is it just me?

I had been hearing about a new Mexican restaurant in town. It is a taqueria and I was told it was authentic. Being a beaner at heart, on Friday evening I decided it would be a fun adventure to go somewhere new and check it out. So we packed baby Liz into the car, and headed over there. If 'authentic' means 'suspicious health practices' then this place is straight out of Guadalajara. It was totally empty when we arrived, and I will admit we actually walked right by and tried to decide if we were up for sitting in this weird empty restaurant. But I really, really love tacos so we decided to give it a shot. In the front you can sit at a counter, which looked nice but counters and babies don't really mix, so they pointed to some tables in the back where we could put a highchair. To get there you have to kind of walk through the kitchen, which I would rather avoid at any establishment, but particularly this one. And then we get into the back which is a teeny space filled with two tables, two giant refrigerators, and a suspicious room with swinging doors. The floor was covered in cardboard, and you could see...um...food products on the ground. So now I was in a dilemma. Was I willing to risk food poisoning for some (clearly extremely) authentic tacos? Or would I grab the baby and run? I decided to look at the menu, and immediately filled with nostalgia I felt like I was back in Mexico. And I was hungry.

So, we ordered. I spent the entire meal watching this guy haul giant metal tubs full of raw meat around, presumably to be cut up into taco sized pieces. And I'll admit, when they first set my plate of sopes in front of me, I was not the least bit sure I wanted to eat them. I had made sure that nothing I owned even touched the floor, and here I was about to eat? But I reminded myself that cooking gets most of the bad stuff out, right? I am sure everything would be fine. (Famous last words.) And the food was delicious. Really. Very Mexican, though much larger and therefore harder to fit in my mouth. Baby Lizard snacked on her quesadilla, though it was not my proudest moment when the waitress walked out to the table and baby Liz yelled "CHIPS!" which of course she was carrying but proved that we probably eat too much Mexican food. Anyway, no one got sick and everyone got full and I got a ridiculous amount of food and drink for my $17. So, I recommend it. However, I also recommend sitting in the front at the counter. Trust me. It's better for everyone.

While sitting there I was reminded of when I got sick when I was living in Mexico. I had been staying with a host family, and we went on a trip down to the coast. The first day there I started feeling ill. By day two I hadn't eaten in a while and was running a hellacious fever. I could not keep anything in my stomach. I got progressively sicker, and then we had to be evacuated from Hurricane Mitch. This ended up being no easy feat and we left the coast stuffed in to the back of a truck that belonged to some lobster fisherman and smelled strongly of gas. At this point, I was so ill that I slept through the trip despite the fact that people were smoking around gas cans and a really drunk guy kept grabbing my leg and saying "Somebody fell on me!". After the truck we had to get on a freezing cold bus and ride back to the city. When I went to the doctor it turned out I had a serious case of salmoneleosis (? I think glorified food poisoning, but the kind that lives on inside of you and makes you feel like death). When I returned to my host family several lbs lighter and much worse for wear, my host mother insisted that I had gotten sick from (no kidding) 'fear of the hurricane' but I personally am sticking with my chicken prepared on dirty wooden board theory.

Unfortunately, I remembered this whole incident while watching the worker squirrel meat into his tiny cubby, which definitely impinged upon my ability to enjoy the food at the new taqueria. But next time I will go and sit in the front and try to pretend the rest of it never happened. Because I really, really love a good taco.