Sanborns
03/17/09 08:05 AM Filed in: Mexico
Sanborns. No apostrophe. In Spanish, apostrophes aren’t used to indicate possessives.
I think of Sanborns as the Denny’s of Mexico. A family restaurant serving nondescript breakfasts, lunches and dinners, it was founded more than a century ago by the Sanborn brothers, two entrepreneurial Californian immigrants. Most of Sanborns’ 150 or so restaurants and cafés are housed in strip-mall-ugly storefronts, but in 1919, their most famous store was opened in the 16th-century Casa de los Azulejos (House of Tiles) in the historical center of Mexico City. It is now a popular tourist attraction.
Having been around for so many years, the restaurant figures into the history of the Mexican revolution. This old photograph purportedly was taken of some of Emiliano Zapata’s soldiers breakfasting at Sanborns.
Excuse me, Señor. Could you pass me the sugar? Not long ago, Laura and I stopped in here, killing time before a flight out of Mexico City Airport. Our fellow diners that day seemed a darn sight tamer than those Zapatistas. Just a bunch of middle class chilangos enjoying Sunday brunch.
Diners sit under a glass roof in a courtyard three stories high. Antique hanging lamps augment natural sunlight, their beauty only slightly diminished by dangling posters hawking some holiday meal special. Stone columns, dark varnished furniture and a fantasy landscape mural complete the setting. When it comes to murals, Sanborns has a jewel: a José Clemente Orozco masterpiece called Omnicience. It graces the door leading to the restrooms.
If you are a Mexican woman of a certain age and temperament, you are qualified to wait tables at Sanborns. Men need not apply. The waitresses are unvaryingly courteous, quick, and professional—from their frilly white blouses to their swirling full skirts.
They wear odd wing-like collars, held in place with safety pins. Angels of coffee, maybe. The menu is unflinchingly Mexican. My breakfast consisted of huevos revueltos (scambled eggs) con frijoles y aguacate. Corn tortillas were included, of course, along with fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee. The meal cost a little more than a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast, but delivered more food and better quality. These pictures from Sanborns’ catering menu give some idea of what many middle-class Mexicans look for at Sanborns. On the left, we have chicharron en salsa verde con habas peladas—fried pork skin in green sauce with shelled broad beans. I myself like the flavor and texture of chicharrones en salsa, but whenever I eat some, I get an uneasy feeling that I’m destroying what’s left of my cardiovascular system.
The candy playing card encrusted thing on the right is a Father’s Day cake, large enough to serve seventy people. That Sanborns would offer such a product in a color catalog speaks to the nature of Mexican families. It’s entirely normal that large extended families frequently get together to celebrate one thing or another, and so might need a festive cake. By contrast, my family is so small and so scattered that we couldn’t get even close to seventy people together for a party. The Sanborn brothers are long gone. Today, Carlos Slim controls the company that owns the restaurant chain. And Sanborns itself has grown tentacles: it controls the Mexican branches of Tower Records and Sears. Chain restaurant food is like sit-com television: geared to offend the smallest number of people, avoiding anything that might lend some interest. But to a footsore traveler in an unfamiliar city, the Sanborns logo signals the presence of a familiar and welcome oasis, where there’s scrambled eggs and coffee, and the energy to continue exploring.
|