Yearly Archives: 2012

The Bomb Fried Pies

Posted on by Bill Chance

I was talking to Raffealel from Gennarino’s Food Truck Saturday about how often they set up in Dallas. He said, “We come here to Sigel’s about one a month and always set up with The Bomb Fried Pies.”

“Oh,” I said, “That sounds good – I’ll have to get some dessert once I’ve finished my calzone.”

“Do that,” Raffealel said, “She’s a great person.”

Of course, I had already noticed the pink trailer with the blue bomb hanging overhead and already had plans to grab a couple of fried pies. I had heard of The Bomb Fried Pies before but this was my first time to get a chance for a visit.

Two new food trucks at one shot – that’s a good day for me.

So I went back and chatted with Brenda Barnhart, the owner. She said she was going to set up at the Wildflower Festival in Richardson – my family loves that. She is from Mesquite, where I used to live. As a matter of fact, I’ve since found out that she is the next-door neighbor of my sister-in-law.

Her trailer is a pretty pink little thing – a rebuilt 1965 Shasta – and is covered with interesting little details. The bomb is a Navy Practice Bomb and everything is pulled by a restored 1960 classic red Ford Sunliner.

Like everyone that has a food truck business in Dallas, she bemoans the difficulty of finding good places to set up. Hopefully, with time the city and the suburbs will become more used to the idea and realize that a good selection of portable gourmet food trucks is a modern essential to an active street life.

I told her about Anthony Bourdain’s idea that food trucks are really an alternative to fast food rather than competition to quality brick and mortar restaurants.

“Yeah and McDonalds sells their fried pies for a buck and I charge three,” she said.

“But that’s a whole different kettle of fish,” I said.

And it was. I bought a cherry and an apricot pie, and they were much better than McDonalds – I assure you. The crust was thin and crispy, fresh, and the filling was sweet and fruity. The Bomb also had a Fried Guacamole and a Fried Ham and Cheese, but I wasn’t hungry enough for that.

The only downside is I tried to eat my apricot pie while driving to the Mockingbird DART station and got stuff all over everything. Those pies are really too good to waste eating while doing something else. You need to sit still and enjoy the experience.

To find where The Bomb Fried Pies is setting up next:

Go to the Facebook Page

Food truck review: The Bomb Fried Pies & Fried Guacamole

Interview: Brenda Barnhart of The Bomb Fried Pies

The Bomb Fried Pies & Guacamole Trailer Hits the Festival Circuit. Next Stop, Oak Cliff.

Fried Pies and Food Trucks: Bless Us Baby Jesus

If you look quick in this video, you can see The Bomb trailer.

Gennarino’s

Posted on by Bill Chance

I surfed through Twitter and Facebook, looking for stuff to do today, and found a Food Truck I had never tried before, Gennarino’s set up on the Siegel’s Parking lot down on Upper Greenville, just north of Lover’s.

Gennarino’s is a Friggitoria, which is Italian for a place that sells fried foods. In this case, it’s a truck that mostly sells things made out of fried pizza dough. Their menu specializes in Neapolitan street food.

It is a large and unique menu. There is a poster with photographs of:

Zeppoline Salate – Neapolitan fried dough bites

Panzarotti – Potato croquettes

Zeppolone – A panzarotto inside of a giant zeppola

Arancino Rosso – Traditional tomato risotto ball made with yummy Bolognese sauce

Arancino Giallo – Saffron risotto ball

Polentine – Fried polenta triangles

Timballo Rosso – Handheld spaghetti and meatballs

Timballo Bianco – Handheld fettuccine Alfredo

Pizza Fritta – Fried dough topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese

There was no way I was going to be able to make up my mind. There were a few folks standing around a tall table eating and I asked, “What’s good today?”

One woman (I think it was Raffealel’s wife – one of the owners) pointed out the specials, so I ordered a Calzone, something I was familiar with. I was able to chat with Raffealel for a bit about the food truck business and how they started (three brothers and Raffealel’s wife) and where he liked to set up. This truck runs out of Irving, which is why I hadn’t seen them before. He said he was doing mostly lunch business outside of office buildings in Los Colinas. He was very friendly and I really enjoyed talking to him, so when you visit his truck, be sure and say hello.

They had a couple of tall stand-up tables set up outside the truck which was nice – it’s always frustrating when you get your food and don’t have a place to eat it. My calzone was great. The fried dough was very crisp and light and not too greasy at all. It was a delicious treat, not like eating a football, which a lot of calzone’s feel like.

I wish Gennarino’s ran in Dallas more often. I’d like a chance to work my way through their extensive selection – that fried spaghetti and meatballs looks good, so does the pizza, and I’d like to bite into that Zeppolone (I always like something inside something else).

How to track them down:

Gennarino’s Facebook

Gennarino’s Twitter

Good food makes for happy customers.

Raffealel and his brother. They were great.

I have no idea what this means, but it looks cool.

My Calzone... excellent.

Raffealel out helping a customer with the menu.

Gennarino’s

Breaking Down the Menu: Dallas’ First Friggitoria

Sneak preview of Gennarino’s food truck

Interview: The Raineri family of Gennarino’s food truck

Food truck review: Gennarino’s

I can’t wait to try Gennarino’s Food Truck

Fried Pizza from a Truck

Gennarino’s is Ready to Roll like a Friggitoria

Shit Dallas People Say

Posted on by Bill Chance

If you don’t live here this won’t make sense. Now, if you’ve been reading my blog you might recognize a few things, but otherwise, nah.

But if you are from Dallas, this is hilarious.

I loved it, even though it didn’t have my favorite Dallas saying. That’s, “Well, you start out driving on Beltline.”  Everything (including my house) is right off Beltline Road. I can be on a freeway fifty miles from my house and see a Beltline Exit sign. One weekend I’m going to drive the entire Beltline Road (it is a loop, surprise) – it might take two days.

Others that I hear(or say) that aren’t on the video:

  • “I get nosebleeds if I go north of George Bush.”
  • “I remember when the West End was cool.”
  • “Nobody rides DART to the fair, it’s too crowded.”
  • “Ugh, the water tastes awful, the lakes must have turned over.”
  • “Should we take LBJ or George Bush.”
  • “Should we go Woodall Rogers or the Mixmaster?”
  • “Central’s all red, better take Greenville.”
  • “There a wreck on 75, better take Coit.”
  • “Stay away from 30, the Zipper is busted.”
  • “I had to bail her out of Lou Sterrett”
  • I don’t remember if it’s in Rockwall or Rowlett.”
  • “Pho Pasteur has the best Pho.”
  • “Bistro B has the best Pho.”
  • “Pho Bac has the best Pho.”
  • “Pho Bang has the best Pho.”
  • “Pho Q  has the best Pho.”
  • “Pho King has the best Pho.”
  • “He lives in this old house, it’s been there almost twenty years.”
  • “They live in a Condo in Uptown.”
  • “Who lives in all these houses?”
  • “Let me borrow your DART pass.”
  • “Let me borrow your Toll Tag.”
  • “You can’t get to Deep Ellum from here.”
  • “Are we waiting for the Red or the Blue?”
  • “Whatever you do, don’t jaywalk in downtown”
  • “A coyote got their cat.”
  • “Back when Frisco was way out in the country.”
  • “Back when Southwest had free drinks.”
  • “I can’t believe you walked there.”
  • “Is the AC all the way up?”
  • “They need to hurry the hell up, they’re driving the speed limit.”
  • “That Mexican food place looks awful, their food must be great.”

At any rate, here it is:

What Dallas sayings do you have that you treasure/are completely sick of? What sayings do you hear every day where you are at?

What I learned this week, February 3, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

20 Procrastination Hacks

  1. Form a Do It Now habit.
  2. Do Your MIT first.
  3. 10-minute rule.
  4. Break it down.
  5. Love your work.
  6. 30-10.
  7. Set a deadline.
  8. Put public pressure on yourself.
  9. Reward yourself.
  10. Consider not doing it.
  11. Change to an “abundance mentality”.
  12. Clear away distractions.
  13. (10+2)*5.
  14. Procrastination dash.
  15. Track your time.
  16. Prepare yourself.
  17. Overcome your fears.
  18. Get a task-master
  19. Schedule it last-minute.
  20. Structured procrastination.

The Seven Most Penetratingly Brilliant Quotes Of All Time

“Nothing in life has any real meaning except the meaning you give it.” — Tony Robbins

“There’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.” — Young Guns

“There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” — Thomas Sowell

“Find something you love to do so much that you’d do it for free and find a way to make it into a career.” — Anonymous

“The last of human freedoms – the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” — Viktor E. Frankl

“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short time and time again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself a worthy cause; who if he wins knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt

“Your emotions are nothing but biochemical storms in your brain and you are in control of them at any point in time.” — Tony Robbins

This Is Why Your Employees Hate You

TIP #1: You have no idea what you’re doing

TIP #2: You’re a jerk

TIP #3: You’re a space-case

How to Write a Novel Step by Step

Effective Time Management Tips and Techniques for Busy People

Fake

Posted on by Bill Chance

You all know (or should know) that I have a weakness for and love of fountain pens. I am primarily a “user” rather than a “collector” – but still appreciate an aged and well-done writing instrument, as long as it has a nib.

I was looking at Amazon.com for some stuff and, off in the corner, I saw an ad that caught my eye. Usually I ignore web ads, but this one seemed aimed right at me.

It looked like The Parker Pen company, the venerable company that over the years has produced such legendary and wonderful fountain pens such as the Vacumatic and the Parker “51” has come up with a new pen – maybe some sort of advanced nib, or a revolutionary filling system. I was stoked.

So I clicked through the ad to the Parker Ingenuity, one of their “5th ink technology” pens. Something didn’t quite look right. So I did some digging and research and it didn’t take long for me to figure it out.

This wasn’t a fountain pen at all. It’s like a felt pen, with a metal hood stamped around it to make it look like a fountain pen.The actual writing surface is replaced with a new refill. It even has non-functional ribs to look like the ridges on a fountain pen feed. A typical model costs a little bit under two hundred dollars. It is obviously aimed at people that want to look like they carry a fountain pen – they want the cachet – but that don’t want inky fingers.

I know that you are going to get ink on your hands or worse when you carry a fountain pen. A pen with a nib is considered a “controlled leak” and I’ve learned to wipe off the pen and clean the inside of the cap when a pen has been lugged around where it can get a shock and shake ink out into the cap. Flying is a real problem – the reduced air pressure can cause a pen to spew ink (I carry an empty pen, an airtight case, and extra cartridges).

So I fully understand someone that wants to carry, for example, a rollerball – sometimes I think of it myself – though I say no… it seems unclean somehow. What bugs me is that they make it look like a fountain pen. A triangle with a slit in it is not a nib – a good nib is a wonderful piece of design, engineering, and manufacture. It is a delicate mechanism of steel, gold, and iridium designed to deliver a carefully controlled stream of ink in a smooth flow to a piece of paper.

A felt pen is useful and deserving of its existence – but don’t try to hide it behind a stamped piece of sheetmetal.

Oh, one other point – I am not a fan of pens that have metal sections – the part right in back of the nib, the place where your fingers grip. I don’t like the feel of cold chrome. Warm plastic, rubber, or ebonite is a better writing grip.

Now that I’ve ranted a bit… if anyone actually wanted to buy me one of those… well, that would be different.

It would be a gift.

The Dallas Wave

Posted on by Bill Chance

Sunday I hiked the mile or so from the Corinth DART station down through the Trinity River Bottoms on the new Santa Fe Trestle trail. Underneath the new/old bridge is another feature, the contentious Dallas Wave.

You see, in its constant struggle to become… what?… a real city, Dallas decided as part of its plans for developing the Trinity River Bottoms to put in a whitewater feature.

The Dallas Wave with a DART train going by overhead... and the skyline in the background. (click to enlarge)

Before it gets to the artificial rapids of the Dallas Wave the Trinity is a lazy, calm stretch of flat water.

The whitewater of the Dallas Wave with the lighted ball of Reunion Tower in the background.

The water is very high from recent rains - at least four feet above normal. The Standing Wave is almost completely drowned.

BTW, those of you in remote locales who might be wondering what I’m talking about – there’s a very familiar piece of footage I’m sure you have seen. The first few seconds of this introduction features a flyover of the Trinity River Bottoms.

At any rate, the city went ahead and put in their whitewater – basically sticking a couple of concrete dams and walls into the otherwise calm and lazy Trinity. The results don’t bode too well – the rest of the development is stalled for a decade or so because of Federal Regulations promulgated after Katrina. The Standing Wave was constructed and it ended up costing millions of dollars more than planned.

And now, the thing is closed. It turns out that it is too fast and dangerous for canoes to run. The sport kayakers seem happy with the thing, but other folks seem to think it’s a deathtrap.

Now that I’ve seen it in person, I have no opinion. The river was so high the lower wave was completely submerged and the upper wave mostly so. The water looked to be at least four feet deeper than in most of the photographs I’ve seen. It looked like a bunch of fast but navigable rapids to me.

So we’ll see. The lawsuits will fly, the construction will finish, and the water will keep on flowing. The river will always be the same, although with constantly different water.

Trinity River Project’s Standing Wave: Great, Now City Hall’s Trying to Kill Us

The Trinity River’s ‘Standing Wave’ Crashes into Reality

Drowning the Whistleblower on the Doomed Trinity River Wave

Dallas Wave park raises wasteful spending debate

$3.9M Dallas Wave Wipes Out

Dallas Wave whitewater park on the Trinity remains in limbo

Wave goodbye to the Dallas Wave opening

Despite all this, the Kayaking community have been enjoying the Dallas Wave for a year.

Pre-Super Bowl Party on the Dallas Standing Wave

Dallas paddlers get a taste of the Trinity River standing wave

Trinity Park Standing Wave Kayak Course

Born to Die

Posted on by Bill Chance

As I was thinking about leaving work to go home (I tend to work until I’ll too tired to do anything reliably well) I texted Candy if she needed anything from Target. She texted back that she wanted some reduced-fat graham crackers. Everything is so exciting in this – the best of all possible worlds.

I was going to stop at Target because today is when Lana Del Rey’s album dropped. I’ve been a fan for a while now and have written too much about her before. Still, I wanted the CD. I could have downloaded it from iTunes or Amazon, but… maybe I’m a bit of an old fart – but I still like to have something in my hands for my hard-earned money.

Plus, a little surfing at lunch told me that Target was selling the real, live, and solid Compact Disk for eight bucks – plus two bonus tracks. A pretty good deal. There were only two left when I got there.

So, do you want a review? How can you review music? Like always – Lana Del Rey is the kind of thing you will like if you like this kind of thing.

She is criticized for being fake – and she is. Her music is a lush laconic illusion. There isn’t much there, but there is a vision, however manufactured, and the vision is unique, entertaining and fun to listen to. In this age of the music “industry” what more can you expect? The title song starts with the words, “feet don’t fail me now.” I like that.

Christ, who knows what’s good and what isn’t in these days? I have a stack of albums that once meant a lot to me; I thought that the sounds from them were genius. I turned to these for solace during difficult times and now I can’t even listen to them anymore because they take me back to those times and I can feel the panic rising. I wish I was young and listening to Lana Del Rey – she is better if you don’t have to worry about anything. Shit, why waste time writing about something you don’t like? Life is way too short.

Here, I’ll list just a few of the WordPress blogs from the last few hours with a Lana Del Rey tag. Read ’em and make up your own mind, please, while I try to get some short story scenes pounded out, ride my exercise bike for a while, and listen to Born to Die on repeat.

Don’t listen to me, I couldn’t even find the reduced-fat graham crackers.

Oh, I do have one legitimate complaint… one of my favorite Del Rey works, Kinda Outta Luck, isn’t on the CD. Well, at any rate, here it is. For your pleasure.

 

Santa Fe Trestle Trail

Posted on by Bill Chance

A few weeks ago, looking around I found out about a trail that I had barely heard of nearing completion in Dallas. It isn’t very long and it goes nowhere, but it looks pretty cool.

When they built the DART rail line along the Santa Fe rail right-of-way going across the Trinity River into Oak Cliff, they constructed a new rail bridge over the river. They left the old Santa Fe iron trestle next to the new concrete bridge. Right from the first, there was talk of trying to preserve the old trestle, both the iron bridgework and the wooden timbers. It was decided to build a hike/bike trail over the old trestle. The first plans were to simply build the trail where the rails used to be, but the Corps of Engineers wanted to clear away the old wooden timber piers to allow debris to wash through during flood periods. So the design was modified with new big, curving, concrete approaches to the metal bridge over the river itself. Over the last few years construction continued, cleaning up the old bridge and putting the new trail causeways into the river bottoms.

I found notice that the construction was nearing completion and although it wasn’t officially open, but the trail was walkable. Sunday I wasn’t able to get some of the things done I had planned, but as the day went on, I was running out of time, but I guessed I would have time to go down and check out the trail as the sun set.

There is parking at the Corinth DART station and the entrance to the trail is across the street. It’s a short walk through the swampy river bottoms (there was a lot of water, mud, plus flotsam and jetsam from the recent heavy rains) and then the trail begins to rise along a long, curving elevated causeway. They are still working on the landscaping, but otherwise it looks pretty much finished.

The sun was setting as I reached the bridge itself. It was pretty cool – the path is wide and smooth and there are nice benches set along the way. I enjoyed watching the DART trains going by a few feet away and there are great views of the downtown skyline contrasted with the vast open areas of the Trinity River Bottoms.

The entrance to the trail near the Corinth DART station.

A view of the Dallas Skyline from the trail. (click to enlarge)

The trestle trail going over the Trinity River.

A DART train rumbles by with the biking/hiking trail in front. (click to enlarge)

I didn’t stick around very long – this is not the part of town you want to be hanging out in after dark. As I was walking back to my car I heard some chanting in the distance. As I walked it was closer and I realized I was hearing some sort of yelling through a bullhorn. Finally, I could understand what was being yelled:

“Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Columbia Packing has got to go!”

Oh, crap, Columbia Packing. That was the place that became infamous last week when they were busted dumping pig blood into a creek that ran down to the Trinity. I did not realize I was so close to the place. It was only a block or so away and I was walking along a stand of trees that bordered the contaminated creek. There was a demonstration going on trying to shut down the plant.

I want to go back to the trail with a group of bike riders during the day once the park is completely open… it’s a cool place even if it doesn’t connect with anything else (yet) – but still, I was glad to get back to my car and get headed home.

A video of a ride across the bridge from a while back. The construction was a lot further along this weekend, and the water in the river was a lot higher.

La Desperada

Posted on by Bill Chance

A few weeks ago I read a book that I ordinarily would not have read. This isn’t surprising, I’m not the target audience for this genre of fiction. I volunteered to read and review the new book by the teacher of a fiction class I took a few years ago, Patricia (Pooks) Burroughs. It’s a historical romance novel called La Desperada.

I didn’t want to put this up until the book was available – you can buy the ebook here. Go ahead, get it… you know you want to. I guarantee that this is the sort of thing you will like if you like this sort of thing.

This is the second romance novel I’ve read. The first was a random thin paperback Harlequin I picked up maybe thirty years ago and read out of sheer curiosity. Don’t ask the title, it’s long lost in my memory, along with the plot, characters, theme… or anything at all about the book except my visceral reaction to it. I remember that I read it in a couple of hours, although I’m not a particularly fast reader. I was able to crank through it so quickly because, First – I had the feeling I knew what the next sentence, paragraph, scene, chapter, all of it – was going to be. And I was always right. Second, I could read it fast because there was nothing there.

I did not become a fan of the genre after that first taste.

So now I am faced with La Desperada and writing a review of a book in a genre that I simply don’t read. Luckily, La Desperada is a much, much better book that that old Harlequin. It is a Romance, but there is much more going on between the pages, and it is written with a lot more ambition, excitement, and skill.

I went to school in Lawrence, Kansas. On days when the weather was nice, I used to walk from my dorm across Iowa Street into an ancient cemetery for a nice quiet place to sit outside and study. Sometimes I would even lean against an old tombstone with a textbook in my lap. Over time, I read most of the stones – they were all victims of Quantrill’s raid – where in a prelude to the civil war a band of Missouri based outlaws came across and burned Lawrence, slaughtering a good many of the residents.

I’m familiar with the history and passion of those days of violence and banditry and was glad to read that the prologue of La Desperada was set in Clay County, Missouri and that the heart of the conflict was born from the evil that spread across the land in those days.

Then the real story begins in West Texas – the town of Cavendish in 1881. Civilization had a tenuous hold on that wild land. There was still a place for men like Clayton Dougherty – men representing the law though they were at best barely on the right side of it – and too often, on the wrong. The uneasy, unstable, and ultimately cataclysmic triangle of Clayton, his intelligent and virtuous but scarred brother Joel, and Joel’s wife Elizabeth is thrown into violence and death when an outlaw, Boone Coulter shows up.

Once the story gets going, Boone and Elizabeth are on the run together, trying to escape their doom fleeing through the rugged desert and mountains of far West Texas and the untamed frontier towns of New Mexico.

I’ve driven North from Van Horn, Texas, along the valley east of the Sierra Diablo and felt the silent menace of those ragged cliffs and heat blasted salt flats. It looks wild and dangerous, and is so, even from a minivan. I’ve hiked up McKittrick Canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains (which must be the location of Boone’s hidden cabin hideout) and seen the magical beauty that a little water and shade can create in the high desert. My favorite aspect of La Desperada is the effort, imagination, and attention to detail that Patricia injects into the romance to pay homage to the setting and the landscape. West Texas, for good and bad, becomes another character in the story, and that is a very good thing.

That is the skill and effort that elevates the story above the run-of-the-mill romance. There is a real story here, real danger, real complexity. The romantic storyline is intact and moves as expected, but beyond that there is plenty of meat to sink your teeth into.

My only complaint with the book was the sex scenes. They arrive periodically and predictably and I found myself simply skipping these sections. This is not due to any prudishness on my part – I’m up for a little titillation without any qualms. I simply found the sex scenes in La Desperada clichéd and, I’m afraid, simply unexciting. I don’t know if that is a requirement of the genre (Bodice Ripping in the Old West) or not. At any rate, jumping over a page now and then didn’t damage the story at all – so it was all good.

When you are writing about someone else’s work, it is usually a bad idea to opine about what you would like to see done differently. You should write about what the book is, not what it is not. In this case, however, I want to give my opinion; I can’t resist. There is a secondary character that works to move the story forward – he has a doomed relationship with the the outlaw’s sister – his name is Miguél Obregón. I found this flawed, dangerous, evil, yet honorable in his own way character to be the most interesting thing in the book. I would love to read a book written about the love story between him and the sister from his point of view.

That would be something.

Links:

Sample Chapter

Review from Book Babe

Review from Journey of a Bookseller

Fresh Fiction

Best Enchiladas Ever

Posted on by Bill Chance

Saturday and I still haven’t totally recovered from the nastiest cold that I have had in decades. There is a lot of stuff to do at home, plumbing problems mostly, but Candy and I headed across the river to a couple of Estate Sales in Kessler Park. Both were in beautiful, old brick homes that are so rare in Dallas. Kessler Park has to be the prettiest part of the city with its historic one-of-a-kind homes, steep hills and thick stands of ancient trees. We bought a bunch of crap we never knew we couldn’t live without at the second sale, which was literally across the street from the house I lived in when I first moved to Dallas, thirty years ago.

After our time spent digging through dead people’s stuff we drove down to the Bishop Arts District – my newest favorite spot in Dallas. There are a bunch of places we want to eat at down there, but the other day I had stumbled across a blog entry written about the best Enchiladas in the city and had read about a semi-fast-food place down in Bishop Arts called bee – which stood for Best Enchiladas Ever. It looked like a plan.

It looks like bee is the brainchild of Monica, of Monica’s Aca y Alla – one of the most loved eating spots around. Monica quality enchiladas with fast food speed and prices sounds really good. Now, Oak Cliff is lousy with Tacquerias and other home-style Mexican food – and I’d like to try them all – so I guess a gentrified gringo invader may be politically incorrect… but I don’t care, I just want something good to eat.

Sorry for the poor photographs - I forgot my camera and had to use my phone.

Bee is a bright and clean little place near the corner of Davis and Zang. You get a little card and fill it out before ordering from the counter, like a sandwich place. The guy at the counter recommended the two enchilada special.

Build your own – starting with tortillas.

Choices:

  • corn,
  • blue corn,
  • wheat,
  • flour,
  • or cabbage leaf wrap.

Then filling:

  • chicken tinga,
  • pork carnitas
  • beef picadillo,
  • beef brisket,
  • tilapia veracruz,
  • spinach and mushroom,
  • quinoa and tofu,
  • vegan special,
  • cheddar cheese.

Finally, you add a sauce:

  • sour cream,
  • con carne,
  • queso blanco,
  • poblano crema,
  • chipotle crema,
  • oaxaca mole,
  • ranchera,
  • tomatillo,
  • avacado verde (cold).

Folks deciding what to get and filling out their cards.

My order, two enchiladas, rice and black beans

So you mix and match. Pick your sides and then when the food is ready they have a selection of toppings and cheeses. The back side of the little menu card is full of other options… burritos, tacos, salads… but you could spend a year working through the options of the different enchilada combinations.

As promised, the food was fast, reasonable, and very good. I had forgotten my combinations by the time the order came up, but I don’t think you can go wrong with anything I did especially like the poblano crema and the vegan black beans. They have a cooler full of beer and soft drinks and a margarita machine, so I suppose you could pretty well just live there if you wanted.

We finished our lunch and walked on down to Bishop where I picked up a coffee at Espumoso, hung out, and wrote this while I sipped on a coffee. Better than crawling around on the bathroom floor fixing the pipes – though I’ll still have to do that sometime.

Link-o-rama: