2:06 p.m. - 2006-08-20
Burrito Night
Monday night is Burrito Night. It's a tradition dating back five weeks in our household, and we expect it to last weeks more. Here then is a recounting of Burrito Nights Past:
July 17: Q'Doba, the one on University Avenue. Kind of pedestrian, yes. This was a Burrito Night of expedience, since we were eating on the run, in between my meeting Kia after work and going to a seven PM movie. The movie, "Strangers With Candy", was a little disappointing, and they had replaced lots of people from the TV show, which was a little alienating. My burrito was adequate: chicken. I think Kia had chicken tacos. Also adequate.
July 24: The Eldorado, on Willy St. This was the real kick-off of Burrito Night as an established weekly event, so we decided to go upscale, to a place where they bring the food to your table. Normally I avoid this place because it's kind of expensive, they jam corn into every item to prove that it's, you know, SOUTHWESTERN, and the waitstaff tend to be ho-bags. Except, guess what? On this particular evening we got a very nice, non-ho-bag waitress and had a really nice time. I ordered the chicken/mushroom burrito, which was good, seared on the outside for a nice texture. Kia got I-don't-remember-what, except that we had a couple pints, which left K just looped enough that she forgot her purse when we left, luckily realizing it during the ride home. When we went back to retreive it it was still there, money intact and everything. All in all, a very successful Burrito Night.
July-31: DIY. By this time we were in the midst of a ghastly heat wave, so we decided to stay inside with the AC going and have Burrito Night in the home; we can do that, there's no law against it! For home burritos, we decided to use pork. They were good, and they had that one extra flavor that restaurant burritos don't have: the flavor of self-sufficiency. Mmmmmm.
August 7: A very special Burrito Night, with an extra special guest: Anna! Actually we were her guests, since we were meeting at her house, but we volunteered to bring burritos over. We bought them from Big As Your Head on Monona Drive, that being close to Anna's place. Between the three of us, burrito varieties included chicken, steak and pork. Shamelessly greasy and salty, so bad yet so, so good. We ate them outside, by the pool. It was lots of fun, since we don't get to see much of Anna. We ate and talked and ate some more until night fell and the bugs started getting all buggy on us and we fled for home to plan our next exciting Burrito Night...
August 14th:...at Mexicali Rose! Located off Cottage Grove Rd. The word "cheesy" doesn't quite begin to describe the environment within. All the waitstaff have to wear the same garish, color-besotted tropical shirts and affect a painfully forced perkiness. The salsa was bland and there were sombreros on the walls. On the upside, we got a booth and they didn't spare the booze in the twenty-ounce margarita I ordered. Kia's burrito was steak, mine was chicken. Both were made mostly out of cheese. The whole experience took me back to my very first job, working in the kitchen of a dopey, cheese-piled-on-everything faux-Mexican place much like this one. I briefly remembered my teen years, shuddered violently and took a big, cleansing drink of margarita. (Kia ordered a Negro Modelo, I believe. It's a source of minor disappointment that restaurants like Mexicali Rose seem so ersatz and condescending, and yet they usually have pretty much the same brands of beer that they actually drink in Mexico. It seems like they should have fake Mexican beers to go with the fake Mexican everything else. They could have names like "Senor Loco's" and "Senor Loco's Lite". Ideally, they would be imported from Canada and would consist of water and yeast run-off from the Molson brewery.) We finished half of our gigantic burritos, boxed the rest and went home, filled with the satisfaction of having survived another Monday. That, and lots and lots of cheese.
