Casual Restaurant Critic’s comment: please note: the author’s first language is Dutch, before you start with your comments on any deficiencies in the writers’ English. Would that you could speak and write in Dutch as well as he can write in English
A nice evening out in Chuburna. Or how the para llevar was born.
What else can you do, after a long day of teaching a foreign language to kids who not even master their own native language (what’s wrong with the education here, they don’t even know what a demonstrative pronoun is in Spanish…..), than to take your lovely wife around 9 in the evening for a nice little comida, just the two of you….
She ordered a salad, because she wants to stay at the safe side of obesity, and I ordered the usual 4 arrachera taco’s de harina, because I didn’t fought myself to the top of the food chain to eat grass…
Within 7 min after ordering, the 4 taco’s are staring at me and we wait a few minutes for the salad… After all, we are ‘out’ to have a nice comida together…right ?.
When after another 5 minutes or so none of the 4 or 6 locals who are running around with empty hands (or taking plates away from customers who are still chewing the last bite) is willing to bring the salad, my wife urge me to start eating ‘before it’s cold’.
And because it’s not a good idea to argue with a person where you intend to spend the night with, I start, very slow, to move the arrachera taco’s from my plastic plate to my internal system.
After another 5 minutes or so, the 4 or 6 locals are still running around with empty hands, I start thinking about this system to stay in shape.
Go to a local restaurant, order food, wait a given amount of time, leave the place…..
Easy, you don’t have to say to people you’re on a diet, you still can say you visit reataurants…they don’t bring the food you ordered anyway…..
I’m at taco number 3, still no salad…still locals running.
My wife managed to capture the attention of one of the runners, who listen carefully, looked at me, my nearly empty plate, magically displays a disbelieve look, turns around and jogs to the innerside of the building, returns after nearly 30 seconds (see, they can be quick) and tells my wife a story.
My Spanish is reaching the level where only I understand it (one have to start somewhere), so the translation is: they working on it.
Duh, more than an half hour to prepare a salad ? Do they have a local schmuck driving a 125 cc motorcycle to the nearby village to get the grass so the salad is fresh ?
Meanwhile, taco nr 4 is moved from plate to internal system, beer was taking the same way and salad is still underway…
Finally, after nearly 45 minutes….tataaa…there’s the salad.
The purpose of this evening out is to be together, to eat together, to drink together…
The food has to reach the table so the people, a couple, can eat together…how difficult is that ?
So when the designated runner is putting the salad in front of my wife, she takes revenge ( it is a plate one have to eat or serve cold, and the salad is cold so this is a perfect opportunity), and ordered the salad para llevar and I ordered la cuenta.
Mind you, within 3 minutes we have a nice plastic bag with the salad and a plate with the cuenta. They can be quick after all and they just showed to the world that two things can come together at one and the same table….
From now on we do not go to Los Tacquitos P.M. on Calle 50…we go to the para llevar….