Lest anyone think that I have totally abandoned my food obsessions, please think again! Those kind of you-are-born-with-em traits die hard and there is no getting around them no matter what city/country/outback I happen to be in. I'm always gonna want to hunt down the best food I can. Case in point:
This weekend in LA, all I could think about was pozole, the fantastical hominy stew that I had a ridiculously haunting bowl of on Isla Mujeres last January. Now that said, you must realize that where there is a conglomerate of Mexicans, there will be a bowl of pozole. Not just in Mexico...it's everywhere...you just have to know where to go.
So, to East LA I went (Lisa in tow, of course). We'd raged through so many insane mood swings by the time we hit up downtown LA (happy, sad, depressed, joyous, melancholy, peaceful) that we flew past a small Mexican storefront touting pozole just east of Chinatown. We'd already long forgotten about pozole though, and were inclined to have a smidge of Vietnamese--perhaps a bit of rice, maybe a spring roll of sorts? Ahhhh, but no parking. I quickly googled our little Mex hole-in-the-wall and found a BOATLOAD of positive reviews. Done and done*
We strolled into the cozy spot and found the perfect sun-lit table, where we then proceeded to order a huge bowl of pozole and while we waited on it, we scarfed the creamiest dish of guacamole served up with a basket of crispy chips. Simple food for very simple people. When our sloppy bowls of soup rolled out ($5.99 each), a nice man named Hector at the neighboring table was just as enamored as we were. Turns out he was a musician, and regular, who came all the way to this spit of a restaurant from Griffith Park and he couldn't believe we'd hauled all the way from Marina del Rey just for pozole. I was like Hect! Dude...you gotta fly off to where the goods are. It's the stuff that makes you smile again. It makes you remember why you travel. Its so you can have memories like the one I have from Isla to try to live up to. Without that, what do I have HECT?? (Suddenly Hect was supposed to have the answers to all my questions!)...
We happily dressed up our soup (as Hector watched gape-jawed) with cilantro, cabbage, lime, onion, salsa, radishes and avocado before even slurping down a spoonful. Talk about YUM. You gotta just hunt these places down -- they ALWAYS exist no matter where you land -- and no matter what, they always, always make me remember what I am here on earth to do. Eat and relish the memories. If I can keep my life that simple, then hell, I'm livin' large....

Recent Comments