Monday, April 7, 2008

Volume I, Episode VIII


































from the mind of El Culo Malo

I awoke to the sounds of roosters crowing and dogs braying. All kinds of birds were chirping and the general cacophony reminded me of that great fairytale where these animals all get together and decide to form a band. The animals head out of town and start looking for gigs, but they are too much of an experimental act for anyone to show any interest. Finally, they end up cold, tired and hungry in some pre-Middle Ages town. As they walk the streets looking for somewhere to sleep, they see a light shining through the window of a dark house on the edge of the city. As the animals peer into the window, they see thieves feasting and counting money. To cut to the chase here, the animals stand one on top of each other and start making noises all at once. The combined braying, neighing, barking, crowing, etc. and the fact that when the thieves look out the window they see this grotesque shadow reflecting the stacked animals, causes the thieves to take off and run. The animals move into the house and feast and live happily ever after.

It was Monday morning in San Miguel, and although I had been partying since I arrived the day before, I felt great. The City's dryness and high altitude make life there pretty forgiving for a partyboy. Neal Cassady had not fared as well. He died by the railroad tracks on the side of the City. Many of the beatniks hung out in San Miguel back in the day, which is why a lot of people who came of age in the 60s are now retiring to San Miguel.

So if you ever plan on going to Mexico again, then you must visit San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato. It will be extra enjoyable, if you happen to be friends with the number 1 chef in the city, who works at the number one restaurant that everyone is talking about, and all the high rollers who are down from Dallas to attend some big wedding in the Instituto del Arte that yours truly crashed told me that "oh, all the people at our hotel were telling us about the new restaurant," meaning Blake's restaurant. The governor of Guanajuato ate there with his posse last week, and I am also pleased to report that our friend has become a celebrity in San Miguel, on a variety of levels and with different strata of the City.

The restaurant is beautiful. I really don't know much about what restaurants are supposed to have, but at 10am on Sunday morning, the kitchen was very very hot even though nothing had been cooking in the restaurant since Saturday night. It's no wonder that Blake's column in the local newspaper is called "En El Estomago del Monstro." Since I only keep kosher, I could not join him in partaking in most of things he has described in this blog, but I did convince him to give me some Costco almonds, which seemed relatively kosher. [The other thing that's great about visiting Blake right now is that it gave me the opportunity to continually pepper him with questions about how he does his work, since it turns out that just like football is a great metaphor for action in any context, running a kitchen is a great metaphor for life and it's challenges and victories.]

Another kosher opportunity arose on Monday morning, when we visited El Caballero del Fruta, who every morning stands on some intersection outside of San Miguel. El Caballero is dressed to the nines and he slices his fruit with a huge machete, before doling out portions of super fresh fruit bathed in lime juice and sprinkled with a liberal dosing of chili powder. We were on our way to Escondido Place Balneario, which has signage outside with a large Pepsi logo, suggesting some affiliation with Pepsi, or perhaps respect for the brand. Hard to say, but for 80 pesos, you can spend the day in the hot springs. I went there with Blake and Culo Flaco for a couple of hours, and it was great. It got all the kinks out of my hips, and it really relaxed all of us. Apparently, Alligator Dave's 30th birthday party will be held there later this month. The Balneario can be rented for $200 for the evening. Renting a place like this in Estados Unidos would be 50 times the price. . . well, you probably couldn't rent a place like this in the Estados Unidos, and then bring in all your friends, and a really good hiphop dj.

It's just like the pulque, man, which is basically the tequila of beers. Pulque is drawn out of a large cactus plant, which starts fermenting as soon as air hits it. A liter of pulque costs about 10 pesos, and that's enough to fuck up a typical pulque drinker. Blake, Alligator Dave's girlfriend ("Lily"), Culo Flaco and I went looking for the Pulqueria, which was supposed to be this hole-in-the-wall ranch that some eccentric lady had been running for years. We were instructed to travel up the road away from San Miguel, pass a cheese place, pass an Italian restaurant, pass a Spanish restaurant, pass a line of tall trees and then make a left.

The directions left us a little lost. We took many dirt roads, spoke to some people who basically told us to get off their land, and a lady who told us that she was only cleaning the windows of the cheese store and knew nothing about a Pulqueria. Finally, we saw a bunch of kids standing around a pickup truck at a corner. Blake sent me over to the truck to see if they knew about a Pulqueria. The driver of the truck, Guillermo, asked us to follow him. He led us far off the main road, took us through some small towns, and then finally dropped us in the middle of a little town with lots of cowboys hanging out on their horses drinking 40s of dark Corona and looking grim.

I was convinced that we were going to be carjacked or kidnapped. I couldn't help to think about how when Blake and I had teleconferenced with my mother earlier that morning, the first thing she wanted to know was if I had a gun. Culo Flaco told me to calm down. He said "if Guillermo says there is a Pulqueria here, then there is a Pulqueria." As it turns out, Guillermo took us a store that sells pulque. We sampled the pulque, and I wanted to buy 10 liters, but Blake and the others talked me down to 5 liters. I also bought some socks for this punk chick I recently met, since her birthday is coming up.

With Lily's car well-stocked with pulque, we headed out of the cowboy town. As we re-approached the main road, we finally found the Pulqueria, and the sexy mamacita with the pulque-belly that was running the joint. We sat on red plastic chairs with new friends, and we drank her pulque too. Then we took a look at the plants and hung out with a burro and some baby pigs. The Pulqueria is basically a little rancho farm kind of place.

The point is that pulque will never be mass produced, because it has to be lovingly drawn out of these big cactus plants. Moreover, it ferments so fast, so it cannot travel very far. You want pulque, you go to San Miguel.

We brought the pulque back to Blake's super-sweet house. The place has something like 5 decks and they all have amazing views. We hung out on the roof, drinking pulque while the sun set. Before we knew it, because Culo Flaco was in the house, we were all speaking Spanish. And because I was there, we were eating almonds.

Previously, that morning we had gone to the market after absconding with the almonds and teleconferencing with my mother. We had Dude with us, because Blake felt bad for him, since he had been sitting at home for a few days. Blake tied Dude to a phone outside the market, and when we got back from our walk-through, Dude was totally gone. It was like one of those bad Allstate commercials, but with a dog instead of a car. The lady next to the phone said that a half-drunk Mexican man took Dude. We were not super worried, because Dude was a street dog to begin with, and it seems that he had a previous owner. The kids in Donny's school knew Dude, as "Solito," and one day, when Blake was walking Dude, some guy rode by in a truck and yelled a lot of smack.

While we were checking out the market, we ran into Rabbi Dubrovsky who was visiting from Dallas to conduct a wedding that evening. Naturally, I asked him if I could crash the wedding, but since I was dressed kind of sketchy, he was evasive about where the wedding would be. No worries though, because San Miguel is a small town, and Lily had seen them loading a lot of flowers into the Instituto del Arte.

Originally, we were supposed to get a ride to the Pulqueria with Alex, who is a super tall San Miguel gangster with a lot of nieces and nephews that eat all his food. However, when we got to Alex's house, no one responded to our knocking, so we decided to take Lily's car instead. Just as we turned onto 20 de Enero (Blake's street), we saw Culo Flaco ride by in a cab. We yelled after him, which is easy to do, since the City streets are so rocky and jagged with random speedbumps, and everyone drives really slowly. I digress with this story, because it demonstrates how San Miguel is not just a small town, but it's a small town where people constantly run into each other and what they are looking for in fun and human ways. I'd like to say that the town has this weird good energy, but maybe it's just being around Blake and the fact that his friends are pretty cool.

After the sun set and Lily had left, Blake encouraged me to change out of my skanky clothing and crash the wedding. I was hesitant. After all, in San Miguel one can get away without showering or shaving for quite some time. Why ruin a good record. It took some convincing (I didn't want to wear shoes, etc.) However, we all know Blake's power of persuasion, and before I knew it I was dressing to crash a wedding. Culo Flaco and Blake dropped me off at the Instituto del Arte, and I set about making friends with these Dallas folk. Everything went really well, and Rabbi Dubrovsky made sure that I was introduced to both families as well as the bride and the groom. The people at the wedding were super nice, and I managed to make a decent impression, albeit a pulque-addled one. The food was pretty good and kosher too, as it had been shipped from Distrito Federal the night before.

After the wedding, Blake, Culo Flaco and I went to La Cucaracha for a nightcap. When we returned to Chez Blake, we ran into Andrew and Lilian, since they had just come home from partying Saturday night. It was Sunday evening, so basically they had been partying for more than 24 hours. Their enthusiasm helped me rally, and Culo Flaco and I accompanied them to see this Norteno band in this huge venue where lots of kids in cowboy hats were dancing and the stage show included shooting fire, sparks and confetti.

We hitched a ride in the back of a pick up truck with a couple of other chicas, and headed over to this all-night bar in San Miguel called The Ring. The Ring is at the edge of a funky little square in the center of town, and guess what is on the corner of that square. Go ahead, guess. Its a Starbucks. Yep, the end is near for San Miguel, as if the high-waisted khaki-wearing preppy invasion was not enough. Now San Miguel is getting a Starbucks. It is a little hard to be pissed about the preppy retirees and other rich folk that move down here and improve the economy, even if that affects the culture of the place. It's kind of super-naive for a gringo like me to demand cultural consistency, even if I think of myself as someone who keeps it real most of the time. Maybe the Starbucks won't succeed. After all, Starbucks was never able to get it going on in Israel.

The Talmud teaches us that heaven and hell are basically the same thing. Both are metaphorically represented as well-set tables with amazing cutlery and great cuisine. The people sitting at the tables do not have elbows so they cannot feed themselves. In hell, everyone is pissed, because they are sitting there being taunted by the amazing food that they can't have. However, in heaven people are reaching across the tables and feeding each other.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice job Berwin. Its like a review of the life of Blake written by Bukowski

Meredith said...

i think talmudic teachings are a much needed addition to this blog - especially those that focus on fabulous feasts.