves at the lone table under the front porch roof and order starters.
What we have on the left here is queso fundido. In places like New York where they're trying to regulate fats in restaurant food, queso fundido simply won't do. It's melted cheese. You scoop up a glob of it with the wooden paddle and smear it on a tortilla. Add some incandescent salsa and scarf it on down. Then listen to your heart laboring. But Oh! Is it good.
On the right, we have repollo con oregano (we'd call it cole slaw) and cebollas flamadas (onion dyed with mild red vinegar). Added to our cheesy tortillas, they make the queso fuindido experience a little less unhealthy-feeling.
Next up comes an order of cecina: thin sliced salted beef grilled until crunchy.
You crumble it with a fork (with good friends you use your fingers) and put it in a tortilla along with beans, guacamole, repollo con oregano, cebollas flamadas, and salsa in any combination that suits you.
Our main course was chicken grilled over mesquite. I should have photographed it as well, but by the time it came, I was so into eating all that wonderful food that I just plain forgot. It's a small loss: grilled chicken pretty much looks like grilled chicken. But it was possibly the best tasting grilled chicken I've ever eaten: juicy, smoky, flavored with a perfect marinade.
I forbore including a photo of Patty with her tortilla in her mouth, to avoid embarrassing her and most importantly, so she'll invite me to lunch again.
Note that she has no fork or plate in front of her. Real Mexicans don' need no plates. They've got tortillas, which is all you'll ever need to get food from the serving plate to your mouth.