World Cup/Mexican Snacks

I watched the World Cup final at my friend Alejandro Maroto’s house. We had a great time watching Spain win the honors of “Best in the World.” This event gave me more insight into my new interest, soccer, but the day was not without some culinary observations. Before I talk about soccer, let’s talk about Mexican snacks.

Whoa Rick. What do you mean Mexican snacks? I thought you were all about shared borders and not forcing labels onto bits of culture that can easily be found on both sides of the border.

Well “imaginary voice,” I can’t find these snacks in the U.S. so therefore I refer to them as Mexican. Shall we take a look.

Let’s start with the chips. Ruffles makes these amazing Queso chips through a Mexican company called Sabritas. They have the same rigid texture like regular Ruffles Potato Chips, but these have a strong cheese flavor combined with a hint of lime. Delicious.

On that note, I’m starting to think that Mexico’s chips are far better than the U.S.’s chips. Now I know that the U.S. has the market cornered on fancy chips. All the kettle-cooked stuff we have is great. But, when it comes to just “good ole “ fashion junk food chips, I think Mexico wins hands down.

Next, the beer. We had Indio which is made by the Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewing Company. Cuauhtémoc also makes other beers such as Dos Equis, Sol, Tecate and Bohemia. I first had this beer in 2005 in Guanajuato and I have to admit that I didn’t like it. I'm starting to think that this past dislike was probably due to a dirty keg connection because the Indios I hade at Maroto’s hit the spot. Indio is a dark beer, but does not have an overly strong flavor, which makes it go down very easy. I like my beers to go down easy during a sporting event so Indio won me over.

Along with our snacks, Maroto also made some fajitas. Fajitas can of course be found in the U.S., but the corn tortillas that accompanied the fajitas cannot. I cannot get over how much better and more abundant corn tortillas are here in D.F. Honestly, most of the food I’ve tried has a somewhat close equivalent in the U.S., but not the corn tortillas. I guess this perfection is the result of over 10,000 years of practice.

This is Maroto and Mayra.

I had a really good time watching the game and hanging out with my new found friends in Mexico City. After the game, we all were standing in a circle and I watched these guys argue over who is the best soccer player then they all started making fun of each other using various inside jokes (Bariloche?).

I laughed at what I understood, and enjoyed the rest simply by being there. I put the fajitas on my corn tortilla, squirted some lime on the meat, added some salsa and devoured my taco. After my first bite, I took a big pull of Indio. This may not be how everybody in Mexico watches soccer, but it will forever be the way I picture it.

Other thoughts:

We had a fun day watching the game, but my favorite part came after the game when all the guys went outside to play a pick-up game, or as it’s called here a cascara. I believe a cascara can refer to any game that is not a “league game” or does not involve referees.

Here are some pics of the guys playing soccer on the street.

I Pronounce it S-O-C-C-E-R

Every four years, countless U.S. citizens decide to jump on the bandwagon that is international soccer. Plenty of the U.S. sites I read, such as Bill Simmon’s sports blog, Sports Guy’s World, have given their opinion on a sport the majority of U.S. citizens know little about, for an example check out Bill Simmon’s 2009 article on Mexican soccer. Others people have noticed this trend as well, such as The Onion’s website Stuff White People Like which has humorously come up with reasons why people in the U.S. say they like soccer, for a quick and funny example of this I refer you to #80 The Idea of Soccer.

This sudden “soccer mania” is heightened every four years, during World Cup, when just about anyone with a computer feels like they can just rant about a sport they know nothing about. With that said: Here are some thoughts I’ve had on soccer.

Let’s just start off with a very basic statement. I enjoy the World Cup. I enjoy the atmosphere it creates, I enjoy the conversations that it produces and I really enjoy the ridiculously over-nationalistic sentiments it inspires. This has little to do with my relationship to the game. I’ve never really played soccer all that seriously, and I could probably go the rest of my life without doing so. However, I really like cheering for a team.

For example, when I was 21 years old my buddy Mike Graham played bass for a band called Satellite Season. They were cool. Well more like decent. Actually, I would probably have hated them if I wasn’t friends with Mike. Satellite Season was a depressed grungy rock band that came a few years too late to the party that was grunge rock.

But you couldn’t tell me that they weren’t the bee’s knees. If they weren’t all that great then why did I become their super-fan? Well, it’s because I like cheering for a team.

This sentiment towards wanting to cheer for a team, is compounded when you add it to the fact that I’m also an awfully loyal guy. Of the teams I root for: 1) Texas Longhorns, 2) Houston Rockets, 3) Tina Fey, 4) Chicago Bulls, 5) Tennessee Titans, 6) Houston Texans, 7) Houston Astros, 8) Texas Rap, 9) Speedy Gonzalez, 10) People that are 5”8 ¾, 11) Lindsay Lohan, I could probably knock off the last six if it weren’t for loyalty. I’ve been sticking with Lindsay Lohan since 2004 simply because she came out in Mean Girls, a movie that Tina Fey wrote. That is quite a stretch, however that is how my mind operates.

Which brings me to U.S. soccer. I have become a super-fan of U.S. soccer because I have plenty of reason to be loyal to this team and therefore can really enjoy rooting for them.

What I liked most about our team this year is that we were tough. This characteristic is especially noticeable in a sport where there is a lot of… hmm, what word should I use? There is a lot of “acting” going on during play. Due to the prevalence of this un-attractive quality, I have come to view “toughness,” above many other characteristics (ball control, defense, attacks), as the main thing I look for in my favorite soccer teams.

I came to this realization a couple of years ago while watching an English Premier League game. I can’t remember the exact details, but the match featured Manchester United versus some other team. I remember seeing Wayne Rooney get slide tackled hard, but instead of grabbing his ankle and trying to draw a foul, he quickly popped up, and tried to keep playing. The whistle blew because the foul was obvious. And while the referees were assessing what happened the camera quickly panned over to Wayne Rooney, who was un-phased waiting to see what was about to happen with blood coming down his knee. This guy is tough and that to me was the way I thought soccer should be played.

From then on I began to have this dream about U.S. soccer. I figured we weren’t going to be the best any time soon. We don’t have a good enough league, and all though more players are starting to go over seas to play, we still don’t have enough people playing against the best in order to bring U.S. soccer up to that next level. But, what we could become, is soccer’s blue-collar team.

This actually was very much how the U.S. played. In almost every game, Clint Dempsey was being killed, but he didn’t dive. I found further evidence on the U.S.’s toughness when this interview aired on U.S. coach Bradley’s views on diving.

Overall, we had a really good tournament. And I know that even though I knew a lot less about the game than a lot of my friends, they had to agree with me that the U.S. looked pretty good this year.

Sample Conversation:

Friend: “Ricky, you know nothing about soccer.”

Me: “Yeah, dawg I know, but did you see Landon Donavon’s goal against Algeria? Tell me that wasn’t good soccer.

Friend: “Whatever man.”

You see, if Friend hadn’t agreed with me, he would have kept arguing. This dismissal felt like a win for me.

McPatatas?

Yes, I am in Mexico City studying food. And yes, I took a trip to McDonalds. You see friends, in order to understand the whole of Mexico City you have to explore everything from the smallest street stand to the "Arches de orro."

There were a few differences in McDonalds in D.F. and McDonalds in the states. First of all, one has the option to order McPatatas instead of the regular fries when ordering a combo meal. McPatatas are like wedge fries in the U.S. Larger and thicker than normal fries.

Also, you always get jalepenos, that come in the same kind of container that you would normally get ketchup in. These jalapenos, that have more of a relish consistency, were my favorite part.

The one thing I was sad about was that my drink did not come with ice, but that's a small concession. Otherwise the quarter-pounder I ate was pretty much the same as the one I have had in the states. I promise not to go back here for the rest of my visit.

The Place Where No One Knows My Name

So like every new place I go to, I like to find the community watering hole, where I can go and rub elbows with the people of the area. I found the establishment I was looking for in the centro de Tlalpan and it is called La Jalisciense.

La Jalisciense is a shot-gun bar with about 7 four person tables, and one big table where 10 people can sit towards the back. There is a little kitchen area connected to the entrance on the bar side where there will usually be a big pot with a soup or rice for the customers. There is also a comal to do some small cooking of meats and veggies. Like many other cantinas, when you come to this place and drink you will usually be offered a little snack (botanas) like raw veggies (carrots, cucumbers) with lime and ground chile or some chicharrones (pork rinds). Even when I don’t think I’m in the mood, I almost always end up eating this stuff.

I have recently commented on the lack of bar-service places in Mexico City where one can go up to the bar and drink. Though the tables are much more common, in La Jalisciense there is indeed counter service. The rub here is that there are no stools, so if you want to order at the bar you had to stand. I was cool with this minor inconvenience, because I figured if I didn’t drink at the bar, I would pass the whole night without saying a word to a single soul.

So, I ponyed up to the bar and order a Negra Modelo. This is one of my favorite Mexican beers because it has some flavor, but still retains that quality of a lighter beer. This beer is just what I needed after doing a whole lot of reading all day.

I drank my first beer and noticed that the guy next to me was eating some hot wings. I asked the bartender if they were serving food, and he said they had a nice “sopa de camaron” (shrimp soup) if I was hungry. I really wanted the hot wings, so I tried not to look too disappointed and politely declined the soup. Maybe noticing my disappointment or putting my accent together with the inclination of Americans and their hot-wings, he quickly offered me the wings which he thought were second rate compared to the soup. I said “yes” with all the excitement that the fat kid inside me (or outside depending on if you're cool or not) was trying to contain.

The next move was to order a nice tequila. I’d only had one since I’d been in Mexico City, and felt this was a shame. I ordered my usual Don Julio reposado and asked the bartender if he could do it bandera style. Having worked for a while on the other side of the bar, I know this can be a pain, but I waited for a calm moment, and order it only after I’d seen him make one earlier.

Bandera is probably my favorite way to drink tequila slowly. What you get with this preparation is a shot of limejuice a shot of the tequila of your choice, and a shot of sangrita. Sangrita can be made in different ways. Here at La Jalisciense, they used clamato, salt, pepper, jugo Maggie, and hot sauce. The three shots, lime (green), tequila (white) and sangrita (red) combine to form the colors of the Mexican flag, thus the name bandera.

There are many ways to drink this multi-coursed spirit. Here’s mine. First, you take a sip of the lime juice to awaken the palette; then, take a drink of the tequila, swashing it over the different taste buds then swallowing; finally, when you feel the warmth of the tequila going down your throat take a swallow of the sangrita. The sangrita is not supposed to act as a chaser, but rather more like a “re-setter” to get you and your palette ready for the next cycle of this process. The cool thing about drinking tequila this way is that by the end of the shot (or second or third) you are taking less of the lime and sangrita and just enjoying the tequila.

Speaking of tequila, I love tequila. It is a wonderful drink that I have always thought is quite magical in that it is a depressant, yet can stimulate the mind, body and conversation while at the same time loosening the moral constraints that we sometimes find ourselves in. However, tequila was not the only Mexican spirit I wanted to imbibe on this night. The Mezcal in the bar was calling my name.

Mezcal also originates from this wonderful country and it is a whole different animal. In trying to think of the difference between tequila and mezcal I could only, in my limited vocabulary, find the word “gamey” as an accurate adjective to describe the difference. Mezcal is more "gamey" than tequila. The same way one can taste a steak made of beef and a steak made of bison and know there is something very similar yet very different, I think one can similarly compare tequila and a lot of mezcals and differentiate them in the same way. Mezcal to me just has something a little wilder, less refined about it. This is not at all a judgment on quality. There are plenty of expensive, well-made mezcals, and to tell you the truth, I don’t know enough about this particular spirit to tell the difference. But there is something a little more “gamey” about this liquor.

The mezcal I had was “de la casa” (house mezcal) and I can’t quite remember the name, nor make out what it is from this photo. All I know is that I drank it a lot more slowly than I did the tequila and afterwards I felt like I had a little more “gitty-up” in my step.

By the time I had gotten to this hard liquor portion of the night, the bar had become packed with a variety of people old and young. I got up to chatting with a fellow who worked at U.N.A.M. With him, was his girlfriend/wife, who had just gotten back from doing some work in Europe. They asked me where I was from, what I was doing and the like. I told them about my project on food and how I was interested in the cultural differences between Mexican Americans and Mexicans. They seemed at first distant towards me, which I found odd because they were the ones that started talking to me first. I later figured out that they were in some sort of lover’s spat and I guess I was serving as a middle-man, keeping the peace and what not. I thought it entertaining the way they would give each other quick nasty glares, then turn to me, contrasting their emotions dramatically with a big smile and start making polite conversation with me asking me questions about my life and the such. I didn’t really mind because I was just happy to be talking to someone.

I left around midnight and walked home with a confident strut that came from the magic of the tequila and mezcal. On a “heavy” night like this one I had on Friday it is always nice when I get to the top of the hill where I am staying and see the gates to my casa in Mexico. When I see this picture I am assured that I’ve made it home, which in this huge, exciting city is always a bit of an accomplishment.

La Selva

I found a home where I can go to and enjoy a coffee while I sit and do some people watching in the center of Tlalpan. The place is called La Selva and it sits on the corner of the neighborhood’s plaza. For about a buck fifty I can get a coffee with two refills. If I’m in a more “Emilioy (my buddy from D.F. who I swear has a pretentious Frenchmen lurking somewhere inside him)" mood I’ll go for an espresso corta (macchiato [espresso with a little milk]).

The first day I went I was not feeling so good so I ordered a hot tea. The server asked me what flavor, so I went with manzana con canela (apple flavor with tea and cinnamon). To my surprise the tea came garnished with walnuts and pomegranates. I love the presentation of both of these drinks.

Covadonga

My tour of D.F.’s hip bar scene continued on Friday night when I spent an evening at Covadonga, a Spanish style restaurant that’s basement turns into a full-on bar at night. From what I’ve read and heard about Covadonga it’s one of those places that many claim they “used to go to before it got popular.” However, from what I saw, Covadonga still seems like a pretty cool place to be as wellas a cool place to be seen.

My buddy Emilio and I arrived to this bar around 8pm and decided to get a little food. The restaurant is Spanish but like any establishment its environment is evident in everything. I looked at the menu and saw what I thought to be Spanish dishes. My rationale went something like this “Well all these words are in Spanish, but I don’t recognize any of them so it must be Spanish.” The Spanish dish we ended up getting was called Chistorra. This is a Spanish style sausage, and it is available in a white cheese (I think Panela).

Chistorra may sound exotic, but in the end it is exactly what it sounds like, sausage in melted white cheese. It was good, but because I rarely get to do this, I have to say that I believe this Spanish food was quite “Mexicanized."* This Mexicanized Spanish dish came with a red salsa and tortillas (Mexican style not Spanish). These sides, tortillas and salsa, I’m pretty sure, are not characteristic of Spanish food. However this lack of adherence to authenticity did not stop Emilio and I from devouring this dish because it was good and we were hungry. The food came with white bread that we dipped into the salsa, and later in the meal we got some beer nuts.

Halfway through our night we got a Spanish style tortilla which is kind of like a quiche. Ordering this dish created the awkward moment where the Mexican tortilla was next to the Spanish tortilla as if they had mistimed their appearances and ended up at the same place. This reminded me of the first time Emilio (the “real” Mexican) and I (the “real” Mexican in my group of friend) first met, and I had to become the Tejano in the group. Maybe the Spanish style tortilla and Mexican tortilla will go on to be good friends too. Moving on from the food.

Covadonga is a good example of one of the big differences that I have begun to notice between D.F. bars and the one’s I am used to frequenting in the U.S. This difference is based in the popularity of “table service” over “bar service” in the choice of community watering holes.In my well researched experiences in the U.S. bar culture I have noticed that most places in the U.S. have a bar that one can go to, sit and get a beverage alone with regularity.** This is not so in Mexico City. In D.F. it is much more common in a cantina (bar) to sit down at a table. In fact I have yet to see a place with a bar that people are occupying. The actual “bar” part of the bar is used more for functionality and rarely has stools.

These “barless bars” have both their advantages and disadvantages. One point for the Mexico City style bars is that conversation among big groups is much more manageable. Anyone who has ever sat at a bar knows how getting stuck next to someone you don’t want to talk to, can make for a bad experience. In a Mexico City bar one can navigate amongst many conversations, or just have one big conversation (except if you’re on the end, then tough luck).

On the other hand, the beauty of bar service is that you always know there will be at least one person that you can talk to… the bartender. Servers rarely are able to offer the same kind of conversation that a bartender can offer which makes sitting at a table alone as lonely an experience as it looks. Luckily, my experiences in Mexico City have so far always been with other people making this a moot point, however I’m sure soon enough I will make an awkward move and pony up to a bar by myself and see what happens.

Back to Covadonga. The large room with neon lights and large tables, some adorned with white table cloths, reminded me of a High School cafeteria. Although, this particular cafeteria was way cooler and had much more alcohol flowing through it than my high school, it still had this “clique-ish” feeling. At one table you could see all the “emo” kids with their piercings, tight jeans and framed glasses; across from them were the old men playing dominoes; and at another table you saw the business types getting stoned on their tonic and gin.

However, where in high school this all combined for an uncomfortable feeling, here it mixed into a really exciting place to drink. The myriad of people created a feeling of community within the large room. The countless conversations in the room combined to form a pub like soundtrack in a bar that was absent of music. I was happy to be here and my company made it better.

The people I was sitting with were my buddy Emilio’s friends from college. They were good examples of the type of people you might run into in Covadonga. They had all gone to the important D.F. college Colegio de Mexico (COLMEX) with the exception of Paul, who went to U.N.A.M arguably the most important university in the country.

As I talked to this group in my accented Spanish, I learned that they came from a variety of jobs. In the group there were government workers, freelance writers, artists, graphic designers and students. What’s more is that they all had something interesting to say about everything. We talked about food, the U.S., Haiti, World Cup, violence in Peru as well as Paul the octopus.

I took it all in, and by the time it was 2:30 am my body was buzzed, my Spanish was broken and I was ready to leave the bar. We got into a cab to take us home. As we drove down Insurgentes I could see one of Mexico City’s multiple business districts with tall buildings, and countless stores. Along the street I sawpanaderias (bakeries) taco restaurants, Pizza Hut and Starbucks, malls, banks, and much more all packed side by side. But it seemed neither Mexican nor American but rather something altogether unique. And as we drove home that night I couldn’t help but feel like I was in the future. A place that had gotten so big so fast, that modernity and tradition were struggling to fit together side-by-side. Or maybe I just had a few too many beers.

El Mercado

This is my second meal in Mexico City (D.F.) and it made me really excited for what's to come. I am staying with my buddy Emilio in a neighborhood called Tlalpan towards the southern end of the city. In the center of Tlalpan is a mercado (market) where one can go to buy groceries, prepared foods, and duplicates of keys (all of which we bought) among many other things. The plan was initially to buy some groceries here and then go home and cook. But this idea was short lived.

You see, when I walked into this market,which I would compare to a really clean flea market in southern Texas, I saw and smelled all the "goodness" that I'd hoped to find on my trip to central Mexico. There was no way I was going to pass up a chance at having food from this magical world. I told Emilio we had to stop at a stand and order some tacos or something. He was game. We looked at the menu and Emilio decided, very casually, on "una quesadilla de huitlacoche (corn fungus quesadilla)." Huitlacoche! This is the food I'd written about, heard about, dreamed about, and it was right here in front of me. Emilio had order this delicacy as if I had been ordering a freaking cheeseburger at Jimmy's in Chicago. I quickly, but politely asked the lady to double up that order up.

When I got the quesadilla, it was all I had hoped for. The quesadilla was a brown, (it's yellow, but not like the yellow I'm used to) freshly made corn tortilla with white cheese and huitlacoche. Huitlacoche is the fungus that grows on corn kernels after they've been exposed to too much moisture from the rain. It was considered an Aztec delicacy when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century and was later looked on as peasant food after the Aztec empire was defeated. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th century that the Mexican elite began to embrace this corn fungus as an acceptable ingredient to be served in nice restaurants. However, the introduction of huitlacoche into society had to be done carefully. Some of the early sightings of the ingredient in nice restaurants was when it was presented as the filling for crepes.

Needless to say, this quesadilla was absolutely delicious. The huitlacoche had the consistency of cooked spinach, but with a more pungent flavor. The corn kernels added a pleasant texture all of which made the fresh tortilla and melted cheese a nice extra.

I also ordered a gordita de tinga that consisted of pork meat, onions, and chipotle on thick floury dough. It was delicious and it was made even better with the green salsa. I thought it was sweet of the lady to give me very little of the salsa, because I guess she thought I wouldn't be able to handle it because I was from Texas. It was all very delicious, and only a small taste of what I will be exploring this next month.

Other thoughts:

- We were originally going to go to the grocery store, but Emilio thought this would be more up my alley. I'm interested to see what the grocery stores look like, and how they compare to the mercados.

- They have huitlacoche in the U.S. but from what I have seen, it is mostly in nicer Mexican restaurants. Maybe there are some areas of Texas that sell it at stands, but none that I've seen.

- Here is a picture of this stand that I intend to go back to and try some types of food I haven’t seen like fried grasshoppers.

Bipolar

I arrived in Mexico City yesterday (Wednesday July 7) and reaped the consequences of my eventful week in Austin. I was half jet lagged, half still inebriated from the inordinate amount of consumption that took place in New Orleans and Austin. But I came to Mexico City to study food and eat, and gosh darn it, I wasn’t going to miss any opportunity that was put in front of me.

So my buddy Emilio picked me up from the airport, gave me a minute to relax in the house I would be staying in, and then introduced me to my first tacos in D.F. (Mexico City). We went to Bipolar, a trendy hipster bar in the Coyocan* neighborhood. I walked into a restaurant that was painted dark red and had wooden benches on both sides where there were some trendy young adults** eating and hanging out. The walls were adorned with kitsch lucha libre (wrestling, Hogan style) decorations like actions figures and old posters.

The lucha libre theme continued on the T.V. where a movie starring El Santo*** was being shown. I don’t plan to write about service too much, because I don’t want to be that guy, but service here was great. Our server was friendly, but unobtrusive, and kept our bench/table extremely clean without making a big deal of it. But back to the food.

Tacos al pastor was my inaugural dinner in D.F. and it was pretty good. The corn tortillas were the first things I noticed. They were a darker brown than any of the ones I’d had (white, blue, red, yellow) in Texas, save for a few places that make them in house (Manuels in Austin). The al pastor meat was like a lot I’ve had in my day, a little over sauced, but in the end still extremely tasty.

I want to point out that I absolutely love tacos al pastor. It’s kind of my “go-to dish,” with which to compare different establishments. Al pastor, is sort of a style that many believe was brought over by the Lebenese (for some info on this check out Que vivan los tamales by Jeffrey Pilcher sorry forgot page number). The Lebanese that immigrated to Mexico (1920sish) brought their style of cooking meat on a trompo (spit) which became the way to cook tacos al pastor. What I’ve read on this subject is hazy about the history, but no doubt this food was introduced from an outside source. Despite being a foreign food, many chilangos (residents of Mexico City) consider al pastor the food of the city dish.****

A little about the style al pastor, the meat is typically pork, and a piece of pineapple is put at the top of the spit where the juice can run down the meat and cause a reaction (I guess from the citrus) that makes the meat tender.*****

I did not bring my camera to this meal, and while the food was just o.k. I would have liked to get a picture of the bar. It’s the kind of place that hipsters in east Austin would drool over. I can just see that kid in a flannel shirt, tight jeans and some 80s sunglasses, telling his friends about how they should bike over to this cool bar called Bipolar. I kid, I kid, I love the hipsters. Next up the Mercado.

* Coyocan is the neighborhood where Frida Kahlo lived.

** Emilio was trying to explain to me the type of peeps that go to Coyocan. He said they were a little “hippie,” but his definition of hippie was obviously different than mine, because I expected to see dreds and tie-dye shirts. This was not the case. I thought they looked pretty trendy, but he assured me I would see the trendy kids in La Condesa.

*** El Santo is apparently equivalent to Hulk Hogan in the U.S. but way more popular. I’m currently learning about him, but apart from wrestling, El Santo had a lot of movies where he fought everything from battles against Zombies in the movie Santo contra los zombies to bouts with Frankenstein’s daughter in Santo contra la hija de Frankenstein.

**** I should just note that this is part hearsay from other friends from Mexico City, Emilio and this author David Lida. Maybe some would disagree with this.

**** This is similar the old Fajita style where ranchers would use lime to make the skirt steak more tender.

Breakfast in New Orleans

Once upon a time in another life I came to New Orleans for my first time. I fell in love with the city more quickly than I fall for baristas at Coffee shops. I loved all the typical clichés: food, music and drinks.

After one night of experiencing all three of these characteristics in excess, I came home to my New Orleans family Jonathon and Michelle. At that moment Jonathon decided we needed to eat a good meal at three am!

What proceeded was a drunken conversation while Mr. J cooked tapatia that he topped with artichokes in a meuniere sauce. This was the best meal I'd had in a long time and I think about it every time I come to New Orleans. So for my latest trip to the Big Easy, Jonathon decided he would make it again. This time he added gulf shrimp, corn and asparagus. Heaven on a plate. Thanks J.

Kuma's Corner

Kuma's Corner is located on the corner of N. Francisco and W. Belmont Ave. in the Avondale neighborhood. I’ve only been in the city for about 7 months and this joint gave me my first good burger experience in Chicago. That's not to say that there aren't good burgers in this city. It's just that this is the first good one I've tasted.

How did I come to this conclusion? Well my burger criterion is pretty simple.

The meat has to be a hand made patty. No frozen pre-made patties will do. Kuma's patty was most definitely hand formed. The meat was well-seasoned and held together well.

Second the bun to meat ratio has to be balanced. Enough bun to hold the meat, but not too much that you get full on the bread alone. The bun was perfect, big but fluffy so that the bun squished down making it light enough to not overpower the meat.

After that, the rest is the difference between a good burger and a great burger. I think Kuma’s definitely is in my top 10 burgers of all time, but it doesn’t top the list. It falls somewhere in the Karl Malone/Isiah Thomas spot, good but not MJ.

Only one complaint for me, which will probably be a positive for anyone else. I thought the burger was a little too much food. Both Anthony and I couldn't do anything for the next couple of hours. But, I guess more is better than less. Maybe we'll skip the app next time.

Other thoughts:

-The options at Kuma's were creative. The second picture has the two burgers we ordered. My burger was the YOB and Anthony's was the Our Famous Kuma Burger. The descriptions speak for themselves.

-The place itself was a clean version of that really trendy biker bar that all the Hip kids are going to these days, where the service is usually bad unless you know the bartender. Kuma's had the same cool feel however with great service. There was a long wait, but I was cool with it, because we were able to drink beer and watch the place do its thing. Lots of energy.

-We had the oysters as an appetizer because we wanted something light. Well they were light, but the Allagash White Belgian-style Ale, Garlic, Butter, Chiles that they were marinated in was so good that we ended using the bread to sop up the deliciousness that was the marinade.

- We had a couple of the Lagunitas Pils pints and they went really well with the burger. Until next time.