Indulgence

Today we re-visit the service guy and inveterate restaurant critic, namely me. This weekend has been one of wanton indulgence, indulgence that included two fine dining meals, a hot tub and a custom massage. It’s not the way we conduct our lives most weekends but, courtesy of a gift certificate we bought at a benefit auction for the Taos Historic Museums we found ourselves at Sunrise Springs Spa Resort in La Cienega just south of Santa Fe for the weekend. Think of it as $650 of goodness (room and breakfast for two days) for the winning bid of auction price of $400. Not cheap to be sure but quite fair considering the amenities.

Because Peggy had to have her windshield replaced, we suffered through two-hour wait and an unremarkable New Mexican fast food meal at El Parasol a couple of blocks from Safelite. Peggy was unimpressed whereas I was relieved that didn’t have to eat my shoe.

With amazing foresight, we had made reservations at our current favorite restaurant Martin at the corner of Galisteo and Paseo de Peralta. In 2017, the last time I reported on the place, Martin and it’s owner Martin Rios had been nominated as Best Chef Southwest by the James Beard Foundation, the only restaurant in New Mexico to receive the honor. In 2018 Restaurante Martin took home First Place. Saludos to Chef Martin and his wife and partner Jennifer.

On this occasion Jennifer was a warm presence throughout the evening as she delivered food and touched tables. Touching tables is the waning practice of the owner or manager visiting every table to show appreciation for your patronage. It matters. A lot.

Julian from Chihuahua was our engaging and skillful server. And to that subject I must proselytize on the importance of casting servers and bartenders. I call it casting because the great ones walk in with the tools and attitude they need. You can help them with rote knowledge like using the cash register and knowing the menu but the great ones are born with IT.

I observed that Julien was serving the entire dining room which as active but not full. It’s not a staffing call I would make but with Jennifer delivering the food as needed, he never broke a sweat. I also calculated that he was going to walk with $300 or more for his efforts. Maybe much more if he turned the tables another time.

We were blessed by a total pro at Sunrise Springs on Saturday night, too. Chris, a native New Mexican was affable, knew the menu cold and could proudly describe the food and the ingredients and tell us where they were sourced. The greens and vegetables come Ojo Caliente’s farm and garden. Sunrise Springs is the sister property to Ojo Caliente. I ordered the Filet of Ribeye despite having never heard of that cut of meat. If the cut was anywhere in proximity to my beloved ribeye it had to be good. It was flavorful and cooked rare as ordered but as tough as the aforementioned shoe. I did not complain but asked Chris, “What the heck is a Filet of Ribeye. He explained that it’s the cut of that that covers the ribs. Methinks that Chef Rocky Durham has taken liberties in renaming the lean, fatless, firm flap steak that is often sliced for fajitas. Nice try, Rocky. I like a low food cost as well as the next person, but I needed chain saw to cut the thing.

At speaking of near misses, Sunrise Springs was full of shortcomings big and small. It clearly aspires to lofty things but falls short here and there. On the conceptual level, it needs a lobby and a gathering place to have a glass of wine. Ideally, that would be adjacent to the restaurant though it’s not clear how they can pull that off. We were disappointed not to be able to have a beverage before dinner and were relegated to opening a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in our room. The house lost the sale and we didn’t have the social scene we would have preferred. In fairness the resort does have al fresco drinking in the warm months but it’s serious oversight when the high is 30.

Then there are small things like not serving a soup spoon with porridge. One assumes they would provide a larger spoon with soup. What not oatmeal?

Then back to the big picture. Being different for its own sake is not enough. It only works if different is better. How is it even possible that breakfast menu doesn’t have a single omelet and when it did it was ham and cheese? Is it breakfast if you can’t get bacon and eggs? Really? Does the porridge have to come with coconut milk? Does the green chile have to be so hot only a fire-eater can swallow it?

Our Sunday breakfast, the one with the porridge, was marred by a spilled ramekin of maple syrup that ran all over Peggy’s coat, chair and table top. The bus boy made a middling effort to clean up his mess. But the mishap was deftly handled by Ben, the manager, who gave us his heartfelt apology and offered to make it right, hinting at a free meal down the road. We told him it was very much appreciated but unnecessary. Moments later we saw Ben walking toward the front desk where we deduced that something was afoot. When we checked out some five minutes later, he had comped the previous night’s dinner.

We were so surprised and impressed that we went back to the restaurant to express our thanks. I told Ben that I had been in the business and that he had gone above and beyond in handling the awkward situation. I offered the theory that “You can’t lose a customer if you give a damn.” and he was evidence of that. Further, I suggested that dealing sympathetically and genuinely with an aggrieved guest can make a guest for life. That's called ending on an up note and we will return. 

Wonderland 87571

This winter has been a gift. The best early snow year anybody can remember promises a hefty snow pack, a great ski season and a wonderland of photographic opportunities. Here are the latest.

It's often been said that artists of all stripes should favor the subjects and environments closest to them. Advice taker that I am, all of these are from the remarkable Immel Rancho just 1.5 miles from the corner of Main and Main in beautiful Taos, NM.

The mother of all winters

Mother winter has made a bold return Taos after years of scant snow. Within ten days we’ve had two 12” snows and a -19 morning. The curator at the Millicent Rogers Museum told us it’s the most snow she’s seen in decades. What is this Maine?

Saturday the snow abated in early afternoon by which time we’d photographed at the Immel Rancho, the historic Torreon and at the Overland Sheepskin complex in El Prado. Add those to a somewhat abstract image of the frozen ice shot Friday at the Millicent Rogers and I have a disparate bunch for this post. I even threw you a color number. This one is all photographs and little text. Is that applause I hear or a massive sigh of relief?

And the winners are

#1 The New Sherman, Salida CO

#2 Perros on Diego Rivera's Street, Guanajuato, Mexico

Tie #3 Bicicleta in the Rain, Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico

Tie #3 Caught, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

#4 Hank's,San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

#5 Kara and Eero, Santa Ana Pueblo, NM

Lucky Strike Extra

#6 Bicycle, Taos, NM

It goes to show that judging art is purely subjective and one person’s winner is another person’s dud. And so it was in this year’s sweepstakes. Beyond the numbers are the surprises. For example, Fire Truck received no votes and I like that a lot. One participant called it too processed and too different than my other stuff. Campo, the one of riders headed to San Martin de Terrero for The Blessing of the horses also got no love. I loved the gesture and the angle of that one. What the heck do I know?

On reflection I should have included the second bicycle shot at the bottom and haven’t the foggiest why I didn’t. To make up for the slight I’m adding it to the winners list. So, we’re having a top six this year.Or is it seven since there was a tie for third?

I included iphone images from my daily Instagram posts and several others are from a pocket camera, so only three in the original group were taken with a full frame DSLR and just one of those made the final cut. That is fascinating and instructive. It foretells that smaller is better is our future. Richard Feynman had it right. I don’t have the guts to give up the big gun quite yet, but I do see the writing on the wall. Hell, I want to travel light without sacrificing image quality. By the way, any image with a frame around it was made with an iphone7. Only Kara and Eero is from my Canon 5D MIII. Caught is from my new Sony Rx100 VI and it really does rival a full frame DSLR. And I can carry it in the front pocket of my jeans. Looking back, and I wrote this in a post years ago, if I could have a small camera with a 24-200mm lens and a large sensor I'd rule the world. Be very careful what you wish for.

The rub with the iphone is sensor size. It’s tiny and won’t stand up to a major enlargement. The images are more contrasty and jiggy than those from a “real” camera. But maybe it’s an advantage. They look like they were created with some nineteenth century alternative process. They are somehow more painterly.  What do you think? But wait, five of seven were shot with an iphone. Seems like you've already told me.

Thanks to everybody who played.

This and That

Caught

Here's a compilation of the so called Best of 2018. This year I added a number of iphone photographs selected from my daily posts to Instagram. Instagram is becoming the platform of choice for sharing images and is increasingly the place that photo editors look for invention and talent. I am still waiting to be discovered.

As with last year please rank order your top five by name and I'll share the tally next week. Thanks for participating.

Leather

Campo

Blessing of the Horses

Caballero

Mujer

Hank's

Broome's

Bicicleta

Fire Truck

Piano

Kara and Eero

Perros

Dempsey

Mayer Leather

Braces

Wall

Callejon

Casa Immel

Aspen

Tendrils

Overheard

This is the rare occasion when I haven’t been building up to my post throughout the week. So, I’m resorting to a stream of consciousness that may lead me somewhere. You’ve heard novelists talk about not knowing where the story is going and that, to some extent, the book writes itself. I should be so lucky. You can take heart, though, to know that next week’s post, the last of the year, will be my ever so lovely look back at the images that are the best of 2018 according to me. Yes, I do recognize that’s a low threshold.

Peggy and I were sitting the high-top communal table, the one nearest the kitchen, at Common Fire on Highway 150 north of Taos Saturday night. We intended dine on leftovers but, as will happen after a couple of gallery visits in the early evening, we declared that we didn’t want to cook, even leftovers, or clean up after. Our first choice was Orlando’s, arguably the best run restaurant in Taos, for authentic Northern New Mexico fare. But to the surprise of absolutely nobody there was a long wait so we defaulted to Andy Lynch’s wood oven emporium where we are ranking members of his foodie brigade and private club.

What transpired was an evening of conviviality, tasty treats and new friends well met. In short, the epitome of good food, wine and kinship. As is so often the case, Andy’s business partner and his wife Ann held sway at the right end of the shared table. They were joined by Ann’s daughter and her daughter’s girlfriend who live in Brooklyn. As if the hipness quotient needed to be higher.

On the other side were a twenty something couple from Chicago drinking champagne. You could tell they loved the place and had the impression they would be back for all the remaining meals of their stay.

It was one of those nights, one of those crazy nights when the right mix of players made the joint come alive. The repartee was sterling and Jewish geography was awhirl. We had met Ann but had only seen her husband at a distance. This time we introduced ourselves. He said his name was Billy Sarokin. I asked, “What do you do?” He answered, “I’m a sound engineer and I’m working on a TV series called Daybreak that’s shooting in Albuquerque.” He described it as a post-apocalyptic series in which the only survivors are high school kids. “Feature Ferris Bueller’s Day Off but with Zombies. In fact, Mathew Broderick plays the high school principal.”

“Wow!” I said. “Our son is in the movie and TV business, too. He’s a special effects makeup artist. Two Emmys. He worked on the mother of zombie apocalypse shows, The Walking Dead, for seven years.

With that Billy IMDb’d Garrett and told us, “That's really cool. We have all kinds of friends in common.” File that in the small world file. Sarokin’s IMDb says that he was nominated for an Academy Award for the movie Salt in 2010 and an Emmy for Mr. Robot in 2015.

Owner Andy sat between our parties and it was there that I overheard a real conversation led by a real conversationalist. Andy asked probing questions of the young women, one of whom hailed from a North Dakota town “three minutes below the Canadian border.” “What was life like in a small town in the hell of the north” Andy asked. The young lady that we’ll call Sarah said, “Well my mother was food writer for the local paper. She loved Anthony Bourdain. We had a movie theatre that played the featured film three times a week, one showing Friday and Saturday nights and a Sunday matinee. That’s it, three showings. That’s what it was like in Crosby.”

“How did you get out of Crosby?” asked Andy.

“Well, I went away to college at Minot State University. Minot has something like 40,000 people so it was like a real city to me.”

Pursuing Sara’s life story Andy asked what she majored in and what she did with it.

“I kind of followed my mother’s path so I majored in Journalism and was a beat reporter for the Minot Daily News. Then I decided to become a lawyer, so I could make a difference. I met Sarah in law school in Brooklyn.” Yes, both women are named Sarah.

“We spent last summer in south Texas providing legal aid to migrants seeking asylum. It was difficult and really slow work. They only process half a dozen applicants a day. The backlog is months long because immigration is so understaffed.”

“Maybe that’s intentional” Andy offered.

“Probably” both Sarah’s answered in unison.

IMDb is the database of movies and television.

Doctor heal thyself

I suppose an argument can be made that the ease with which I bought Atorvastatin in Mexico or that my friend Bob bought a sinus medication and a pain killer with a trace of an opiate in it exposes a gaping hole through which less disciplined folks might descend into the abyss of addiction. For sure it lends itself to self-diagnosis as was evidenced by a hilarious episode in Guatemala in February of 2017.

Three weeks into my four week stint at the estimable Ixchel Spanish School in Antigua I woke up with searing sciatica that felt like a red-hot poker shooting down my lower back through my hamstring and into my right foot. It’s always the right side for some reason. My diagnostic skills end with identifying the pain. Yes, it was sciatica. Been there before.

I dealt with the withering discomfort for a couple of days which meant I could make it to the bathroom, the shower, the breakfast room and my mezzanine table for class. Thankfully mi maestra Carmen and I sat five short steps from my treasured dormitorio 4. Or is it recamara, habitación or cuarto? Got me. The Spanish have too many words for bedroom as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, the important thing is that you get room 4. Settle for no other. And while you’re at it ask for a desk or purloin one from the roof deck as I did.

After dinner with Ana, Diego, Ana’s daughter Liliana, and my fellow students the lure of Antigua’s many watering holes demanded I limp and moan to the our bar of choice with my drinking partners. Camaraderie es muy importante. So, shuffle and whine it was for two harrowing days. I was on the brink of quitting school and booking an earlier flight back to Albuquerque when I remembered Sam Fees, my eighth-grade teacher, blistering me for quitting during a 100 yard dash in which I was a poor fifth out of six. My thirteen-year old self thought, “What’s the point?” He screamed, “Never quit, Immel. Never be a quitter.”

Taking that admonition to heart I summoned my inner doctor and repaired to the nearest farmacia on 6a Avenida Sur.  Look for the welcoming Green Cross or Cruz Verde. I described my plight and asked for a pain suppressant and a muscle relaxant. It wasn’t my first rodeo. I’ve fought demons of the back and spine for half a lifetime. When I described my malady and asked for the aforementioned potions, the pharmacist presented two boxes and I realized that the muscle relaxant was a daily injection. In the fog of desperation, I bought it. I’d have performed back surgery on myself to get rid of the pain. Hell, I gave myself a shot in the abdomen every day for a year. How hard can it be? Reaching my right hip with the syringe would raise the degree of difficulty but surely I’d manage. Even dream of relief made me feel better.

When I got back to school for lunch, I described my problem to Ana. By this time, I was doubting my ability to reach half way around my body and plunge the magic elixir into my nalga. Ana told me she had a friend across the street who knew how to give shots since she had been doing it for one of her children. “Do you want me get her?” Ana asked. Did I ever.

“Absolutemente." I answered.

With that Ana walked across the street and brought back the muy amable Lucía. “Much gusto, Lucía. Muchas gracias por tu ayuda.” Glad to meet you. Thanks for the help. She asked if I wanted the first shot right then. I said that I did.

Lucía told me to drop my drawers and lean over my bed so she could administer the first injection into my lily white butt. All the while Ana is watching this unfold from the partially open door to my room. I was beyond embarrassment. Lucía could have brought a class of second graders to watch the show and I wouldn’t have cared less.

That process continued for four more days and I was enjoying my morning jog south down Ruta Nacional 10 toward San Juan Obispo that Saturday morning. Best of all I didn’t bail and was able to complete my second four weeks of Spanish immersion in beautiful Antigua.

You have to be resourceful in the third world and sometimes that means taking chances. These little bouts of risk and reward can become the highlights of your adventure.

Just the facts, ma'am

On our last day in San Miguel I decided to walk down the hill to the pharmacy to get a refill of my Atorvastatin, the medication formerly known as Lipitor. For some reason, I like to have an extra prescription period of all my drugs just in case. In case of what I’m not sure. Maybe the Chinese will stop exporting the drugs we know and love. I have a cushion of ninety days on my other two meds but not my cholesterol fighter.

There was something faintly clandestine about my mission. I had no prescription though I did have the pill canister. I skulked into the farmacia, took a big breath and whispered, “¿Puedo comprar esta medicina?”  The pharmacist gave me a furtive glance, went into the stacks and returned with a 90-dose box of the stuff. I asked, “¿Cuanto?” She told me, “171 pesos.” That’s $9.00 to you, gringo. Then came the dawning. A month earlier I had posed the same question at my local Walgreens and was told $342. I passed. I did not pass at $9.00.

When I had my annual check-up this week, I told the story to my primary care physician who launched into a dissertation on the price of drugs in Los Estados Unidos and the hammerlock Big Pharma has on drug prices and our complicit congress. Back in 2003 when the Republican congress created the Medicare drug benefit it allowed drug companies to set their own prices and denied the right of Medicare to negotiate lower ones for its 40 million clients. Makes perfect sense if you're in somebody's pocket.

Between 2006 and 2016 drug companies spent $2.3 billion, yes that’s a ‘b’, on lobbying and made $30 million in contributions per election cycle to both political parties. It's roughly 60% to Republicans and 40% to Democrats for the bean counters among you. In 2017 alone drug companies and their trade groups spent $171.5 million on lobbying and deployed 882 lobbyists into the backrooms of congress. So, we can predict with high confidence that drug prices will continue to rise despite pledges from both houses of congress and from the White House to rein in prices and though 80% of Americans believe that drug prices are unreasonably high. The means to rein in costs exist, of course. The will to do so does not, of course. Did you know that the drug companies employ consulting firms to tell them how high they can raise prices before patients can’t or won’t pay?

The standard drug industry excuse for high prices is the cost of research which proves to be a specious argument since the industry spends far more on marketing than on R&D.

I know this. There’s something seriously awry when you can get a garden variety medication like Atorvastatin for $9.00 in Mexico and pay $342 in the US.

Act your age

This rangy dude had nothing to do with the post except maybe sorta the aging part

You have good trips and not so good trips. This one was “más o menos.” San Miguel didn’t live up to our ten- year-old memories and the reasons are varied. We found that “living” in San Miguel was hard work, that shopping for groceries was long cab drive each way, that all of life’s necessities took effort and that I had picked a physically cold house that was too far from downtown and that the walk back up the hill from El Centro was a sweaty thirty-minute heart pounder. Take the inconvenience and add a house that you didn’t want to be in and you might as well have stayed in a hotel in the center of everything.

Our street. The gray facade is our casa.

It may be, too, that a month-long vacation is two weeks too long. I’ll take that on advisement. Having to plan payments a month ahead and find someone to mind the house is a stress giver that makes the trip too much of a job. There were highlights aplenty, but the living wasn’t easy, and we never felt we could just be. I arrived in San Miguel thinking it’s a place I could live. I left San Miguel knowing it is not.

The cliff leading to El Centro. It's steeper than it looks.

As is he case in the rest of Latin America, even Taos for that matter, the cultures are separate. In San Miguel the Anglo community is abundant and insular. And old. There were more bad facelifts than taxis and there were a lot of taxis. Restaurants and musical events in SMA reminded me of movie night at the Taos Community Auditorium, a sea of blue hairs with advanced degrees. I can tell you this, if I move anywhere it’ll be younger. I want to be the oddity not the norm.

Which brings up the subject of aging or being old. It’s cliché to say, “age is just a number” or “you’re as old as you feel.” It’s also more or less true. I’ve been asking the musical question, “When are you old?” for a couple of months.  I set up the subject with a disjointed preface that says something like, “I feel pretty much like I did when I was in my mid-forties. I still do the same physical exercise and hold myself to the same standard of effort as I did thirty years ago. But I know that one day something will set me back and I will be old and infirm. Presto chango. I also know that at 77 a very optimistic outlook is another ten years of being able to do the things I do now. I am not happy with the prognosis, Doctor. I don’t know any 90-year-old man-children. Strike that. Bob Cooley in his early nineties say he skies better than ever with his new knees and dances like a mad man. I want to be Bob Cooley when I grow up.

So, the question is this. Do you begin accepting the decline before it happens or hold out till it smacks you in the face? I see a lot of the former, the folks who acquit themselves as old people before their time. It even happens in middle age. Back in Lincoln, Massachusetts where we lived for 23 years, the housewives of the Radcliffe and Wellesley persuasion became matrons in their mid-forties replete with care free hairdos, scant makeup, formless attire and sensible shoes. I want to be my mother.

“Are to you still running?” is something I get asked a lot. I have the urge to answer, “Why wouldn’t I be?” I will till I can’t. And there you have it. Do it till you can’t. That goes for absolutely everything. And corollary to that is this bit of advice. Don’t stop (fill in the blank) because starting over again is a bitch. Every day you don’t do what you do makes it all the harder to start the old engine again. I’m testing that premise this very day. 

Market Connections

This trip feels like one continuous meal with short breaks for sleep, study and sightseeing. Instead of exercise it’s been planning where to eat, when to eat and getting to and from the restaurant in question. I’d like to understand the malaise that has kept me from writing, photographing and running. It’s almost too late this trip to make things right on the whole-body front. But if I can reclaim the balance that I enjoy at home in Taos over the next few days I’ll consider it a victory.

There was an article in the New York Times a couple of days ago that reported on the discovery that septuagenarians who had exercised throughout their lives had muscles that are virtually indistinguishable from 25-year-olds. That was me until we came to Mexico. I’m not blaming my dissipation on the Mexico exactly.  I’ll take some of the credit.

The cold snap didn’t help. When night temperatures dipped to the low thirties for a few nights the house responded with highs below fifty. That is not a typo. My memories of the gulag had faded but living in a refrigerator brought them back with chilling clarity. Our rental house doesn’t have central heating, a condition not uncommon in these mild climes. So, the job of heating this barn was left to two incapable wall heaters one of which didn’t work. Responding to my desperate pleas for warmth, our alleged house manager sent a plumber with a new gas wall heater which, according to form, didn’t function.

Then there are the cobbles which make every step an adventure. To run on those bastards is to move slower than walking. Today I went for a 50 minute jog and tripped three times, one almost resulted in a face plant.

When you do nothing but eat and all of the eating is done in restaurants you run up a tab for starters. Do it enough and you’re bound to score a good meal from time to time though we’ve haven’t had any world beaters and I’ve had no food epiphanies. The single most memorable dish was carnitas in a plastic and Naugahyde emporium on the main drag of Dolores Hidalgo 35 miles north of San Miguel. Carnitas are best described as fall off the bone roasted pork. I love carnitas at Guadalajara Grill in Taos. They’re mighty fine, but Vicente Fernandez’s carnitas at Restaurante Carnitas Vicente take the art of carnitas to new heights. Beg your server to bring you Vicente’s pork rib carnitas and you will be transported. Those fatty flavor bombs are out of this world. Real carnitas, by the way, entail roasting the pork in lard till the lard melts and the spices are added. A direct shot to the artery would be quicker but not as much fun.

When you travel you learn as much about yourself as you do your new environs. I learned that simply being an observer doesn’t cut it. I found that I need a purpose and that, though the location may be new, I still want to do things I want to do. To write, photograph, run and lift just like at home. The theme of travel and how to do it has been the subject of many a dining room table discussion since we’ve had our capacious dwelling in Atascadero to ourselves. As I touched on last time, being a small part of the actual community is key. Engaging your waiter or taxi driver in their language is part of it. Putting yourself in places where that can happen is key. Moving out of your comfort zone is part of the deal.

I went to the enormous “Tuesday Market” this week. I wanted to do street photography, street portraits specifically, and can’t think of a better place to do it. The Tianguis Mercado sprawls for city blocks and is a trove of tchotchkes, new and used clothing (new clothes are ropa nuevo and used clothes that are new to you and are nueva ropa), housewares and food stalls. Even before I got there after a 15-minute walk from our house I was focused on carnitas. There were half a dozen stalls offering them but one stuck in my mind. Can’t tell you why. It was at the far reaches of the mercado and, even though I was still walking off breakfast, I made my way to Carnitas Guero at noon o’clock. That’s early for lunch in Mexico but what they hell. Restaurants at El Jardin don’t switch from breakfast to lunch until one o’clock.

There were three young men operating the establishment, one roasting the pork, one chopping the carnitas and preparing the plates and the other serving. I ordered two carnitas tacos and the server gave me an are you lost look. I was a stranger from a distant planet. He wrapped the tacos with packets of pico de gallo and salsa in a plastic bag when I told him, “Quiero comer aqui.” I want to eat here. His eyes brightened and he scootched the tacos onto a plastic plate. He seemed to appreciate that a lost old gringo would be ordering carnitas much less eating them at his rustic stall. His eyes kept shifting back to me as he worked. I was quite the novelty. What’s your story his eyes seemed to say. When I was half way through my first juicy taco, he pulled an orange Fanta out of the ice and raised it my direction with a lift of his head that said, “Want one?” I smiled and said, “Sí, por favor.” It was my third sugary drink with no food value on the trip. So far. I wouldn’t have had the thing if he hadn’t asked and I’m pleased that he did. Sugary drinks with carnitas rock. He was saying that you are welcome here and we’re surprised that you are. When I finished, the apparent boss who was manning the stove, came up to me as asked if it was good. I said, “Maravillosa. Donde esta la basura?” Wonderful. Where is the trash? He smiled and took my plate from me. I said, “Hasta luego.”

I have the feeling that if I visit Carnitas Guero a year from now I’ll be recognized. It’s like my favorite bar in Antigua, Guatemala where I guarantee the owner Carolina would give me a hug and pour me a dark Gallo beer before I had a chance to order.

That’s what hospitality is about.