Thank you Rodney, for this hilarious photo which takes the best of Yucatecan Spanish (huach/wach = Yucatecan Spanish for a person who comes from Mexico City) and English (Car Wash) and mixes it up.
One could reasonably assume that the owner of this establishment is a Wach.
Tonight the Better Half and the Casual Restaurant Critic visited Wok to Walk, mentioned in the last post as coming into an already crowded placita called Fontana, across from the IMSS mega-hospital.
The restaurant is in the throes of opening, so there is still plenty of empty space behind the counter, there is no glass separating the flaming wok area from the public and the general feeling is that of a soft opening.
The cash register, however, is working!
The Critic and his BH had visited Wok to Walk before – the Montejo location – so knew the drill: you pick your rice or noodle, your toppings or goodies to be stir fried and your favorite sauce. They are then cooked up for you on the spot in giant woks with occasional bursts of flame flashing out to make it more showy.
Kind of like a teppan yaki restaurant except without the Japanese accent or the jokes or the knife acrobatics. OK, maybe not like a teppan yaki restaurant.
On this occasion the Critic ordered rice noodles with tofu, thai chicken, green pepper while the Better Half ordered arroz de trigo which prompted a reaction from the Critic who was surprised that there even was such an animal. Arroz de trigo means wheat rice, which is of course, not any rice that the Critic has seen in Superama lately. The Spanish menu says Arroz Integral which means brown rice, but apparently in the translation this became wheat rice. As in whole wheat perhaps? Also the green pepper mentioned above was off the English menu; the Spanish menu says pimiento, which is a red bell pepper and which is what was actually tucked in amongst the rice noodles. The noodles were ordered with the curry n coconut sauce; the rice with the Saigon sauce. Both dishes were excellent, piping hot, tasty and served in the little orange Chinese take-out boxes that have come to characterize Wok to Walk. Chopsticks were available too. And not the cheap kind either.
The decor and seating is of the minimalist style and there are similar seating options outside as well. Service was friendly enough from the young man who took the order; there were a lot of other people hanging around both outside and in: the Critic assumes these are trainees.
Would the Critic return? Probably.
Getting all ready to Twitter away this morning which I like to do in lieu of exercise and what do you know? Twitter won’t load.
A quick Google search takes me to the Twitter status page and it informs me that they are under ‘attack’ and are ‘defending themselves. A Denial of Service Attack. I had to look that up and Wikipedia says the following:
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.
So much activity – I’m exhausted.
Have a great day everyone!
The Better Half and the Critic had lunch at Il Piattino today. Nothing new about that, it’s been done before but the Critic noted that he hadn’t written about previous visits.
Il Piattino is a place for a casual pasta, panini or salad. Prices are cheap and the location is right across from the white elephant Hospital de Especialidades, run by the IMSS (say no more) in that new, fashionable part of town called Altabrisa.
Upon entering the restaurant, the Critic and his Better Half bumped into the only waiter on duty, who was so absorbed with counting the change on a bill he was returning to a table, that he was unable to acknowledge in any way the presence of two more guests that he would be serving that day. Off to a good start!
Today, a salad and a panini were ordered. The salad, a Caesar that actually looks like a Caesar unlike the awfully original Trotters’ version, came out almost immediately, while the panini took an eternity during which time the Critic was able to check multiple email accounts on his cell phone thanks to free wifi that the restaurant offers. The bathroom is an un-air conditioned cubbyhole, hot, not very clean and featuring an open hole for an air duct high up on the wall that a Komodo dragon sized lizard could crawl through at night. Needless to say the Better Half finished her salad eons before the Critics’ food was brought, making for some interesting speculation as to what was causing the delay. Perhaps they had to go to Italy (or Costco) for more prosciutto? It was decided, once the plate arrived, that it was the fault of the french fries; which probably took a while to get well, fried.
When the time came for the bill, the Critic went directly to the cashier, which caused a little confusion, since the generally accepted procedure is to get the bill from the waiter, but time was a factor and the Critic wanted/needed to leave. The cashier hummed and hawed a bit, and of course her confusion was understandable, since the Critics’ was the ONLY table left in the restaurant and it must have been challenging to locate la cuenta.
The bill came to 150 pesos with one bottle of water and the aforementioned food items. The salad was passable, the sandwich as well, but this is by no means a destination to be visited at any cost.
There will be however, a new Wok to Walk in this same plaza that already has El Viejo Molino pulling in crowds. Stay tuned!
I wonder if this is as predominant in other parts of the so-called civilized world, but here in the formerly-white city called Merida you see a lot of this: the used diaper, rolled up into a neat little crap-filled ball and left behind for someone else to throw away.
How hard is it for these inconsiderate adults to dispose of their offsprings’ DNA samples in a trash can? What can you expect from these brain-dead individuals when it comes to raising normal, considerate children? What are they thinking as they roll up the disposable diaper, applying the tape to seal it into a tidy bundle?
In an ideal world, where justice and common sense prevails, these people should be made to work in a garbage sorting facility, where they would be in charge of classifying used disposable diapers according to their contents.
Photo taken in the Gran Plaza parkade, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico
At this time of the year, Merida restaurants respond to the decline in attendance by offering promotions and specials, especially for those husbands or spouses that have to stay and work in Merida while the rest of the family vacations in and around Progreso. These husbands have no one at home to ‘serve’ them their lunch and so the restaurateurs of the formerly white city take it upon themselves to fill in for the duration.
One of these is Trotters, who have an excellently priced lunch special that runs around $150 pesos or so and includes a soup, refillable refresco, a main course and a dessert.
The Critic and his Better Half had the opportunity to sample this lunch the other day. The verdict? Take it or leave it.
The service was really rough at the beginning with an extended gap between the seating and the appearing of a menu and the offer of a drink. Drink refills were sporadic. Appetizer delivery was clueless; the busboy offered the appetizer to an adjacent table (where the diners were finishing their main courses), did not look around and headed back to the kitchen where the appetizer remained for quite some time.
Air conditioning was minimal, making it just a little uncomfortable with the humid heat Merida is suffering these days.
The soup, a cream of asparagus, was too obviously made with Carnation canned milk. The Mini Burger Trio however, was excellent. Juicy and tasty, each little burger had its own little theme going on.
The Critic can not really say that this is a Do Not Miss promotion. Take it or leave it.
The Casual Restaurant is not going to review this cookie bakery, since it is owned by someone near and dear. There would be a conflict of interest there, for sure.
you can’t beat their carrot cake and the new lime pie is awesome and check out those cupcakes
The Critic just wanted to put this link up so everyone can see what Kukis By Maru is up to these days… 🙂
http://www.e-myth.com/pub/client_profile/kukis
The Critic is going to have a coffee now. Guess where.
The Critic is not what you would call your typical piña colada / margarita quaffing kinda gringo in the tropics but there is something about those “top shelf” margaritas – on the rocks, mind you – at Chili’s, that is addictive.
Last night the Critic and a group of people went to Chili’s Altabrisa for a bite; but for the Critic the main attraction was the margarita.
First of all it comes in a huge chilled beer mug, not a sissy glass with a wide rim that you have to ‘negotiate’ to your lips and then sip. Then it has lots of salt around the edges; chunks of it. Ice cubes clink happily inside. The margarita itself is the perfect blend of sweet and sour and does not taste horribly artificial (like the one at Boston’s for example). The tequila is there but not overpowering.
And because of the size of the glass and the fact that it is not an adult Slurpy ie ‘slush’, you can get in there with a big thirst on, on a hot Merida day or night, order one of these and take a big pipe-cooling swallow.
Awesome.
In my previous post I stated why I thought the Canadians finally clamped down on the Mexicans. I blamed all the Mexicans who took advantage of Canada’s relaxed immigration policies and ruined it for everyone.
Now it’s the Canadian governments turn.
Who is the Canadian Brain Surgeon/Rocket Scientist who came up with this idiotic, one-day-to-the-next policy that will affect not only hundred if not thousands of perfectly legit people who are planning to visit Canada and have already purchased flights, prepaid hotels and cruises? Not only that side of the coin, but all the cruise ships, hotels and restaurants as well as tourist attractions in Canada? This isn’t September, it’s the middle of the tourist season! What was this bureaucrat thinking? Was he thinking?
Even the US Government, when they issued their new proclamation regarding passport requirements for US citizens, had a timetable.
Canada has really dropped the ball on this one; another fabulous accomplishment for the cheesehead government of Steven Harper.
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For the conspiracy theorists…
Here’s a thought: CIA/FBI discovers an imminent attack on Canadian soil originating in Mexico; the CIA advised Canadas’ CSIS, who take it to Canada Immigration.
Immigration responded by immediately issuing a blanket visa requirement for all Mexicans, thereby thwarting the plot.
Everything is hush hush for now.
Just a thought…