My good pal and associate Ralf has published a new photobook of a very small selection of Merida’s beautiful doors, taken in downtown Merida one sunny afternoon! If you like reading this blog and have found some use for the information contained herein, you can support the effort and get an attractive Merida souvenir at the same time! Enjoy!
Tag Archives: life in Merida
Bella Roma – New Authentic Italian Find in Merida
Everyone is talking about it.
A new Italian eatery; a really authentic Italian restaurant, located in the most unlikely and hard to find places; the new, gigantic urban development known as Las Americas. Not the mall, but the Sadasi construction companys huge housing project near Dzitya, just off the Merida-Progreso highway.
The Casual Restaurant Critic, Better Half and several friends visited this hidden gem a few nights ago and the group was magically transported from Merida to a Roman neighborhood trattoria, where a large (20 members by one account) Italian family hosts Yucatecans and the occasional Canadian and offers up real food from the land shaped like a boot.
The pizza is of the ultra thin crust variety and while the ‘everything’ pizza was fine, it was the quattro formaggio with anchovies that wowed the group. Pastas were perfect; rare indeed is the restaurant that can put together a delicious pasta cooked perfectly. Elio al Mare is one, Bella Roma is another. Accompanied by a reasonably priced bottle of Moltepuciano red wine, the meal was perfect up to and including the tiramisu and limoncello (and mandarincello) for dessert. Exquisite!
Service was adequate, but the crushing onslaught of Yucatecans never stopped and the female waitresses, evidently sisters and daughters of the older folks in the kitchen as well as several young men including the Eros Ramazotti singing member of the family who provided live entertainment for part of the evening, were hard-pressed to spend much time at any table. Every few minutes, yet another Italian face would appear with a load of plates and the Critic counted at least 11 different members of the staff, all related apparently.
Dinner for 8 came to about $1400 pesos before tips which the Critic felt was quite fair.
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- Woodfired oven baked pizzas
Fruteria La Jarochita
There’re probably a million fruterias in Merida now; this is one of them, called La Jarochita which means “little woman from Veracruz” but rather than little, the ita (or ito) at the end of the word Jarocho a term of endearment.
I stopped by for some fresh squeezed carrot & orange juice and the afternoon light was again, like the “doors and facades” moment before, fantastic. Each fruit displayed looked like fat colorful jewelry. Alas, I did not have my camera with me, only the ubiquitous iPhone.
Here are some of those shots:
Chillin’ at Starbucks
For most people it’s no big deal to be sitting with ones laptop in Starbucks, checking emails, surfing, tweeting, or updating a blog. It’s just that this is the first time I am doing it. And I must say that it’s really not such a great experience, except of course for the coffee which is pretty darn good good and the air conditioning, which is blessedly divine.
First of all the internet connection with a laptop running Windows is less than intuitive but after banging the laptop against the wall a couple of times, the Infinitum Starbucks log-in screen appeared and I was able to ‘register’ to use internet in any Starbucks in Mexico.Cool. The Infinitum part never worked; 7 attempts with the cashier-provided username and password yielded no result other than an incorrect username message en español.
Once that was working, and I began to check my myriad accounts of this and that and the other, it immediately became obvious that the seats are of the old-fashioned wooden variety and the apparent lack of tone in my muscles means that every pelvic bone I own is in direct contact with the maple or so it seems. I shift from side to side, sliding to the front and then to the back, trying to find the sweet spot to no avail. The fact that the wood is so smooth doesn’t help either, as any position I adopt changes in seconds as I literally slide in another direction. The chairs back rest seems too far away to offer any support to my spine and so I alternate between slouching and then self consciously straightening my back like a 1950’s Mad Men secretary banging away primly at her Olympia.
Other than that, things are just fine here in Starbucks. The background music is classical guitar and although very nice, although it seems to me, as I slide around on my chair, that the ambiance is reminiscent of Monty Pythons cheese shop and the increasingly irritating background music therein, as Cleese orders cheese.
To make matters more interesting, just now a less than-youngish man has sat down at the next table, set up his laptop and is doing his business correspondence here at Starbucks because, as I just overheard him yelling into his cell phone, his internet is down at home and that’s why he came here. I am also privy to potentially boring information about his upcoming sales promotions and the fact that he has only two months left on something or other and he needs to get things moving. Before and after the high-volume business chatter is of course the social chatter, again on extra high enthusiastic volume, which involves a lot of friendly banter and macho bullshit back and forth. Did I mention that his cell phone is actually a NexTel phone and emits that irritating electronic fart every two minutes?
Ah yes. Perhaps it’s a sign of age and my increasingly diminishing levels of tolerance for loud, annoying individuals and uncomfortable furniture, but for me, the laptop at Starbucks thing isn’t working out tonight.
Although I did hammer out this post as a result. In Starbucks.
Customer Service – iStore vs Starbucks
This morning found me in Altabrisa, doing some banking at a Canadian bank that has found a nice market with their credit cards because in Mexico they can charge whatever the hell they want (see previous post) and no one complains, like maybe they would back in Canada.
Again, I digress.
I stopped by the iStore or mini-Apple store or whatever Mixup calls their Mac store these days to ask about an Apogee device that would allow me to connect my electric guitar to my iPad and thereby enable me to jam out in GarageBand which I am currently infatuated with.
So I ask the lady cleaning some packaging and without looking up or expressing any interest whatsoever, she simply tells me that they don’t handle those kind of products (there is a $300 dollar microphone for iPads on the shelf behind her) and that I should go to Radio Shack or Steren. Um, no?
I was so disgusted with her complete lack of interest that I vowed never to buy anything at their stupid, pretentious wannabe store.
A little while later, I was in Starbucks getting an espresso from a very nice young man and after paying and walking the length of the mall, I heard him come running up behind me – I had left my debit card there.
I was just struck by the difference in service in a space of 30 minutes of mall time.
Merida Slow Food – Some Photos from this Morning
I have already written about the Slow Food market, but I thought I would upload some photos of the food from this mornings visit to the GringoFest that is the Mercado Slow Food in Merida. Lots and lots of familiar faces, from my international artist buddy Katherine to local celebrity Mrs Campos to my new bud Reg. Also some new ones and even the occasional Yucateco (walking around saying “pero que es ESTO?”) among the palefaces. The word needs to get out to the local foodies that this market even exists so they can come and partake of the excellent selection of organic and gourmet items on sale.
Enjoy the photos.
Finally, some good news about Mexico – The Washington Post
For those of you who read my neurotic ramblings – and I know you are out there – and haven’t seen this, here is a link to an article from my pal Edith over at the Washington Post that summarized what a lot of us who live here feel about the place. A little sugary for me, but still, better than yet another report on a narco-beheading, a hotel exploding or a tourist losing an actual arm and a leg to a real shark (as opposed to those tourists who attend the “free” breakfast and lose a virtual arm and a leg to the time share cetaceans)
The link is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/02/AR2011030205529.html
Enjoy.
Love the Yucatan? You will love this Dictionary!
Comforting Rituals – and a Dilemma
Of all the comforting rituals that us humans take part in, a great proportion of them involve food, I would guess.
Here’s mine.
I come home hungry and without too many ‘ganas‘ to cook anything (rare, but it happens) and my eyes, scanning like the Terminator through the offerings visible in my fridge, rest upon a Ziploc bag containing brown kraft paper that is coddling a quarter of a chunk of Monique’s fabulous sourdough bread, made right here in the formerly white city of Merida. This is what I am craving.
Removing the spongy, dark crusted bread from it’s hiding place I slice thick chunks (I have been known to simply tear at the loaf) and pop them into the toaster, pushing the slices down since they are so thick that the toaster is gagging.
While the aroma of freshly baked bread wafts into my kitchen, I take a soup bowl and pour myself a healthy portion of olive oil. There are plenty of olive oils now available in Merida, some Spanish, others Italian and even others still of the gourmet variety from God knows where. For my purposes, however, I need the Costco jug, since it is the only one that can keep up with my consumption and still offer more the next day.
The bread is toasty and warm and my fingers burn as I move the slices to a plate.
Ripping off chunks of warm bread, I plop them into the bowl and push down hard to get all the oil I can into the pores of the sourdough. Then I pop the dripping mess into my mouth. Nirvana!
The dilemma comes when I no longer have any olive oil in the bowl into which to stick my dwindling bread stock. So I pour in some more and you know what happens; the bread runs out and I still have olive oil to soak up! So back to the remainder of the loaf, slicing and heating until a critical moment when both bread and oil are depleted and my craving is sated.
Here’s to the olive pressers but here’s even more to Monique, who bakes this stuff and offers it to the public every Saturday morning at the Slow Food market right here in Merida. Go this weekend; you’ll be so glad you did!
Offended Mexicans vs BBC Comedy
I received an interesting article on the BBC/Mexico scandal in my junk-infested inbox this morning from my dear Better Half, who in turn received it from a friend whose acerbic wit and online social commentary on life in Merida was often the target for xenophobic hate mail accusing her of being *gasp* a critical wach, of all things.
The Milenio article (available in Spanish here) commented on the recent scandal involving the BBC’s program Top Gear, in which the comedy troupe said stereotypical things about Mexicans which apparently, caused the Mexican ambassador to England to feel such distress that he fired off an official protest letter to the government denouncing the show and its “xenophobic” remarks.
The author at Milenio says, in a nutshell, that everyone that is ‘offended’ by the program should take a look at themselves and the discrimination, racism and lack of tolerance perpetrated every single day in this country, by Mexicans.
Also interesting is the debate below the article. I think the author makes a good point. What do you think?