Review - Los Gallos Taqueria (or, How To Choose a Mexican Restaurant)

Introduction

Road trips can be great for dining. They can also be lousy if you guess wrong about a restaurant. (For example, I went to a dynamite-looking Bavarian pastry shop in Michigan back in ’94 that looked so promising until the first grainy, filmy, insipid bite.) Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google can obviously help, if you’re able to sort through the conflicting reviews.

This I did with my brother Bryan on a recent road trip that took us through Reno. This post reviews a great taqueria there, and in the process lays out some solid criteria for evaluating one. I also cover (once again) some of the pitfalls of amateur reviews.

Restaurant Review – Los Gallos taqueria, Reno, NV

While Bryan drove, I searched top-10 lists for Reno taquerias. My method is simple: see if the same taqueria pops up in the top-10 lists of Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google. Then I scan the reviews of a favorable place and look for undeniable evidence for or against a place being good. Undeniable would be along the lines of “whole wheat and gluten free tortillas offered!” (against) and “best lengua I’ve ever had!” (for). What I’m looking for is authenticity and assurance that that Sysco is not involved.

Just in case you’re not familiar with lengua, it’s beef tongue. I only had it once, from a mediocre food truck. My burrito had giant rubbery hunks of it and it made me feel kind of ill. I hauled the tongue out of the burrito and put it in my cat’s dish, so I could set up a family member to ask me, “Whatsa matter … cat got your tongue?” (Nobody did.) Interesting aside: the resemblance of “lengua” to the word “language” is no coincidence, and the Russian word for language, язык, is the same as their word for tongue. Anyway, I will probably never order lengua again, but I like to know it’s on the menu. It’s like a shibboleth.

Los Gallos taqueria showed immediate promise based on this statement from a 5-star review: “Burrito-gasms= spicy pork and lingua.” A 4-star review said, “Any restaurant whose theme is cock fighting, just check the wall decor, has to be confident in their grub… If you ever wanted to try buche, tripas or lengua, this is the place.”

(I thought going into this review that the person would be complaining about the cockfighting motif. Frankly, I would not watch a cockfight, but that doesn’t mean I think this restaurant should be avoided. I mean, I wouldn’t fight in a war if I could avoid it, but I don’t shun Hemingway’s work just because he wrote about war.)

I’ve never wanted to try tripe, but it’s an excellent sign that Los Gallos serves it. And buche? What the hell is that? Google translated it as “maw,” which isn’t really helpful. No animal’s throat would yield much meat, would it? But there’s a Spanish definition given as well: “Abultamiento del esófago de las aves, en forma de bolsa membranosa, donde almacenan los alimentos para reblandecerlos antes de triturarlos en la molleja.” Google translates this as “Bulging of the esophagus of the birds, in the form of a membranous bag, where they store the food to soften them before crushing them in the gizzard.” This puts Los Gallos up there with those really trendy “whole animal” restaurants that cost a fortune. Another good sign!

Of course, it’s important to look at the 1-star reviews as well, to make sure there are no ugly surprises, such as “They don’t have burritos, only ‘wraps,’” or “They charged me $2 extra for guac and it was only the faintest smear,” or “I watched the cook shoot the dishwasher in the stomach just to watch him die” (this was Reno, after all).

But the 1-star reviews I saw weren’t very damning. One said, “Place in kinda run down but was clean. I just found the food to be meh mediocre and do to its dreary decor I don't want to even bother giving it another try.” That first bit, “Place in kinda run down,” is problematic. If “in” was supposed to be “is,” then there’s a verb tense problem with “was” later in the same sentence. If it’s just an extra tacked-on word, well, then the person is sloppy. The fact of “due” being spelled “do” confirms the borderline illiteracy of the reviewer, and any focus on décor shows poor judgment if not poor character. This person does not deserve to be taken seriously.

Another 1-star review said, “Nasty and nasty. I was so disappointed both my husband and I were. I was upset also with the girls that work there at the front they  both were rude. $23.97 went to the garbage can.” The sloppiness of this review (e.g., the run-on sentences) shows remarkable cheek in somebody so utterly unforgiving of her fellow man. And “girls” seems a bit sexist, as surely the employees were adults. I’m not sure what the redundancy of “nasty and nasty” was intended to convey. And I’m dismayed that she threw away her food. (I’ve been known to rescue marginal food from the family compost bin.)

My favorite 1-star review read, “Love the food been coming here for years ... NOW I GET HOME AND THE BURRIOT HAS PICO WHICH I CLEARLY DIDNT ASK FOR!!! ASTONISHED, if this isn't taken care of I will never return, my family won't return and my friends will hear of this.” OMG. Is this person for real? First of all, who doesn’t like pico de gallo? And if this person has loved the food for years, couldn’t a little goof like this be forgiven? “Astonished” … really?

Man, people suck. Fricking prima donnas. I have enjoyed Joe Blow’s Yelp reviews for years, but now I read the non-word “burriot” instead of burrito which is clearly a misspelling! ASTONISHED! If this isn’t taken care of I’ll never read another Joe Blow review, and my family and friends will hear of this! (Note: it has occurred to me that this person’s review could be satirical and/or tongue-in-cheek, but if so that’s no favor to the restaurant given the widespread gullibility of Internet users.)

Of course we should take the favorable reviews with a grain of salt as well. A 4-star review reported, “This place has been on my list for a while.  It’s a bit embarrassing because I live around the corner from the place. Why I haven’t I gone?  The obvious is I’m lazy.” Ah, a classic self-referential blathering review. What do I care of the reviewer’s traits and circumstance? And who is that lazy? Should I trust a lazy person?

A 5-star review raved, “Tacos were filling, meat was savory, and the bottled coke was delicious.” Look, all tacos are filling, if you eat enough of them, and to call any Coke “delicious” shows an exceedingly sunny disposition that must be marvelous in a human being, but not very useful in a critic.

Okay, enough of the received wisdom—on to my own experience. If I were writing a Yelp review, I’d probably give this 5 stars and proclaim, “Totally great place—I was driving through Reno with my brother, coming back from Colorado where we settled our late father’s estate, and we were really hungry from hours of driving along Highway 50, which is a much better route than I-70 or I-80 by the way, and check this out—Los Gallos doesn’t have a parking lot but it does have street parking, and when we got there, there was 36 minutes left on the meter. THIS PLACE ROCKS!”

Fortunately, albertnet has higher standards so you won’t get my life story. We headed in there, and the menu told us straight off that we were in good hands. Check this out:

Not only was the lengua confirmed, but they have cabeza (beef brains) and buche (which term they helpfully translate for us). They also serve menudo, which you will never, ever find at Chipotle or Trump Tower, and birria, which is goat. (I thought about asking if they’d put birria in my burrito—which I happened to know would be great—but remembered that I’d been warned that “the girls that work there at the front they  both were rude.” I wonder what the items were that have been whited out and papered over on the menu.

The super burrito is a bit pricey ($9) but at least the guacamole comes stock. The cashier asked us if we wanted the cheese that the burritos came with. I take this as another sign of authenticity, as I’m dimly aware that traditional Mexican food isn’t brimming with cheese. (Being a gringo, I actually do want the cheese, but it’s nice to be asked.) The food took a while, which is also good. I once went to Chipotle (it was the only place open on a holiday), and although the place was as deserted as it deserves to be, the cook put my burrito together so hastily and half-assedly I almost lunged across the counter to strangle him.

Interestingly, Los Gallos accepts Android Pay. The only reason I care is that I got my housecat from the animal shelter, where they implant every animal with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip. That means if you update your pet’s profile online, adding your credit card number, you can use the animal as a mobile wallet. Not at Los Gallos, though … they don’t allow pets.

While waiting for our burritos we helped ourselves to thick, crunchy chips that were just the right amount of greasy. There was a salsa bar with at least five kinds of salsa, plus the little radishes and pickled jalapenos that I never eat. The salsa was really good and really fiery. It made my mouth hurt. I’m sure there’s a 1-star review out there complaining about this, but it’s how Mexican food is supposed to be (at least as far as I know).

Here’s a photo of the interior. As I’ve said, I’m not hugely into décor, but the original artwork was fun (and decidedly non-institutional). I would give Los Gallos a 5-star review based on this dude’s beard alone. (Yes, that was hyperbole.)

Okay, let’s cut to the chase: how were the burritos? Delicious. I’ll walk you through mine. First, the tortilla was perfectly grilled. (I like grilled way better than steamed.) The first bite obviously had more tortilla than subsequent bites would, as I bit through the “cap,” but I didn’t have to deal with a bunch of wadded-up tortilla like what you get when there’s too much tortilla for the filling. I hate that, even as a lover of large expanses of starch.

The meat—I ordered my burrito al pastor—was a bit greasy, but in a good way. Let’s face it, anyone who doesn’t like a bit of grease would avoid al pastor entirely. The ingredients were perfectly apportioned. I hate it when there’s too much meat in a burrito, even if the meat is good. The flavors must be balanced. The ingredients were also perfectly distributed. I won’t say I dislike coming across a huge pocket of rice, since I like rice, but I obviously don’t prefer any big deposits of a single ingredient. Everything tasted great. Have a look:

I freely confess that’s not a very good photo. The burrito isn’t even in focus. But this actually attests to the burrito’s superb quality. Having tasted it, I couldn’t be bothered to waste a lot of time photographing it. In fact, every moment I spent not stuffing my face was intolerable. But look closely and you’ll see my brother is sweating. That’s because it was spicy. I should have taken another photo toward the end of the meal to better showcase this. (As spicy as the filling was, I kept adding more salsa anyway simply because it was there and it was so good.)

There’s only so much you can say about a burrito without starting to blather like a wine “expert” so I’ll stop now. But I have two things to say about the service. One, when I went back to the counter to ask the cashier to thank the cook for me, she was perfectly friendly. Two, even if the cashier had been totally rude, had insulted me and even my mother to my face, I wouldn’t hesitate to eat at Los Gallos again. I almost wish I had some reason to go back to Reno.

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From the Archives: Burrito Worlds

Introduction

Around five years ago, I learned of a documentary about burritos that somebody was doing. He was looking for anybody with a funny burrito-related story to tell, so I finally wrote down the story of how I won the burrito-eating World Championship while a student at UC Santa Barbara. He liked the story, and came out to my house with his movie camera and filmed me telling the story. For some reason it took at least a couple of takes to get it just right. Ultimately I never did get to see the documentary, and I strongly suspect it never got made. Nevertheless, it was good to get the story down on paper, and I offer it here as a companion piece to my post about the Vuelta del Taco Truck.

The qualifying round

I entered the World Championship in burrito-eating when I was a student at UC Santa Barbara in 1990. A local restaurant, El Freebird's, put on this contest, in which people compete for the fastest time eating a “monster burrito.” (It’s about four inches in diameter and at least eight inches long; many people couldn’t finish one at a sitting.) They held qualifying heats all day long, each with five people, and the five eaters with the lowest times on the day could go on to the finals. I hadn’t actually even known about the contest, but I was coming back from a 100-mile bicycle ride (I was on the cycling team), and I stopped at El Freebird’s to see what the huge crowd there was for. They told me there was still room in the last heat, but I only had 10 minutes to go home and change. This I did. I easily won my heat with a time of 1:06, and went into the finals the next day holding the best qualifying time.

My competition

This rather large, acne-ridden fellow had a 1:08 qualifying time, so I was a bit worried about him when I sat down for the big event. Practically the entire cycling team had shown up to watch, and my brother and a friend had driven all the way down from San Luis Obispo, so I was under some serious pressure. There was also a great looking blond girl from my French class who’d somehow heard about it and was sitting right up front.

Meanwhile there was the David and Goliath business. I was, and am, skinny as a rail and exactly the kind of person you wouldn’t expect to win an eating event. Meanwhile, this other fellow was one of those huge fat guys you pretty much always picture in a pie eating contest—indeed, whom you almost can’t imagine doing anything else. And he was clearly very confident, as though he managed to find and enter such contests routinely. How cool would it be to beat him? There was some serious buzz about our impressive qualifying times (the local rock station was covering the event) and many were discussing whether or not it was humanly possible to eat the monster in less than a minute.

Psyching up, and psyching out

I was hamming it up to my friends, waving and grinning, but inside I was getting serious butterflies, like before a bike race. Unlike many of the spectators, my friends all knew—or thought they knew—what I was capable of in a speed-eating scenario. (In actual fact, they’d never seen me go anything close to all-out.) They all felt I had a lock on the event. I wasn’t nearly so sure. The last eating competition I’d been in was an informal Chinese eat-off with a friend of mine who weighed in at about 350. I’d figured his weight was a gland problem or something, compounded with inactivity, and that I could take him. (I’d never lost before, after all.) But he completely blew me away. He shamed me. It was all the more embarrassing for me when I reflected on why I ever thought I could out-eat such a fat dude in the first place. This was my general worry now. How could I let my friends down?

The fat guy was now doing this Zen thing, as if preparing to enter some special zone of pure, concentrated, focused speed-eating according to the teachings of old masters. I couldn’t believe he could be serious, and I figured this was designed to psych me out. What could I do in return? I’d already set such a breezy tone with my friends I couldn’t do a similar Zen thing, or even a brooding prizefighter thing. Then inspiration hit: I became serious and said to the main judge, “Hey, does anybody here know the Heimlich?” The judge laughed and I said, without a trace of a smile, “No, I’m serious!” And actually, when I thought about it, I was. Only a fool chokes to death trying to eat a monster burrito in under a minute. The effect was perfect: I established myself, I believe, as a serious competitor who doesn’t kid himself about the harsh realities of his sport.

Strategy

I gave some thought to my technique just before the race began. Sure, I’d won my heat the day before, but on pure talent, little realizing what was at stake. Now, in the finals, I needed to remove every inefficiency from my game. I had naturally decided to eschew chewing, because it wastes time and besides, I never chew anyway. The main technique would be to create intense suction by contracting my diaphragm, and then to just guide the burrito in with my hands. The question was, would I take a drink at any point during the event? The monster was a somewhat dry burrito; if I could have afforded to eat out back then (I was perennially pressed for cash), I would have always loaded gobs of extra salsa into such a burrito. Anyway, at one point during the qualifier my throat had started to constrict, and that could’ve ended the whole thing. On the other hand, taking a drink would cost me several seconds—an eternity in such a short event. I decided to play it by ear.

The race

They started the race and I hit the burrito hard, swiftly biting off the “cap,” or folded-in tortilla section, to expose the innards and begin their flow down my throat. I worked quickly, deftly, almost surgically, excavating an area and then chewing away the empty section of tortilla hull that had surrounded it. I was completely focused, engrossed you might say, but was nonetheless aware of two things: one, the entire cycling team, and my friends and roommates, were all chanting “DANA, DANA, DANA!” in perfect sync over the roar of the crowd; and two, I was going really fast. I had hit my stride completely, perhaps better than I ever had, or have ever done since. All the stress and nervousness from before had fallen away, or been turned into pure speed-eating energy. I myself, record-holder in the Gondolier spaghetti speed event (a plate in 19.9 seconds), could not believe how fast the burrito was disappearing. The announcer was now saying, I dimly registered, that three of the finalists had actually put down their burritos, conceding defeat, just to watch the unbelievable spectacle of the fat guy and me and our dizzying pace. I dared not distract myself by checking on the fat guy’s progress, but from the increasing din of the spectators I knew it was a close race.

Then my throat started to get parched. It had moved through a lot of material, including whole beans (which in my opinion should never stand in for refried in any burrito, much less a racing burrito), and of course the dryness wasn’t exactly helped by the sting of the salsa, a fairly spicy raw pico de gallo. So I decided to go for the drink.

The effect must have been impressive: I swung the remaining third of the burrito to the side in one hand just far enough, and long enough, to miss the paper cup, which with perfect simultaneity I brought in with the other hand and downed in a fraction of a second, then dropping the cup away and immediately returning to the burrito. It was a perfect fluid motion and only later did I realize I should have rehearsed it beforehand; again, only pure talent can explain the perfection of the move. And the effect was everything I’d hoped for: my throat was restored and the flow was excellent once again. But then, disaster struck—a tortilla blowout!

Freebird’s is of the steamed-tortilla breed of taquerias; while my preference for lightly grilled tortillas is really a culinary predilection, in this case it was architectural. Any time you have a tightly stretched tortilla, even if it’s a over a comparatively dry burrito like the monster, a steamed tortilla runs the risk of developing a soggy section and blowing out like a baby’s diaper. This it had. Fighting off panic—my friends were all still chanting “DANA! DANA! DANA!” and the crowd was ever increasing in its fervor—I held in the soggy section as well as I could to prevent hemorrhaging of rice and beans. How much could I spill without being disqualified?

Then, perhaps ten or fifteen seconds later, I was done. A quick flash out of the corner of my eye confirmed that the fat guy was not obviously finished, so I threw my arms up in a victory salute and stuck my tongue out to show that there was nothing in my mouth. (How did I know to do this? Again, pure instinct. I was born for this.) The judges all pointed to me in unison, stopping the split timers on their stopwatches. The crowd went wild. With the exception of the fat guy’s handful of gathered friends, the crowd had to have been gunning for the skinny young upstart. But there was commotion—the fat guy had come in right behind me, and was later ruled to have lost by only half a second. My winning time? 49.5 seconds. I believe that record still stands.

The aftermath

To be honest, we probably finished eating our burritos at about the same time, but my victory flourish carried the day. Imagine being a judge, trying to time the whole thing, watching these guys slugging down burritos in the midst of a spray of rice and beans—how do you know who really won? The other guy was at least as much of a pig as I am; he just didn’t know how to win. Then, he was a really sore loser as well—the main prize was five tickets to a Rolling Stones concert in L.A. and a limo ride there and back, and this guy was so sure he’d win that he had already made all the plans with his friends. He started to make a big stink, which was too bad since the whole contest was supposed to be fun, so I gave him the tickets and the limo ride (for a nominal fee, of course) and kept the other prizes, which were a few CDs and two tickets to Monster Truck Madness.

And, of course, the trophy, and it was majestic: a large wooden base with a brass plaque reading “Burrito World Champion” (they even engraved my name on it afterward), from which extended, vertically, a spring-type car shock absorber, atop which was mounted a life-size golden burrito (or was it silver?—it was destroyed months later, taking a long fall from my apartment balcony, to the delight of my roommate who’d grown sick of looking at it). Freebird’s had photos up for months of me holding the trophy gleefully above my head, the fat guy beside me looking like he was about to cry, and colored in green in the photos.

x

Vuelta del Taco Truck

Introduction

I struggled with the title of this post. I heard about a bike tour of Oakland/Fruitvale taco trucks from a guy on my bike club in a group e-mail titled “Giro di Taco Truck.” This is of course a takeoff on “Giro d’Italia,” the Italian stage race similar to the Tour de France. I decided it makes more sense to riff on the name of the Spanish stage race, the Vuelta d’Espagne. The trouble is, the only Spanish I know involves names of Mexican foods so I didn’t know whether it should be Vuelta de Taco Truck, or Vuelta del Taco Truck. My mom is pretty sure it’s the latter, which I’ve used, but now the only problems is I have “Del Taco,” the name of that horrible Taco-Bell-like chain, lurking within the title of my report. Suffice to say this post has only to do with legit, tasty food from non-chain taco trucks: four of them, which I visited by bike. Ah, food and bikes … two of my favorite things.

The official name of the tour is “Taco Truck Tour #2: Foothill Blvd. Edition,” and it is the brain child of a guy named Cyrus Farivar. He has a taco truck website, http://www.californiatacotrucks.com/, and came up with the whole idea of a bunch of hungry bicyclists meeting at the Lake Merritt Bart station and pedaling from taco track to taco truck, finishing up at an ice cream place near the Fruitvale Bart station. A simple, yet inspired, scheme. Here is Cyrus himself, in his favorite habitat:

A novel activity

In the event, none of my bike club buddies joined me for the tour. Thus, it was a bit of a departure for me to show up anyway. I’m a shy person, and hanging out with a bunch of strangers for three hours isn’t something I normally decide to do on a weekend—which is a perfect reason to do it. I move in pretty predictable patterns, my life having settled into a series of well-worn grooves. Socially, I interact regularly with three main groups of people: 1) my colleagues at work; 2) parents of my kids’ schoolmates; and 3) my friends, most of whom I know through cycling (and thus through the vast, glorious range of meals cycling entails).

Of course, the taco-tourists and I had common ground: these were cyclists, and foodies. That said, “cyclist” is a really broad category. My biking friends comprise a very, very small subset of the cycling world. Most of us have done a lot of road racing (many still do); we all have bikes worth at least a couple grand; any of us can wax eloquently on the relative merits of carbon fiber vs. titanium or aluminum for bike frames; we are all comfortable discussing power output in watts or climb difficulty in percent grade. We are not a representative sample of bicyclists at large, who range from mountain bikers to commuters to enthusiasts, and whose vehicles range from department store bikes to basic commuting bikes to twenty-plus-year-old ten-speeds to folding bikes to recumbents to souped-up all-weather cargo bikes to folding bikes. The bicyclists on the taco truck tour were not racers or wannabes or bike-techno-geeks; many or most probably don’t follow the Tour de France; they didn’t necessarily know or care about heart rate monitors or power meters. Sure, they love bikes and cycling, but that didn’t make them a ready-made social group for me.

Meanwhile, “people who eat Mexican food” is an even broader group. Who doesn’t love it? I suppose there are pockets of, say, really old people in the Midwest who don’t eat it. In 1994 I had a lot of trouble finding tortillas in North Carolina, where two different grocery store employees claimed not to have heard of them. During a two-week vacation in London this summer that involved a lot of restaurants I never saw a single Mexican place, and my brother in Holland can’t find refried beans or tortillas and has to make them from scratch. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule; especially in California, I’d say most people eat Mexican regularly. Thus, my shared love of this food didn’t mean I would have instant rapport with a bunch of people I’d never met.

I suppose if I were one of those bold, alpha-dog epicures who considers himself an expert on one or another type of cuisine, and everybody else on the tour was as well, we could break the ice by launching into mini-lectures that showcase our knowledge and establish our merit (as I’ve seen happen with wine and cigars). Thankfully, nobody in this group treated our outing like a pissing contest. We were just out to rides bikes and try out new taco trucks. It was a great slice of life, among new people who didn’t necessarily have much in common with me or with one another.

The turnout

I’d wondered if the group would be easy to spot. It was, even though I was on the early side. Cyrus gave a very brief introduction, and asked how many had heard of the tour through his blog. Surprisingly few had. (I don’t really know how everybody else had learned of it.) It also seemed as though most of the people didn’t know many of the others.

I chatted with one guy about his very strange, even uncanny shoes:

He introduced himself as “Pirate.” I wasn’t sure I heard him right, and said, “Pirate?” He stuck out his hand and said, “Yeah … arrrrgh!” He was a very funny guy, a bartender (who was inspired toward this vocation by Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential). He sang the praises of his strange shoes—easier on his feet, better for balance, better for his back—and when one person replied that orthodics can help too, he joked, “That’s what the Footwear Industrial Complex would have you believe.”

Soon our group had finished gathering and we set out on our bikes. There were too many in our group to easily count, but most estimates were around forty or forty-five souls.

The route

Most of the bicycling came at the beginning, as we rode a little under three miles from the Lake Merritt Bart station to the first taco truck. From there the taco trucks were mere blocks apart, with a final multi-block trek to ice cream and Bart at the end. Here’s a map of the route (the part getting to Foothill Blvd being perhaps only approximate). You'll want to click to zoom in.

Whether it was the damp air or the fact that I was absolutely starving, I enjoyed Technicolor smells on the way to the first truck. First I caught the roasting meat aroma of a taqueria, followed quickly by another equally appetizing but not immediately recognizable smell. Pirate’s wife Lexi quickly identified it: pho. I enjoyed that until it was replaced by that classic Laundromat smell. I was so hungry even that smelled good, in its cozy dryer-lint way.

El Grullo – 27^th & Foothill

The first truck wasn’t really a truck at all, but a very small building (with a closed-up truck outside). They started out taking orders indoors until they realized how big our group was; then they opened a side window and delivered food between the bars. My overwhelming first impression was panic, because it was after 1 p.m. and I hadn’t really eaten since the evening before (and had done a hard two-hour bike ride earlier in the day). El Grullo wasn’t prepared for such a sudden onslaught and took a long time in delivering our food. But this is really a plus: they take appropriate care in the kitchen.

(On New Year’s Eve a couple years ago, I couldn’t find a taqueria that was open and in desperation resorted to Chipotle, the McDonald’s-owned chain of fake taquerias. Notwithstanding their sponsorship of a pro cycling team, I can’t really recommend this for an authentic taqueria experience. On this particular night the place was completely dead, but that didn’t mean the lazy college kid working there made any effort to get anything right. He assembled my burrito with all the care you’d take in balling up a dirty sock before throwing it in the hamper. He rolled the inferior ingredients into the inferior tortilla begrudgingly, a look on his face like “I was having a fine time staring into space here before you came in and ruined it.” I felt like punching him in the face.)

The El Grullo menu was in Spanish only. The burrito was cheap: $4.50. It was served with two extra little foil-wrapped bundles: one with jalapenos, the other with radishes and a slice of lime. The tortilla was grilled (which I favor highly over those little steaming machines). There hadn’t been an option for whole wheat, spinach, sun-dried-tomato, or any other silly gringo tortilla, nor an option for whole pinto or black beans—equally unnecessary. (At an Italian restaurant they wouldn’t ask if you wanted your pasta overcooked, or would like to substitute Chef Boyardee sauce for their marinara; in like fashion, I think tortilla and bean options are best left off a taqueria’s menu. Just sayin’.)

There was plenty of good rice, jack cheese, tasty refried beans, and good, hot, crispy carnitas. Throughout were flecks of chopped cilantro—just the right amount, not overpowering. I was so hungry I was practically inhaling the thing, and probably drooling into it. It took all the will-power I had not to devour the whole thing in one straight shot (having three more taco trucks to save room for). When I came up for air, I reflected that it could use some salsa, which seemed oddly missing. It was a tad bit on the dry side, but still delicious and I couldn’t complain. Halfway through wrapping up the last half of the burrito (to throw in a Ziploc bag for later), I stopped, unwrapped, and had a few more bites. I couldn’t help myself.

Tacos el Mazatlan – Foothill at Fruitvale Ave

Half the group stopped at an “unofficial” taco truck less than a block from El Grullo, while the rest of us pedaled less than four blocks to the next scheduled stop, Tacos el Mazatlan. I have to confess, I was among the first to head over there, hoping to get a burrito on the early side lest I keel over and die from lack of calories. The first half-burrito had not even registered in my stomach, such is my appetite once it’s awakened. As it turned out, only one person was working at Tacos el Mazatlan, and it took her about forty minutes just to take all our orders before turning to the kitchen side of her truck. How she kept it all straight is beyond me.

This was a classic taco truck, with the standard (yet somehow odd) aluminum siding that brings to mind a quilted coat; the blue-tinted windows; the lift-up awning; the menu that has plenty of meat options (e.g., lengua, cabeza, tripas) with their helpful translations (tongue, head, and “guts” respectively), with none of the needless options I mentioned above.

A word on authenticity: though I am actually a former Burrito World Champion, I don’t claim to be an expert, nor to necessarily prefer my Mexican food to be authentic in every detail. For example, I get the impression that cheese isn’t necessarily authentic (I often have to ask for it), but I want it on my burrito. Likewise, I’m not in a hurry to try cabeza or tripas. That said, the absence of spinach tortillas on the menu, and the presence of head and guts, suggest that the taqueria’s target market isn’t gringo tourists and the airport food court set. Similarly, a really cheap place is bound to be good—not just a better value than a pricey place, but better food. Offer me a $10 burrito and I’ll likely ask for what’s behind Door #2.

On the way to meeting the group, on Bart, I had been reading an article in “The New Yorker” about a Michelin Guide inspector, and perhaps this went to my head because I resolved to try a carnitas burrito at each taco truck so I could compare them. With hindsight I realize I should have tried all kinds of different things, just to broaden my experience, but the fact is I didn’t. Besides, I like burritos better than tacos and I think they’re easier to bring home as leftovers.

When several tacos came up at once, and as eaters throughout our crowd all squeezed lime on their tacos at once, the air was nicely infused with the bright citrus scent. Here’s a photo (after snapping this, I wished I’d ordered tacos—I’ll have to go back!).

I ordered the “super” carnitas burrito ($5) because it came with cheese and sour cream. I don’t like the sour cream you get at taquerias; it’s too milky and cools down the burrito while diluting it. So as always I asked for no sour cream, and to my delight the cashier deducted fifty cents from the price. That’s the first time in my entire life I’ve had the cost of sour cream deducted from my total, and I think that alone makes this place deserving of your business, on sheer principle.

The Tacos el Mazatlan burrito had all the positive attributes of the El Grullo one, plus diced raw onions, a plus. It was still a bit on the dry side—perhaps that’s the style in Oakland. It came with sliced (perhaps pickled?) carrots, a jalapeno, and sliced radishes. Delicious, and again it took a few tries to put away half of it for later.

Tamales Mi Lupita – 34^th & Foothill

This was perhaps the most interesting of the four places. (It’s shown in the photo of Cyrus above.) It features a wide variety of “Centroamerican food,” including pupsas, yuca con chicharron, tortas, platanos fritos, tamales, pasteles, and empanadas. I don’t know what all of these things are. The pupusas, I learned, are small cornmeal disks, a little thicker than a pancake, filled with cheese, beans, meat, and such. Here’s a little video of one being made:

Again, I’m kicking myself for not trying a pupusa, but I was hurrying because in addition to our large group there was a work crew (grape harvesters) making a bulk order, and the whole menu was in Spanish, I’d never encountered pupusas before, and I basically panicked. I even forgot to order a drink (which I never normally order, but I was parched). Next time!

While I waited I chatted with a very friendly grape harvester. He lives in Fresno, but is from a country in Central America (Guatemala, I think he said) and said the food here was just like what he had growing up. As he described this, stack after stack of pupusas was bagged for his crew. When their tremendous order was all packed he gave a friendly farewell and headed for the truck. I wanted to say, “Wait, take me with you!”

I wandered over to inspect the wide assortment of bikes from our group, leaning en masse on the wall of the neighboring restaurant (also Tamales Mi Lupita). The fanciest bike there was this gorgeous green Raleigh, obviously outfitted with careful consideration. “Can I take your picture admiring that bike?” a young woman asked. She said it was her boyfriend’s bike and he’d be proud to know it attracted a gawker.

Hoping for hot sauce and/or pico de gallo, I’d asked for my burrito “with everything.” I’m not sure the cashier know what I meant, but for $6 I got my best burrito yet. It came equipped much like the others, but with welcome chunks of ripe red tomatoes. (You’ll see photos in awhile here showing cross-sections of each burrito.) I even had a rickety little table to sit at so I didn’t have to balance my burrito—with its standard sides of radish and jalapeno—on my bike saddle or a trash can. My amazing stomach was still unfazed, 1.5 burritos into my evolving lunch, and again it was with great regret that I tagged and bagged the second half of this one.

I had become relaxed enough by this point to compare a few notes with the other taco-tourists. Partly this just meant explaining my burrito preference, not to mention my ability to continue eating such hearty fare at each truck. I consulted with one guy about the meaning of “revuelta” (or was it “revueltos”?) in the context of pupusas. “Vuelta” roughly translates “tour” or “rotation,” but “revuelta” seems to involve mixing somehow; applied to eggs it means scrambled. His revuelta pupusa had a whole bunch of fillings. I will certainly investigate this culinary-etymological junction in the future, using all of my senses.

Happily, nobody (least of all me) bloviated about the nuances, quality, or authenticity of the food. I’d have liked to get a breakdown of what each menu item was, but there’s something to be said for quiet appreciation too. One person mentioned that the jalapenos had been better on the previous bike-taco tour. Mostly there were a lot of yummy-noises.

A final note on Tamales Mi Lupita: the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain ate here, and apparently got some video footage for his TV show “No Reservations.” I’ve never seen the show, and have no idea what he made of the place, but somebody in the know must have turned him onto it. I’m no celebrity-chef groupie, but I have to say, if you’ve never read Kitchen Confidential you really need to do that. Bourdain is a really funny writer with endless restaurant stories. I recently read one of his novels, Gone Bamboo, and it was good too.

Tacos el Tio Juan – 41^st & Foothill

Here’s an embarrassing admission: in my notes I referred to this place as Atole, because of a neon sign in the window (and the absence of any other sign). Atole, I have since learned, is a thick, hot drink made of corn or rice, and was simply a menu offering, not the name of the business.

As far as complete menus, this place takes top honors. Some of the meats had a handy English translation, but the most exotic did not. Fortunately, a Spanish speaker in our group (there seemed to be several) offered some translations: birria is goat, chicharron is fried pork rinds (i.e., skin), and lorno is loin.

I decided that dang it, I was going to try something different this time, so I went with the birria burrito. I told the guy, “Birria burrito with everything except sour cream. “ He replied, “Okay, $4.” Four dollars! If you asked for everything on a burrito at the airport, you’d get the $10 rubbish tube I alluded to earlier. It was dawning on me that the Oakland taco truck circuit is a very special thing. And that was before I even tasted the birria burrito.

Wow: it was glorious. The meat was unlike anything I’ve had. It had a very particular flavor, just as lamb has a particular flavor (though goat doesn’t taste like lamb). It wasn’t as gamey as I’d thought it might be. It was interesting in the very way that chicken is boring. Where chicken is basically an empty set—a chasm, a void, a lack—goat is a fullness, a presence, a substance of flavor. And it was tender and juicy. Though this wasn’t a complicated burrito—indeed, as you’ll see later, its cross-section reveals less color than any of the others—it was the best of them all. I’m not sure that guacamole (which was evidently unavailable at any of these trucks) would have necessarily enhanced it, so rich and tasty was its simple flavor. Wow.

Ice cream

We pedaled to our last stop, an ice cream shop called Cinco de Mayo in a little complex of shops across a little plaza from Fruitvale Bart. Like those of the taco trucks, its menu was largely in Spanish. I wanted spearmint ice cream but they were out; I should have been emboldened by the birria buritto and tried something weird like corn or “curled milk,” but I just didn’t feel like it, and went with strawberry. I couldn’t believe it was only $1.25. At any other ice cream place you probably couldn’t get an empty cone for that. Another remarkable thing: I asked for a cup of water and got it. So many times I’ve been turned down on the basis of “We sell bottled water,” or for no reason at all.

The ice cream was good. It tasted like strawberries and cream, like it should. If that totally artificial pepto-bismol-pink stuff we got as kids is a 1, and Haagen-Dazs is a 10, this was about a seven; for $1.25 I’ll take it any day. Someone had the corn ice cream and said it wasn’t bad.

This was a nice, casual way to end the day’s journey; then I bade everyone farewell and left for Bart. In my bag I had a page of notes, assorted napkins and bundles of garnish, and four half-burritos (actually, three half-burritos and about a quarter of the birria burrito) to serve up to my expert panel of tasters at home.

The tasting panel

At dinnertime (about two hours after my three-hour lunch) I carefully sliced the rest of the burritos, warmed them up, and arranged them on plates with little labels so my tasting panel could weigh in. (Somehow on the labels I rendered “Tamales Mi Lupita” as “Pupuseria Lupita,” and as I explained before, I had thought “Tacos El Tio Juan” was “Atole.”) As promised, here are photos showing the cross-sections of all four burritos:

My panel comprises two young epicures: Lindsay (age six, on the left) and Alexa (age eight).

It may seem to you as though my tasters must lack experience and the sophisticated palate of a seasoned veteran of taquerias. To which I reply, yes, experience is valuable, but there’s also no substitute for talent. These kids have been eating Mexican food their whole lives.

My wife and I had our favorite corner of Mario’s La Fiesta (Telegraph Ave, Berkeley) with a perfect little shelf for Alexa’s car seat when she was an infant. I remember well how on one evening, as I spoon-fed her refried beans off of Erin’s plate, Alexa would alternate between greedily accepting the spoon and bursting out crying. Finally I came to learn that Erin had mixed a bunch of fiery salsa into her beans; poor Alexa kept having to push past the pain to get her fill.

The results

Here are the comments my tasting panel had about each burrito.

El Grullo Taqueria

Alexa: “I don’t like it at all.”

Lindsay: “If one is better [between this and El Mazatlan], it’s this one.”

Tacos El Mazatlan

Alexa: “I like it much better [than El Tio Juan].”

Lindsay: “Pretty good burrito.”

Tamales Mi Lupita

Alexa: “It’s my favorite—it’s really cheesy; I like the meat. I really like it.”

Lindsay: “The cheesiest I’ve had yet and the tastiest.” [She hadn’t tried El Tio Juan yet.]

Tacos El Tio Juan

Alexa: “I’m liking it but a little too greasy.”

Lindsay: “The spiciest I’ve ever had but delicious besides the spiciness. The tastiest, but not my favorite because it’s spicy.”

We ranked the four according to a sophisticated scoring system (the details of which I won’t bother you with except upon request). The composite scores are as follows:

El Grullo Taqueria: 4 points

Tacos El Mazatlan: 6 points

Tamales Mi Lupita: 10 points

Tacos El Tio Juan: 10 points

I declare the winner to be Tacos El Tio Juan; although it was tied with Tamales Mi Lupita on points, it was picked as a favorite by two testers (including myself). I definitely plan to return to this place, as well as Tamales Mi Lupita. Meanwhile, I definitely see more Vueltas del Taco Truck (of one sort or another) in my future: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of my life.

dana albert blog

South Beach Starch King

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Introduction

I’ve been on the South Beach diet for almost a week now, and I’ve already dropped five pounds.  (If my fancy scale is to be believed, which it probably isn’t, my body fat is now 8.0%.)  If my goal here were the normal one (i.e., lose weight), I’d be making great progress.  But my only goal is actually to get off this diet, and gain back the five pounds.  This would seem to be a simple matter, but it’s not.

What brought about this state of affairs?  In this post I will explore the strange concept of secondhand dieting; the South Beach diet; the Starch King diet; and a few other diet-related subjects.

Secondhand dieting

A secondhand diet is where your spouse, who does most of the cooking, goes on a diet and prepares family dinners according to her new culinary palette.  Gone are the glorious lasagnes, fried chicken with heaps of mashed potatoes, and spaghetti alla puttanesca; now she’s serving steamed vegetables and poached fish.  Shared family dinners are important to you, and—not wanting to set a bad example for the kids—you cheerfully eat what you’re served.  Sometimes you sneak in a low-key post-dinner snack like a PBJ, and/or raid your kids’ leftover Hallowe’en candy, but just as often you get caught up in the post-meal machinery of the household and end up with but a fraction of your normal caloric intake.  Voilà!  You’re a secondhand dieter.

This is how I have found myself on the South Beach diet.  My wife Erin has started it up, in earnest, and has requested that I do my normal starch-bomb eating outside the home, at lunchtime.  That way I’m not testing her resolve with huge batches of pasta sitting around begging to be snitched from.  But I’ve had the flu for the last week and thus have scarcely left the house, so I’m leading a strangely pasta-free existence. 

Starch dreams

Since I started this diet, most nights I dream about glorious starchy food.  Two nights ago it was pizzas and pastries—kind strangers were handing them to me, one after another.  A couple nights before that I was woken up out of a deep slumber by the sound of my cough drop clattering to the hardwood floor:  I’d actually tried to bite something in my sleep.

And then, yesterday, I was talking on the phone idly watching the slide-show screen saver on my PC when I was suddenly struck dumb by this most tantalizing photo:

Just look at those damn fritjes.  Glorious.  Fries figured in to last night’s dream, my strangest starch dream yet.  In this one I came across my daughters and one of my nieces eating a big pile of “Lite Burrito,” a (fictitious) tortilla-less burrito from Burger King.  There were so many things wrong with that scenario I didn’t know where to start.  I was thinking of shutting down their party until I saw their side of fries, which I took for myself.  Burger King fries are the most tampered-with of all the fast food chains (the potatoes are coated in a starch batter before frying), but I ate them and they were good.  That’s right … dream on!

It hasn’t been easy going to bed kind of hungry and dreaming, and daydreaming, of food, but I can’t hold anything against Erin.  After all, I’m not exactly an innocent victim of this kind of situation.  For fifteen years I’ve been a bad influence on my wife, always wanting to cook (or wanting her to cook) rich, high-carb foods, or taking the family to some Mexican or Italian restaurant that serves huge portions.  When Erin and I were courting, we’d often go to Zachary’s and split a large stuffed deep-dish pizza that’s supposed to serve 4-5 people.  (I’d have five slices; she’d have three.)  When I cooked her a pasta dinner, I’d unthinkingly serve her up a cyclist-sized  portion, and she’d end up eating it.  As a result of my influence she quickly gained ten pounds, which she has now resolved to finally shed.

The South Beach diet

In high school, I decided (for no reason I can remember) to write my English class term paper on fad diets.  My research didn’t endear me to them, and over time my opinion hasn’t changed.  I hold particular contempt for the Atkins diet.  (I trust the opinion of the American Heart Association that Atkin’s own heart attack was caused by his diet, and I still buy into the USDA food pyramid, with carbs being the foundation.)  But the South Beach diet, despite its catchy name and widespread success, seems to be based on sound principles. 

As I understand it, the whole idea is to avoid the insulin overload you get from eating refined starches, that leads to inappropriate hunger and general overconsumption.  With South Beach, you eat foods with a low glycemic index—that is, foods that digest slowly.  For the first couple weeks on this diet you cut out all refined starches, as well as fruit and anything sweet, to sever your addiction to insulin-producing simple carbs.  Then in phase two you reintroduce carbs in the form of fruits, brown rice, and whole grain breads.  Then, when you’ve lost the weight you want and have overcome the habit of empty carbs, you are in “maintenance mode” and eat more or less normally (while avoiding certain unworthy foods).  At least in the edition of the South Beach book Erin has, beer is singled out as a particular evil, because it is alleged to contain maltose, which is a very simple sugar.  (It’s not hard to find this allegation vigorously disputed:  look here and here.)

Even in this first phase, the diet allows you all the carbs you want, with one important caveat:  they have to come from vegetables.  So dinner goes something like this:  you eat some London broil with mushrooms, with and a side of okra and squash.  After finishing a generous serving of okra, your jaws are so tired, and your palette so bored, that you just feel like stopping, so you clear the dishes and get on with your life.  As this behavior substitutes for getting unnecessary second and third helpings of something relatively unhealthy like macaroni and cheese (damn, I just drooled at the thought), you lose weight.

The Starch King diet

Historically I’ve been on what I’ve come to call the Starch King diet.  It’s not nearly as prescriptive as the South Beach diet, nor any other diet for that matter.  It consists of eating whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever quantities I want, with an emphasis on taqueria food (because it’s so tasty) and pasta (because I don’t know how to make my own taqueria food).  Here’s a sample pasta recipe:

Southwestern corn goo

Get the pasta water boiling.  Glug a bunch of olive oil in a hot pan and add diced onions.  Sizzle those awhile, then add two 17-oz. cans cream style corn.  Bring this to a boil and add a 7-oz. can of green chiles, diced.  Reduce the heat and boil this awhile to get rid of the excess water.  Boil the pasta (something long like linguine or spaghetti).  Grate a bunch of cheese into the corn goo:  cheddar, jack, mozzarella, whatever you got.  Drain the pasta and mix it in with the goo.  Eat it with salt and a little Crystal sauce.

(Notably, almost everything in this dish is illegal in at least the first phase of the South Beach diet.  On the plus side, it’s easy and tasty and kids love it.)

The Starch King diet is really easy, and it has always really worked—for me.  I suspect this has to do with all the cycling I do.  During an intense five-hour Mount Diablo ride, I’ll burn about 5,000 calories and take in about 1,000 in energy drink.  Some of that 4,000 calorie deficit comes from my stored muscle glycogen, but the rest comes from burning fat.  I doubt anybody burns fat as efficiently as a cyclist.  This is why I can (and routinely do) go eighteen or nineteen hours between (seriously huge) meals.  (I never eat breakfast, except socially.)

I can’t recommend this eating style to anybody else, though most of my cycling club pals are on this diet or something similar (e.g., Starch King With a Side of Bacon).

The South Beach experience

So far, I have to say that for Erin and me, the South Beach diet is actually not that hard to stick to.  Vegetables really do give the stomach a full feeling, and they are slow to digest so you don’t need to snack much.  The greatest hurdle is probably psychological.  I do feel hungry much of the time now, as does Erin, but hunger isn’t actually that bad a feeling, if you can get past the anxiety it produces.  I think we’re all hardwired to fear starvation, which is why hunger is such a powerful force.  Intellectualizing the experience and reminding myself that I won’t actually starve takes care of the fear, and the suffering is no worse than what I subject myself to on the bike.

The other thing I’ll say about the South Beach diet is that it’s interesting.  Erin and I have enjoyed many conversations about the diet itself; the strange phenomenon of refined starch consumption causing appetite; the strange sensation of being hungry and yet having a full stomach; and so on.  (I think of this dialog as payback for all the chatter Erin’s had to endure from me about bike parts, training, percent grades, and such over the years.)

Last night I was enjoying a New Belgium Mothership Wit ale, in a festive short-stemmed beer glass, and Erin approached with something like hostility.  “That beer is tempting me more than anything has so far,” she said severely.  Fortunately I have a (mostly useless) talent for chug-a-lugging, and I slammed  the beer down in about a second.  Thus marital strife has been avoided, and I’m one step closer to getting off this diet….

Race Report - Everest Challenge

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Introduction

About a year ago, some cycling friends made plans to do a big bike race, and were looking for takers. The race was the Everest Challenge, the California-Nevada Climbing Championship, a two-day stage race covering 206 miles with 28,035 feet of cumulative vertical gain. I was intrigued, but couldn’t get fit enough after being hit by a car that summer. The intrepid three who raced it last year—Paul, Jamie, and Craig—decided to do it again, and I determined to give it a shot. I even managed to bully another rider, Lucas, into joining us.

What follows is the official race report I sent around to my bike club. As I explained at some length in an earlier post, my race reports tend to talk a lot about the food involved. After all, most of us are in this sport for the food, and food is arguably more interesting than bike racing. If you doubt this, consider the following two passages:

I came to regret passing up the penne—pronounced “penny PAST-ah” by the locals—choosing instead a fettuccine dish consisting of limp pasta in Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, with the lightest dusting of fresh Parmesan cheese, dispensed ineffectually by the waitress, who was new, and who held the excellent Zyliss rotary cheese grater backwards and upside down, thus turning the handle the wrong way and unscrewing it from the grater, until finally I gave up and said “when” and that’s all the cheese I got.

So anyhow, I was in perfect position, about eight riders back, but knowing that this one Team Spine dude in front of me had a really good jump and would probably take me past a least a few guys, when we come around the last turn and my tire hit this Botts’ dot, one of those domed round white ones, and I didn’t exactly lose traction, but it kind of made my tire drift just a bit, so I was just a bit off balance, and I knew I wasn’t going to crash but it just kind of screwed up my timing a bit, and lost the Spine guy’s wheel, and then I got totally boxed in by this Morgan Stanley guy and ended up with another pack finish. But I was so close to having a top five at least!

Okay, I think you can see where the real human interest is. So now, with no further ado, here is my official Everest Challenge race report. (Note: if you're still interested in the story of the actual race and not just the food and camaraderie, click here. That's my Daily Peloton story, in two parts.)


Pre-race

After much logistical discussion, our group of five arranged ourselves in two cars: Jamie and Paul in the “Climbers’ Honda” and Lucas, Craig, and I in the “Goliaths’ Volvo.” The climbers dropped us right away, getting on the road about an hour before us, which is a pity because they missed a glorious lunch at a little taqueria in a strip mall in Escalon that I miraculously remembered from having eaten there with Erin at some point. I had the carnitas burrito, which was glorious, but Lucas was issuing serious yummy-noises over his al pastor burrito. The place had all the hallmarks of a great taqueria: grilled (not steamed) tortillas (flour and corn only, none of this sun-dried tomato, spinach, or whole wheat crap), refried (not just pinto) beans, very spicy salsa, and cabeza and lengua on the menu. And guacamole came stock—none of this nickel-and-diming us to death like that damn 360 place.

We did a quick spin-the-legs ride before our dinner, which was provided by the race organizers. This was your standard-issue mass-pasta, four on a scale of zero being mush, ten being hard, and seven being al dente. There was some tasty sausage too, and when they ran out the volunteer server picked several slices out of the sauce for me, which was a nice touch. There was some chewy garlic bread that was pleasantly low-brow, almost vulgar (in the best possible way). It was a fine meal all around, though Lucas, ever-competitive, tried to keep up with my consumption and ended up with a stomachache. (Lucas, just with whom the hell did you think you were dealing?)


Stage 1 – 122 miles, 15,465 feet of climbing

Breakfast, early the next morning, was Golean cereal, courtesy of Craig. I guess it’s supposed to be pronounced “go lean,” but I’ve trained my kids to say “GOAL-iyan” so it sounds like something Captain Kirk might eat. Oh, and a banana. We were pretty nervous.

During Stage 1 I consumed seven gels, four bottles of my standard energy drink, a bottle of water, and two bottles of the race-supplied energy drink everybody had warned me not to use. It didn’t turn my stomach as I’d feared, and as everybody had predicted, which was a relief (though I actually stopped at the car for the second two bottles of my normal energy drink as a precaution). At the finish I had two or three large bean-and-cheese quesadillas, a tall stack of real Oreos, a Coke, a V-8 juice (far higher in electrolytes than any energy drink), a cup of homemade spicy chicken soup, and a pesto-and-sun-dried-tomato quesadilla that was, hands-down, the saltiest thing I’ve ever eaten.

Dinner that evening was at a groovy Italian place the Everest veterans ate at last year. We had a large pizza as an appetizer, and though we all agreed on mushrooms, only compromise kept a fistfight from breaking out over pepperoni vs. sausage. I couldn’t tell whether the waitress was a bit dim or I simply wasn’t speaking clearly, but it took several tries to get her to understand that we wanted mushrooms on the whole thing and half-and-half pepperoni and sausage on the rest. It was damn good pizza. Then I had this mushroom soup that the waitress had warned me was “a little spicy.” That sealed the deal, not because I like spicy mushroom soup (who ever heard of such a thing?) but because I couldn’t have my masculinity called into question with a stage remaining in the race. It ended up being very fiery, probably capable of stripping paint, and I liked it.

My entree was the chicken marsala, which the waitress all but insisted I get, having shot down my first two tentative choices. (I always have the waiter or waitress vet my food choice.) The marsala was brilliant: very rich and fattening without being greasy, with copious amounts of chicken breast that was tender and actually had flavor, unlike the blasted raspy retreads you get at Outhouse Steakback. Craig and Lucas developed a technique for dredging the oil from their primavera, and I guess they liked it okay, but I’ll just come out and say it: I pitied them their inferior choice. Perhaps I was just in a competitive spirit after doing a hard race, and doing it jolly hard. Anyway, Lucas felt the pasta was overcooked, and though it was about 6.5 on my doneness scale I had no issue with it. We didn’t have dessert, though Paul clearly wanted to; I’d had enough sweets for the day and also felt that if somebody ordered a pansy dessert like tiramisu or crème brûlée we might all be cursed the next day and never find the big ring.

Stage 2 – 86 miles, 13,570 feet of climbing

Breakfast on the second day was more Golean cereal, which was mighty hard to eat because nobody slept well and you could practically see the low cloud of flatulence that had gradually filled the room all night. My own flatulence was concussive almost to a window-shaking degree, which was a big part of our insomnia, but another rider’s gas (I won’t say whose) smelled just like an outhouse. So much for breakfast.

During Stage 2 I ate six gels, four of which were this foreign brand of gnarly race-provided gels that were supposed to taste like apple pie. Back in 1983 I did a bike tour in Canada and subsisted almost entirely on individually wrapped Pepperidge Farm cookies that were like a precursor to the Powerbar, and they were mostly apple pie flavored, and I swore I’d never touch them again. These gels tasted exactly like the Pepperidge Farm cookies, so needless to say they didn’t go down easy.

On the second climb I started having pretty bad stomach problems, so I consumed as little of the race-supplied energy rink as possible and managed, during the race, to have four bottles of my preferred brand (two of which I mixed myself, one while riding). I ended up with just one bottle of foreign drink, and several bottles of water because it was really hot (over 100 degrees) and the support was so awesome. At the top I didn’t eat as much as after Stage 1, because I didn’t have to replace my muscle glycogen—in fact, the idea of paralysis was very appealing at that point. Nevertheless, I had a couple bean quesadillas, a cup of chicken noodle soup (the noodles a crunchy 9.5), a V-8, and a Coke.

Our second lunch that day was at this bakery in Bishop. It was a huge operation that could probably provide bread for a large army, and I wonder how it can exist in such a small town. They had about eight or ten sandwich choices, each a rather pricey $8, but I was in no mood to pinch pennies. My brain was pretty muddy after two brutal road races, so for a few minutes it was hard to decide what to order, but then a little sign on the menu board settled the matter: “Note: our pastrami is not lean.” And it wasn’t: it was gloriously fatty. The rye bread was excellent, the cheese melted, the sauerkraut good and sauer, and the whole thing just eyeball-rollingly exquisite.

If my arms hadn’t been so tired from all the climbing I’d probably have beaten down my biker friends to steal their sandwiches. Lucas was very pleased with his “Mule Kick” sandwich, but I suspect he just liked the name. (It’s sort of the Hootie & the Blowfish of the sandwich world.) I have to say, the sandwich Paul had looked meager and vegetarian, but he didn’t seem to have any problem with it and I should really learn to resist gloating inwardly at my superior restaurant choices, or at least to refrain from documenting them.

The trip home

For the next several hours I dreamed of the burrito I’d be eating at the little taqueria in Escalon. Lucas, Craig, and I had talked the place up to Paul and Jamie, and we took some pains to drive together, caravan-style, so we could eat there together. This wasn’t easy because it got dark during the drive and we were all completely knackered. About thirty miles out of Oakdale (where we mistakenly thought the place was) Lucas realized it would be closed. He mourned this loudly and at length, and though I felt his pain—acutely—I was in denial and exhorted him to hold out hope.

Of course he was right, and though we managed to find the taqueria, it had closed at 3 (over six hours earlier!) and we were screwed. We went to Taco Hell, where the service was the worst I’ve ever experienced. Orders were flying out of the drive-thru window but we waited at least ten minutes for our grub. I even went and complained, causing the others to fear that our food would have spit in it. I really doubt this kitchen crew was that organized. I had five Cheesy Bean ‘n’ Rice burritos, which were heinously full of that grotesque plasticized nacho cheese goo. I was so hungry I actually ate them.

And that’s about it for the race. Once back in the Bay Area, my next two lunches were proper Mexican meals, and tonight I’m eating at Gordo Taqueria. My body is still trying to refuel itself and every night I dream about food. In summary, I highly recommend the Everest Challenge for anybody who takes eating, and suffering, seriously.