Introduction
When my wife and I bought our house, in Albany, California, we probably thought it was a starter home. Well, over 24 years later, we’re still here. Thus, what we assumed could well be the first of several housewarming parties became possibly, probably our only one. Fortunately, the party was glorious, mainly because we procured the food from our favorite (and alas, now long gone) Mexican restaurant, Mario’s La Fiesta . What follows is an account of that party—or, more precisely, the food, because that’s almost all I wrote about. Please enjoy this mouth-watering account from my archives. (At least, it made my mouth water.)
[Here’s the picture we included on our invitations, which we actually printed and mailed out. No, that’s not really our house.]
Our Fiesta – April 1, 2001
[My wife] E— came up with perhaps one of the greatest ideas ever conceived by the human mind: to get the food for our housewarming party from Mario’s La Fiesta. There were gobs of details to worry about for the party (cleaning the house, having enough toilet paper, providing a wide variety of healthy-style soft drinks for the non-drinkers and four pregnant women at the party, battling the logistics of having more than a hundred beers cold at once), so it was great not to have to worry about assembling decorative trays of whores-douvres. As it was, cleaning the place took several evenings, because we didn’t want to spend all Saturday cleaning and then be too tired to entertain our guests. The yard out front had been completely infested with weeds, and completely covered in fallen leaves (the camphor trees seem to do all their shedding at this time of year), and E—happened by a small crew of gardeners working in the neighborhood, and asked them to come out and give a bid, and they did a bang-up job for $100. By six we were almost completely ready. I realized I am an amateur party-giver when I loaded about 100 pounds of ice into a giant tub, before putting in the drinks, then had a devil of a time plunging the drinks through the ice. A bottled fizzy juice thing forced in head-first must have ruptured slightly, because there was a hissing sound somewhere in the tub. But we were essentially ready.
Our first official guest, a middle-aged lady from E—’s work, arrived at 6:10, some 20 minutes early. Then, nobody arrived for a very long time, and I was starting to worry that nobody would show, when everybody seemed to show up at once. Things were so busy that I actually forgot about the food, believe it or not, until I suddenly realized I was starving. “Man, what do they give you to eat around here?” I incongruously thought, before suddenly realizing I’d completely forgotten about my 7:15 food pickup at Mario’s. Panicking, I looked at my watch: it was already 7:15, on the nose. I looked around at a large crowd of guests who didn’t have a single thing to eat: not a cracker, not a celery stick, and certainly not one of those hackneyed spinach/artichoke dips inside a hauled-out bread bowl that seem to curse every party I’ve been to since college. No, my guests—spared though they were from the insipid brie wheels and 7-layer dips and inedible highfalutin pâté-style nonsense—were starving.
I quickly found an able assistant, my former colleague P— who immediately spoke up because he has a brand-new truck, one of those massive one-and-a-half-ton pickups with crew cab. We rushed to the restaurant, making a horribly time-consuming side trip to the ATM to cash up as La Fiesta doesn’t take credit or checks. Inside the restaurant, there was general confusion because a) nobody could understand that I’d placed the order days in advance, since they assumed I was there for a standard take-out, and 2) I was in the wrong place—I needed the banquet facility around the corner.
So I was like half an hour late, and lo and behold there was a La Fiesta employee waiting out front. Kind of an older looking guy, robust but not fat, and I had the distinct impression I was in the presence of somebody important. Sure enough, it was Mario himself! Not even the son of the original Mario, but the very founder, 42 years ago, of La Fiesta! I even shook his hand! He had the solid, nonchalant confidence and cheerfulness of somebody who knows his customer will be completely satisfied.
Mario saw how far away the truck was parked, and said to bring it right up front and double-park. Then we went into the banquet facility and I saw my food there, on the counter, in two huge, four-inch-deep aluminum casserole trays, next to three deep tubs of salsa (one a smoked tomato thing, one a classic salsa roja, and the other green tomatillo). My heart soared like a hawk to see so much La Fiesta food in one place at one time. At this point Mario beckoned to P— to come forward and help haul: “We’ve got a lot of food here!” Imagine my amazement when another member of the La Fiesta family approached, wheeling a large dolly with a stack at least four feet high of more giant trays of food. It was probably more food than I’ve ever seen in one place. (I’m not counting Sizzler as food.) I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
Mario’s wife Rosalinda settled up the bill. I’d ordered 30 flour tortillas, which weren’t on the menu but which Mario supposed he could provide, though he had no idea when I ordered how much they would cost. Well, they ended up charging me four dollars and change, roughly a quarter what I would have paid at Safeway. And somehow, though I’d meticulously calculated the total and the tax, the bill came out about $25 lower than expected. All in all it was an extremely reasonable sum: within fifty bucks or so of the most expensive dinner for two I’ve had with E—, and we were feeding forty-plus people.
The food absolutely filled the bed of P—’s truck, and this is one of those massive pickups that it so large, in fact, that it doesn’t deserve to exist except as a legit work truck, with the type of oversized bed that could carry the space shuttle, the lunar lander, and any modern sedan all at one time. There wasn’t even room in the bed for the salsa and the bag of chips (which was the size of a small cow), which I carried up front on my lap. I was so excited at this point I thought I was going to cry. We were just about to pull away when I remember the Agua Fresca. Agua Fresca is a lot like punch, except that it’s made from fruit instead of corn syrup and food coloring. Thus, the flavors are things like pineapple and strawberry instead of “blue” and “red.” It’s delicious stuff, and I’d ordered four gallons. So I went back, and found to my horror that I couldn’t get back in. The banquet facility is right next to People’s Park, which is so full of desperate homeless people I couldn’t blame La Fiesta for having a big locking gate out front. It was some time before I discovered the doorbell. Mario came back out, and I said, “The Agua Fresca!” He threw his hands up in the air. “Ah, the Agua Fresca!” he shouted. He turned back and went inside, yelling, “The Agua Fresca!” Everybody in the place starting running around yelling “The Agua Fresca! the Agua Fresca!” and looking for it as though it were a small animal that could run under a table and hide. Suddenly Mario found it, seeming to pull it out of thin air, though it was a massive lidded plastic pail, at least three feet tall. He loaded it up on the dolly and we rolled it out to the car. It took all my adrenaline-boosted strength to hoist it up into the crew cab. I could hear the ice cubes clattering around and I all but drooled down the front of my shirt.
[Here’s a photo of another giant order from La Fiesta, from another party years later. You get the idea.]
We drove as fast back to my house (my house!) as is prudent in a truck filled with such a precious and precarious cargo, and when we pulled up I ran into the house and yelled for assistance. At least half a dozen guests, half-crazed with hunger I imagine, streamed out the door and helped unload. It was like an army of ants carrying massive crumbs to their queen. I distinctly heard a colleague of mine ask another, “Have you ever seen Dana this happy?” It didn’t even all fit on our dining room table. The dining room was instantly thronged with people. And the food was a hit! I was in there for at least half an hour before I got anything to eat, and the burden of socializing with guests was starting to be a severe obstacle. I almost wanted to dismiss the whole party so as to get at those enchiladas verdes and chiles rellenos, the magical refried beans and the rice, the guacamole (a huge tray), and the three, count-em three, kinds of salsa.
The husband of one of E—’s friends approached me, plate-less, looking quite grave: “I will know if this is worth eating,” he said in a low voice, “after just one taste of the guacamole. If it isn’t good, nothing will be.” I practically forced a chip into his hand. (Later in the evening, his gut bloated with gas and cramp, he apologized for having doubted my choice, explaining that he’d been subjected to a dreadful hotel-catered “Mexican” buffet the previous week, the awfulness of which was heralded by milky-sour-cream-based, uniformly weak and thin ersatz guacamole.
Eventually I made my way to the table and had, over three or four trips, what in aggregate could be called the Super Mario platter—at least three each of rellenos and enchiladas, with rice and beans and tortillas accompanying each round. I ate more La Fiesta that night than I ever have in a single sitting. It may have been because I was standing up, thus giving more room in my gut. Plus, it’s very hard to cut a chile relleno with one hand (the other hand was holding the plate), so I ate at least one of them in a single bite.
Ten years ago, had we the inclination and the means to throw such a party, I imagine it would have ended at three or four AM or whenever we ran out of booze. Instead, the last guests left at 2:40 AM, which was actually 1:40 AM except we lost an hour at 2:00 AM (when daylight savings began). Many of the guests had assumed it was BYOB, and we ended up with more than half, perhaps even two thirds, of the beer un-drunk. We never even opened the tequila, and barely tapped the vodka. The bowl of spiked Agua Fresca was only half gone at the end, though the total of un-spiked Agua Fresca left over was only about 2-1/2 quarts. When I think about it, I realize it was more popular than the booze! Part of that was the pregnant women at the party, but then again all of their husbands should have been drinking for three. I guess my generation is slowing down. As for me, I spent a lot of time in bed on Sunday, not because I drank a lot (I didn’t) but because I had eaten so much. Kind of a lard hangover.
The leftovers? A vast amount. I think when you order large takeout from Mario’s, they pay little attention the quantity you actually ordered and just give you gobs of food. Maybe they round up to the nearest hundred items (I’d ordered four dozen of each). I can’t wait for my next excuse to throw a party.
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It seems like your starter home is working out, a good start, if you will. How fortunate you were to live in the era of Mario's La Fiesta! Man I miss that place... I have never found its equal.
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