From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XVIII

Introduction

This is the eighteenth and final installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. (No, it’s not really the final one, so far as I know. Just seeing if you’re awake.) Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, and Volume XVII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another, and can be read in order of importance, in First World Order, in the order in which they were received, in any other order you like, and/or not at all. (Note: I do not recommend that last option.)

What are Bits & Bobs, in the context of this blog? They’re like the bits of film left on the cutting room floor after a movie is made. Except you know what? That’s a nice metaphor but completely false. These are not leftovers but pertinent snippets from letters I wrote people. Some of the letters were actually printed letters, on paper, couriered by the post office. Others were of course emails. I only selected stuff that I figured any audience might find entertaining, especially nuns. Obviously snippets like “my flight gets in at 7:46 p.m.” would be excluded. (“Especially nuns?” No, I don’t know why I put that.)

Pay attention to the dates. These bits and bobs sprawl all over the place—or, to be more accurate, all over the time.

March 8, 1990

You know, there’s actually a very good reason for procrastinating on a [school] paper. The writing process is very complex, and very personal. What you write has everything to do with your life experiences, and I figure the longer I wait before writing, the more life experiences I’ll have to go on. Something could happen to me right now, for example, which could change the next paragraph of this letter. So it is with my paper. It’s not due for several more days and I’m still young … I should wait.

November 6, 1992

I sprained my right index finger about three weeks ago. I was at the bike shop after-hours truing a wheel and a customer suddenly bobbed up in front of me. Somebody must have left the shop door unlocked, and the customer ignored the “EMPLOYEES ONLY” sign. Scared the crap out of me, and as I flinched my finger went right into the spinning wheel. A few days ago , since it wasn’t healing, I jerry‑rigged a cardboard splint for it, but that didn’t help. Finally I broke down and saw a doctor. Well, a nurse, anyway. She seemed more concerned than I had been, and gave me a real splint which I’m supposed to wear for six weeks! I talked her down to three weeks, but the splint is still a major hassle since it holds my most important finger in a basically straight position.

“But wait,” you’re saying, “this letter is typed—how do you do that?” Well, I have to be able to type, since I have at least fifty pages in papers due before the end of the semester. The splint really does concern me (or rather, it did, as I shall explain). It’s a two‑centimeter‑wide aluminum plate (padded out with foam rubber) which extends beyond my fingertip, and the aluminum is curved at the end. I tried a number of typing drills—the word “jumpy” being the best challenge—and the splint would indiscriminately strike the “u,” “h,” “m,” or “n” key when I was trying for the “j.” The word “jumpy” came out anything from “hynpu” to “nhmph” or even “hunmjhupuh.” What would I do? Without the ability to type, I’d have no papers to turn in, thus failed classes, no graduation, no job, NO FUTURE. Something had to be done. It was then that I remembered the motto of the Marine Corps: Semper Fidelis. No, wait, that wasn’t it. What came to mind was a little saying I’ve somehow attributed to the Marine Corps: “Adapt, Overcome, Improvise!”

I remembered a small worn‑out mechanical pencil eraser I’d replaced a few days earlier, and dug through the trash until I found it. It’s perfect: hard rubber, about seven or eight millimeters in diameter, and maybe five millimeters thick. I glued it to the end of the aluminum splint, and you can see the results. I’ve been typing at about ninety percent of my normal speed (that is to say, about seventy or seventy‑five words per minute). While it’s somewhat trickier than normal typing, I really don’t mind it. The only minor problem is that every so often—once in three hundred words or so, perhaps—the eraser stub gets caught in the intersection of four keys, and hangs up, trapping my splinted finger. This gives me that same queer, shocking sensation as being clotheslined or when the front wheel of your bike somehow locks up.

November 10, 1992

A question my friends like to ask me is, “So what are you doing after you graduate?” I tell them, “I’m gonna get a job,” and then the real interrogation begins: “What can you do with an English degree?” they ask. At least they realize now that it’s too late to persuade me to change my major … that had gotten old over the first couple years. So, recently I was talking to a friend I hadn’t seen in ages, and she asked the same thing. “I’ve got a job lined up,” I told her, “in a factory, deburring plastic parts on an assembly line. You see, when plastics are molded, there are flashings left over from the holes the liquid material was poured through, into the mold. It’s actually pretty tricky work, because if you slip with the file you can ruin the whole piece.” I was pleased to have pulled off the entire description with a straight face. “Wow!” she said enthusiastically. “That’s great!” Sheesh. She took it hook, line, and sinker. So you can see how little respect we English majors get.

September 27, 1996

My pasta is infested. I’d bought like twenty pounds of De Cecco from the restaurant supply store down the street for super cheap, not worrying about what looked like maybe minor water damage to some of the boxes. I store most of the pasta under my bed because our kitchen is so tiny. Well, a week or so ago I saw little flecks of something when I poured the pasta in the boiling water, but wrote it off as minute cardboard debris. I made up a big batch of corn goo pasta and as E— and I began to eat, we both noticed that there were little specks in our dinner. I isolated one and determined that it was reddish in color and seemed to have a protuberance at one end. I ran and grabbed my albeit cheesy microscope and had a closer look. As I had begun to fear, it seemed to be an insect: six legs and a snout at one end. I fished out another speck and examined it; same thing. My next question was, what kind of insect could it be? I racked my brain to try to think of what kind of insects have a history of invading foodstuffs. Then it came to me: a word commonly used to describe the meals endured by peasants in Russian novels: “weevily,” as in “his grey, weevily porridge.” So I looked up “weevil” in my CD-ROM dictionary and found this definition: “Any of numerous beetles, of the superfamily Curculionoidea, especially the snout beetle, that characteristically have a downward-curving snout and are destructive to nuts, roots, stems, fruits, and pasta.” (Yeah, I added that last bit.) A picture was even provided:

E— couldn’t bear to eat the pasta, but I was hungry and just kind of ate around the weevils. I regaled my boss at work with this anecdote and he told a story of some relative who was a POW in Japan and was fed weevily rice. At first the POW refused to eat it; then he just ate around the weevils; then, eventually, realizing he wasn’t getting enough protein, would not only eat the weevils but would push them back down into his rice when they tried to escape up the side of the bowl. Reassured by this story, I’m continuing to eat the weevily pasta, since I have so much of it. Last night I made perciatelli, which is tubular like macaroni but straight and long like spaghetti. It’s particularly weevily because the weevils crawl inside of it. But it’s fine … I can’t even taste them.

September 9, 2009

A few days ago [in preparation for the Everest Challenge bike race], I shaved my legs for the first time in three years. I think it does make the legs feel a bit cooler. Plus, my leg hair was literally blowing in the wind during the Mount Diablo descent two weekends ago, which I’d found distracting. I think shaving may offer a placebo effect as well. Couldn’t hurt (unless you nick yourself). Anyhow, congrats on biting the bullet and joining me for the race. You will not suffer alone, unless you drop me.

I don’t mind driving you home on Sunday night after the race. My un-doping regimen [only using caffeine before bike rides] means that one NoDoz can wake me from the dead, and/or keep me going on a late night drive after two days of cycling overkill. And I even have a valid driver license, because I braved the DMV today to get a temporary license extension since my real license is, for some reason, moving at the speed of a glacier through the bureaucracy.

September 22, 2009

I don’t have a time trial bike you can borrow, but if you’re really, actually doing a triathlon you’ll need an appropriately dorky jersey as well, ideally one made by (well, branded by) a former pro triathlete. And you’re in luck: I still have a Scott Tinley jersey you can borrow—see attached photos.

Notwithstanding the mesh side panels, I had to make the jersey even more Tri by cutting off the sleeves so I could wear it “properly” with arm warmers (per T—’s astute observation about this dubious sartorial choice triathletes make). The hole in the chest is from when I got shot during a triathlon by an angry biker on the sidelines. Either that or I crashed on the Golden Gate Bridge and slid on my heart rate monitor transmitter; I can’t remember which. I don’t have the matching shorts anymore, which T— (in his capacity as UCSB bike club president) forbade us to wear during races; I gave those to my wife’s would-be ex-stepmother-in-law, who wore them with pride and aplomb for years. Though not in triathlons.

October 2, 2009

[To my bike team members and some other friends.] It’s been a long bike racing season. If you’ll be too tired to cook on Saturday, October 17, but not too tired to eat and drink and hang out with other bike people, celebrate your fatigue with your spouse/other and/or kids by coming to the Albert house. If you’re too tired to move, have someone drag you here. If you’re too tired to eat or drink, we’ll put you in a barber’s chair and pour beer and salsa right down your throat.

What? Salsa? Not homemade pasta? That’s right. Because we’re too tired to cook this year, and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mario’s La Fiesta, we’re bringing in Mexican food—lots of it. Beer and the raw materials for mixed drinks will also be provided. If you have m4d sk1llz at the blender, a spot in the kitchen is reserved for you. Bring your favorite beer if you like.

I realize now that I’ve used a vague acronym in the past: RSVP. While this can mean “Regional Senior Vice President,” it also stands for “Répondez S’il Vous Plaît.” And while this phrase literally translates to “respond if it pleases you,” it can also mean “respond, damn it.” It is in that sense I now say, “RSVP” so we’ll know how much food to order.

October 20, 2009

There’s a guy out front (visible through my office window) parking a horrible fake-wood-paneled Buick Roadmaster station wagon. He’s taking a very long time. He’s an old weird guy with plaid shorts and a jacket. Kind of a cross between L—’s husband and my dad. Now he’s done parking and is cleaning the interior meticulously. He has an unimpressive dog. He wants $6K for the car. People are mighty strange.

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From the Archives - Our Fiesta

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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Farewell, La Fiesta

Introduction

My favorite Mexican restaurant—actually, come to think of it, my favorite restaurant, period—closed recently after almost fifty-three years in business. This was Mario’s La Fiesta (quick, visit their old website while it’s still up!), which Mario and Rosalinda Tejada started up in 1959 and ran continuously throughout its life. In the twenty years I ate there, nothing changed—the recipes were never so much as tinkered with. It was like the perfect enchanted restaurant. But now it’s been sold to a new owner, which is to say it has utterly ceased to exist.

In this post I provide some fond memories, some photos, much reflection, and my take on the restaurant that has taken—I mean, tried to take—the place of Mario’s La Fiesta.

The horror

Before I get into all the good stuff about La Fiesta, I need to impress on you how devastating its closure was for me. Discovering that it was gone, replaced by another Mexican restaurant, was like getting hit in the stomach with a medicine ball—no, make that a wrecking ball.

On Memorial Day, I drove over to La Fiesta with my wife, my mom, and my two daughters, and dropped them off, then went to park the car. As I walked past People’s Park toward the restaurant, I was surprised to see my family standing out front—they were supposed to be inside scarfing chips and salsa. They all had strange smiles on their faces: not happy smiles, but the shocked, strained smiles of somebody trying to be stoic. They didn’t say anything. “What are you waiting for, let’s go!” I said. “Look at the sign,” my wife Erin told me. I looked. It said “Remy’s.” This meant nothing. Somebody put up a sign in the wrong place, I figured. I immediately put it out of my mind.

Actually, I’d already ignored two other pieces of information signaling La Fiesta’s demise. First, that morning when I looked up their phone number online (to call ahead and make sure they were open on the holiday) the first Google hit I saw was “Mario’s La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant – CLOSED.” I disregarded this, figuring it was leftover news about the restaurant leaving its original location a couple years ago. Then, when I phoned, it sounded like the person who answered said something other than “Mario’s” or “La Fiesta,” but I ignored this, too, figuring I just didn’t hear her right, over the background noise. I was in complete denial.

Realizing now that I wasn’t getting the message, Erin spelled it out for me: “Dana, La Fiesta is gone! It’s been sold!” I froze. I felt a huge disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. For several eternal seconds I was completely paralyzed. “It’s okay,” Erin continued, “your mom went and asked, and they said it was the same menu.”

It was not okay. I have thought long and hard about how to express the feeling of loss and betrayal that washed over me. The best I can do is this: imagine that you’re a kid returning home from summer camp, and when you walk in the front door, there’s a strange women standing there. Your dad appears at her side and says, “While you were away, I divorced your mother and remarried. But don’t worry, you’ll like your new mom just fine. She’s a lot like your old mom—look, she can even wear your mom’s clothes!”

We sat down and were given menus that said “Remy’s” at the top. I suppose if the menu were the same physical menu I’d held in my hand during my last La Fiesta visit, with a mailing label with “Remy’s” written in ball-point stuck over the old name, I’d have been okay. But it was a new menu with the new name and was like a slap in the face. “We have a special today,” said the waitress brightly. “It’s your own heart. We cut it out when you came in the door.”

(I suppose the news would have been a little easier to take had I known in advance of La Fiesta’s demise. I would have liked to have one last meal there before it was all over. A Chowhounder posted Mario’s farewell letter here.)

Fond memories

As with many of La Fiesta’s customers, I first started going there in college. For me, that meant 1990. I lived far from campus, so the restaurant was handy, and it was really the only place I could afford. I was close to flat broke most of the time in those days; I remember once having to deposit a few dollars in cash into my checking account so my rent check would clear. My standard La Fiesta meal was a side of beans ($0.80), a side of rice ($0.80), and a side of flour tortillas ($0.50). Even with a huge tip, I was out the door for $3.

Despite my minimalist order, I got the free chips and Mario’s fantastic, fiery homemade salsa. They had at least half a dozen different salsas that they’d rotate, two or three at a time. The sides would come arranged on a big plate with a liberal amount of melted cheese on the beans, and a little pile of lettuce. It was enough to make two decent-sized burritos, and—due to the lard in the beans—was both delicious and filling. It probably doesn’t sound like much of a meal but that’s the amazing thing about that place. I would practically whimper with pleasure. It’s hard to describe how good it was without resorting to profanity.

After I moved to San Francisco and got married, my wife and I would make the trip to Berkeley just to eat at La Fiesta. For a few years we didn’t have a car and would Bart all the way out. Naturally such a trip called for a more lavish meal, and I wasn’t broke anymore, so I’d spring for the combination plate. Here’s one of my favorites: chicken enchilada, chile relleno, chicken flauta, rice and beans, and (not shown) a side of tortillas.

Counting the extra sour cream from Erin’s plate (you can see it coming in from the right), we’re talking about probably 3,000 calories of pure goodness, for about $10. Frankly, I’d have paid far more than that, and now I’d pay almost anything.

In 2000, Erin and I moved back to the East Bay, and for our housewarming party ordered from the La Fiesta “Large Party Take-Out Menu.” I phoned in the order, and at the end of the call I asked for the name of the person I was speaking with. “This is Mario,” he replied. I was stunned. “You mean, the Mario!?” I asked. It was. I felt like I’d just met a rock star. I’d seen Mario before, as I was heading down Haste Street at the end of an early morning bike ride, and he was crossing the street with a giant box of fresh produce. And when I picked up my Large Party Take-Out order, I got to meet Mario in person for the first time.

I’d ordered what I figured would be enough for fifty or so people. It totally filled my Volvo wagon, even with the seats down. As several friends and I brought the food in from the car, one of them said, “Dana, I’ve never seen you so happy.” It was more than enough food; in fact, the leftovers filled my freezer, which is about as good as it gets. The cost for this dazzling amount of food? $260: a stunning value. Over the years I bought La Fiesta take-out for three more giant parties. Here’s a shot from the most recent one:

When our first child, Alexa, was born, La Fiesta became our go-to restaurant because it was loud enough to be kid-friendly, and the waitress would give us a window seat in the corner that had a little shelf for the baby’s car-seat. We’d set Alexa up in a high-chair (the old-school kind with a built-in tray), and actually have some peace so long as we fed her rice and beans almost continuously. On one occasion, though, she kept bursting out crying between bites, though I was going as fast as I could, spooning beans directly from Erin’s plate into Alexa’s mouth. Finally I said to Erin, “I wonder why she keeps crying!” Erin said, “Wait—are you giving her my beans?” I fessed up. “Well no wonder she’s crying!” Erin said. “I mixed a whole bunch of salsa into those beans!”

La Fiesta became a standard outing whenever I had friends or family visiting. Here are Bradley and my brother Geoff, enjoying a four-item combo that won’t even fit on one plate. Note the ‘70s-era plastic cups and the various salsas.

Here’s my nephew John tucking into an enchilada. Behind him are the car-seats of his little sister and one of my kids. John starts college in the fall.

My brother Geoff moved to the Netherlands in 1993. Whenever he came to visit, La Fiesta was of course mandatory, despite the fact that his family—being Dutch—didn’t necessarily enjoy spicy food. On one trip, I asked his wife, “Does it bother you that we always eat Mexican food when you’re out, even though it’s spicier than you’d like?” She replied, “It doesn’t bother me, because I know if Geoff doesn’t get it, he’ll die.” When I phoned Geoff today to give him the bad news about La Fiesta, he was just finishing a dinner of tacos. (He has to make everything from scratch, even the tortillas and salsa, because none of the ingredients are available over there.) I asked if he still had his La Fiesta t-shirt. “It just so happens I’m wearing it right now,” he said, and sent me over this photo.

My brother isn’t the only expatriate who missed La Fiesta. One of the last times I ate there, my family happened to be seated right next to Mario and Rosalinda, who were enjoying a quiet early dinner. We got to talking, and Mario recounted how a family living in Europe heard that La Fiesta was moving (just across the street, into the former banquet space), and changed their flights so they could arrive in time for one last meal in the original location.

How many times did I eat at La Fiesta? It’s impossible to say, because when I ate there the most often—in college—they didn’t take credit cards, so no paper-trail exists. They started taking credit cards in mid-2004, and I have record of forty visits since then. I had my albertnet intern, Alexa, crunch the numbers and she estimates I’ve eaten there about 145½ times.

Factoring in that it was practically the only restaurant I ever went to during college, and that on occasion friends or family have treated me there, I’m guessing the real total is well over 200.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about Mario’s La Fiesta was its constancy. In a world where corporations are constantly pandering to shareholders, forever reorganizing themselves and taking over competitors in a tireless effort to grow continuously, Mario and his family always knew they had a good thing and saw no need to change it. Whereas so many people value only ambition, Mario was wise enough to know contentment isn’t a failing.

The wait staff must have felt the same way, because it seemed like the same waiters for the whole twenty years I ate there. And they looked to be the same age as when they served me as in college, which made me feel like I could still be that college kid. To eat at La Fiesta was to deny the march of time: those waiters and I, we will never get old. We will never die.

The food

There is so much to say about the food at La Fiesta. I offer a full report in a separate blog post, a “from the archives” tale from an e-mail I sent to my bike club in 2006 (it was a restaurant review masquerading as a bike race report). Click here for this tribute to La Fiesta’s food.

I should, however, take a moment here to talk about Mario’s soup. Anybody who cooks a lot of chickens really ought to boil the carcasses to make a good stock, and this was standard practice at La Fiesta. All the entrees came with this soup, which was a simple broth with potatoes, carrots, and tiny star-shaped pasta (the shape of which always reminded me of sponge spicules). Erin and I used to fight over this soup with our kids, whose à la carte grilled burritos didn’t come with it, but then the waiters noticed and, without ever having been asked, took to bringing the kids soup anyway. I always meant to try the soup without eating any salsa first, to get its full flavor without my mouth being on fire. But hot soup in a mouth-on-fire was pretty much a tradition unto itself.

Does Remy’s stack up?

Of course not. Let me count the ways. First and foremost, the new management installed three flat-screen TVs in there, one of them giant, all of them showing sports. There’s so much wrong with this. First of all, the TVs are sleek and modern so they make me feel like I’m in an airport. Second, I draw a distinct line between eating and watching TV. For me, the two activities do not belong together to begin with, much less when you’re occupying a restaurant with such a rich history of actual dining (as opposed to the feeding-at-the-trough affair that the American meal is morphing into). The presence of these TVs would be no less disgraceful if they were placed in a church so dudes could keep an eye on the game during the sermon.

Second, the salsa—though still tasty—is not spicy whatsoever. This strikes a severe blow to Remy’s authenticity, and is also disrespectful of Mario’s tradition. In an article about La Fiesta’s relocation a couple years ago, the journalist—who was either ignorant or possessed of a strange sense of humor—wrote, “Mario’s has competition in the form of a popular chain, Chipotle’s Mexican Grill, which Tejada insists is no competition at all. ‘Instead of our genuine hot sauce—which we make from jalapenos, serranos or habaneros—the chains sell a watered- down version,’ [Mario said].” Remy’s, in this regard, seems to be actually imitating the chains, which is a bit like if Eminem tried to copy Vanilla Ice, or Radiohead tried to be more like R.E.M.

The combination of big TVs and weak salsa—the first two things you notice when eating at Remy’s—has a truly disheartening effect. Returning to my earlier analogy, it’s like your new stepmom being your age, and trying to suck up to you as a pal. Remy’s is saying, “We don’t want to hurt your mouth! We don’t want you to be bored during your meal! We don’t want you to miss the game! We want you to have fun! We want to be your friend!” It’s their right, of course, but it’s patronizing, and tacky, and distasteful. College kids don’t need to be pandered to; they need to be shown what’s what, a service La Fiesta provided for generations.

One particularly annoying thing is that if you look at the Google Maps reviews of Remy’s, what you actually get are old reviews of La Fiesta. This strikes me as a flat-out theft of Mario’s well-earned reputation. It’s no different than if I bought Alexi Grewal’s 1984 Pinarello racing bike and then went around telling people I’m an Olympic gold medalist. I’m going to blame Google for this, not Remy’s, but still—it’s annoying.

The real reviews of Remy’s, meanwhile, strike me as unduly harsh. Granted, most of the reviewers are as stunned and grief-stricken as I am over La Fiesta being gone, so I can understand their impulse to skewer the interloper. But Remy’s (which I think has retained at least one cook from La Fiesta) does have some strong points. The chile relleno is still pretty good (only the sauce is wrong—totally insipid), and the rice is the same as ever, and the flauta is almost identical to Mario’s—only the guacamole on it was a bit wrong (too much lime). If a place in my neighborhood had food like this, I’d be stoked.

The décor is almost the same (other than those damn TVs), and in fact the chief difference in ambience is that things we overlooked since La Fiesta moved from Telegraph Ave are now things we’re tempted to nitpick about. For example, the original location had these great hand-painted wicker chairs (look for them in the photos above) that before La Fiesta’s demise were already being gradually replaced due to old age. (Occasionally I’d get a particularly frail one and would quickly swap chairs with one of my kids.) In their place are the gross brown-painted steel-box-section chairs with foam rubber padding under vinyl that give a tiny wheeze when you sit on them. They’re like what you’d get in a cheap cafeteria. Did I notice them before? Yeah, I guess—but it’s so tempting to blame them on the new owners.

Really, the only way for Remy’s to stack up would be to replicate Maria’s La Fiesta in every detail. To be 98% identical isn’t enough—remember, if you were 2% different, you’d be a chimpanzee. Remy’s is doomed to fall down as badly in the comparison as Kenney Jones being held up to Keith Moon, or Shelley Hack to Jaclyn Smith—not only because it’s legitimately inferior, which it certainly is, but also because our sense of loyalty and honor demand that it fall short. For Remy’s to be compared to La Fiesta is like your new stepmother being compared to your own mom.

Gratitude

Naturally I would be a real ingrate if I ended this post on a sad note. After all, at least I got to enjoy a great restaurant for twenty years, while 17 million Dutch people have no Mexican food at all (unless they’re lucky enough to dine at my brother’s place). And it’s not like I can’t get good Mexican anymore, with the Mission District of San Francisco—a mecca for kick-ass taquerias—a short trip away.

I think I’m going to check out Juan’s Place again. It’s only been around for some thirty years, but it’s actually the first Mexican restaurant I went to when I moved to Berkeley in 1990. I remember that trip well—a bunch of blue-collar types at the next table were arguing about the bill and it evolved into an actual fistfight. I’ve seen cops eating there too, so it’s got some cred, and as I recall the food is good enough. It’s going to have to wait, though. I’m still in mourning.

dana albert blog

From the Archives - UC Berkeley Criterium "Race Report"

Introduction

In an invitation my wife Erin sent out for my fortieth birthday party a couple years ago, she wrote, “He likes to talk, likes to ride his bike, likes to talk while riding his bike, likes to eat, likes to drink, likes to eat while having a drink. In short, he likes to overeat, over-drink and over-ride. All of which lead to pain and suffering, which he likes best of all. Don’t you?” It’s all true, but what she didn’t mention is that I also I like to write, and what better to write about than riding bikes and eating? In that spirit, in 2006 I wrote my first bike club e-mail Race Report, after the UC Berkeley criterium. If you can’t envision yourself wading through a bike geek’s description of attacks, team tactics, and excuses, fear not: my report diverges sharply from the traditional race report format. I run it here, in its entirety, because it ties in perfectly with an upcoming post.

Race Report – UC Berkeley Criterium, Alumni Category

Right after the race, Dave, Robin, Erin, Alexa, Lindsay and I headed over to Mario’s La Fiesta. The waiter was cool enough to let Dave stash his bike in the back among the ripening avocados, bricks of lard, sacks of rice, etc. Perhaps I was enjoying residual endorphins from the race, because I was able to eat vast amounts of La Fiesta’s fiery salsa without feeling one particle of pain. The chips were thick and crunchy, not like those absurdly flimsy paperlike things at Chevy’s. La Fiesta can be forgiven for not having Dos Equis Special Lager, because they tolerated my children, and the stench of Dave’s and my sweat.

The soup arrived, with spaghetti instead of the tiny starlike pasta it normally has. I didn’t get to taste it, as my kids were all over it. But when a little kid won’t share with you something comprised mainly of vegetables, you know the cook is doing something right.

Robin had the carne asada burrito, which was larger than a human head. Okay, not really, but larger than any other burrito on the market. She pronounced it “very good” and if she didn’t expound at length it’s perhaps only because her mouth was full.

I created my own combo: chile relleno, enchilada verde, and flauta. The chile relleno was plump, zesty, and nicely battered: not too eggy and not soggy. There’s a thin red sauce, almost a broth, on the relleno that I’ve contemplated at length: it must somehow be a perfectly fluid rendition of lard, for it has that knock-down flavor that vegans cannot synthesize no matter how assiduously they worry and molest their ingredients. The enchilada was much better than what many of you have had at my house; when prepared as is single unit, as is done at the restaurant, the enchilada has a perfection that the casserole format of large-scale take-out cannot
achieve. The chicken was all dark meat, which the non-deluded among us recognize as superior to the comparatively dry, insipid white meat that Hungry Hunters and Olive Gardeners think is the way to go.

The flauta was perfectly crunchy, its chicken filling nicely peppery, and it was generously covered with guacamole. There were only two problems with this dish: first, the guacamole’s exquisite, whimper-inducing perfection threw me into the quandary of whether or not it was too late to get a large order of guacamole for the table; and second, by this time in the meal my passion for the food was so mightily kindled I found it impossible not to forget my manners and pick up the flauta with my fingers, driving it into my mouth like a large branch into a wood chipper. Fortunately, my kids created a nice diversion, lustily tearing into portions of a grilled burrito: for just a few bucks, it’s a nice combo of beans, rice, chicken, and cheese folded into a tortilla that the cook must butter before throwing it on the grill because it has a wonderful guilty-pleasure-greasiness that kids love and parents can’t help but snitch from.

Dave had a big pile of cubed meat on his plate and I never got around to asking him about it; granted, he’s not a big proponent of lengthy race reports, but perhaps we can persuade him to comment. Erin had the number five, the chile relleno/enchilada verde duo, and she was busy enough with Lindsay that she neglected to rave. I can say that very few of her leftovers made it to me, which is a sure sign she liked it (given La Fiesta’s massive portions). I did get part of Erin’s relleno casing, which arrived just in time to throw on the pile of beans, rice, and enchilada/flauta shrapnel that I love to load onto a fresh grilled tortilla until the thing becomes almost impossible to manipulate without spillage.

All in all, the UC Berkeley alumni criterium was superb preparation for getting the maximum pleasure out of a great meal. Next year, I hope to see more orange jerseys stinking up my favorite Berkeley restaurant.

dana albert blog