A Home Cooked Meal

I'm always going on about this restaurant or that cafe, reporting with remarkable clarity and unbiased insight into the artistry or failings of each place's culinary team, service levels and interior design while copping whatever snarky remarks I can sandwich in between to give my food blog journalistic depth tinged with a soupçon of sarcasm.

The Divine Ms. J

Our cherished, oldest most long-term friend J invited us out last Saturday night to her house to see her wonderfully redesigned and updated kitchen.  After retiring from a high pressure career where she ascended to lofty heights of executive level decision-making on topics ranging from greenhouse effects in the Grand Canyon to five star Ohio state campground accommodations, she moved to Dallas a couple of years ago to be closer to us, her nearest and dearest.  (Her daughter and grandchildren lived here, too, but that was a secondary consideration, I am sure.)  She "downsized" to a 15,000 sf house in an affluent suburb where she has been methodically replacing 1980's popcorn ceilings and dark paneled walls with sleek resurfacing and 74 different shades of white paint hand-applied by illegal immigrants whom she supervises with a critical eye softened by financial largesse.  Her twelve bathrooms sport trendy vessel lavatories and her landscaping triumphs have won so many "yard of the months" the home owners' association has retired her jersey and she now presides over the advisory committee, where she tries very hard not to seem dismissive of her neighbors' laughable attempts to duplicate her botanical brilliance.  This is a woman with formidable skills.

We had arrived with a spray of Dendrobium orchid blooms rising majestically on an impossibly tall,

Don't Forget the Fabric Softener

slender stalk, which we thought a perfect kitchen-warming gift.  It would have been had we not walked into the house and immediately spied 12 different gigantic arrangements of exotic flowers from six continents festooning every room.  She seemed genuinely thrilled with our thoughtfulness as she banished the orchid to her laundry room, firmly closing and locking the door behind her.  She gestured grandly to the vast array of appetizers set out on her Florentine marble island, inviting us to partake of the bounty but cautioning us not to ruin our dinner.  For the three of us she had spread out home-made hummus with artisan crisps, zesty queso with imported tortilla chips, fresh salsa, twelve kinds of cheese representing the finest udderances of goats, sheep and cows, fresh fruit from Argentina and a16-ounce jar of Vegemite.  We had an aperitif and caught up on world news and celebrity gossip (no Kardashians were mentioned--I said celebrities, not talentless sex tape opportunists) while singing along with an oldies station which was wirelessly piped throughout her thoroughly modern manse.

It was delightful.  No valet parking to contend with, no barbie doll hostesses, no hipster servers, no brash, nearby diners yelling about stock options and repealing Obamacare for the 39th time (unfortunately we live in a state that elected the Antichrist junior senator Ted Cruz, the scourge of intelligent civilization and common sense.  I found that totally embarrassing to begin with and then this week he was exposed of accepting $75,000 to say "no" to an up and down vote to consider requiring background checks for gun purchasers, which 90% of Americans support but which apparently the NRA can easily override due to greedy, amoral hypocrites like him.  It's enough to put one off one's feed.)

Here's the Beef

By this time J had effortlessly prepared a simple repast of 48-ounce rib eye steaks, fresh corn on the cob, Jersey tomatoes at the height of summer succulence, gigantic biscuits, home-churned butter, and salted, baked Idaho taters of a size that would make Mrs. Potato Head blush.  There were no sounds for a period of several minutes save the gnashing of teeth and audible moans of hedonistic abandonment.  I finally lifted my head from the trough and saw that my two table mates were slack jawed in a comestible coma so I lowered my head and finished their plates, as well.

Cleaning up afterwards was forbidden by our hostess, so we repaired to the drawing room for candy cigarettes and 112 year old brandy.  We laughed about old times and talked about all of our friends, mostly in a kind way.  I had forgotten how nice it was to spend a leisurely evening in a cherished loved one's home, and being catered to with devotion and humor and enough food to feed the French foreign legion.  Don't get me wrong, I still love to go out to eat and see what's new on the culinary scene.  But there is something really special about leisurely breaking bread with a beloved member of your chosen family in an exquisitely decorated domicile aside from not having to pick up the check.  (But that helped.)

Chips & Salsa

Just got back from a week in Puerto Vallarta, the quaint fishing village/sun-kissed paradise that was put on the map when Elizabeth Taylor accompanied Richard Burton there in the early 1960's when he was filming Night of the Iguana.  He played a drunk throughout most of the film and well-to-do Americans were like "that place looks beautiful and you can booze it up in town for cheap so let's go" and they have been flocking there ever since.

It is the most laid back place you will ever have the chance to visit, with a daily agenda that always starts with a relaxing Breakfast al Fresco.  That is to say if by "Breakfast" you mean "Bloody Mary" and "al Fresco" is loosely interpreted as "sprawling under a palapa on the beach wearing nothing but a Speedo and SPF 60 sunscreen". (Do yourself a favor and don't try to visualize me doing that.)

Imagine Hearing Waves Breaking and Seagulls Screeching, If You Can

Our favorite place is called La Palapa and it is one of the finest restaurants in town with the added advantage of being located directly on the beach so you can kick off your flip flops and bury your toes in the sand while being serenaded by a winsome Spanish guitarist whose soulful eyes reflect the flames of the torchlit perimeter.  The fish is incredibly fresh.  When you order it they throw a line into the sea and yank out your dinner and slap it on the grill before it has had a chance to say adios to its schoolmates. Seriously, the food rivals some of the best I've ever had and you can have a margarita and an appetizer and that line caught fish and a flaming coffee for something like $500 pesos which last week was about 42 bucks. That includes the propina (tip) and impuesta (tax). The guitarist was so overly gratified by the twenty peso bill I gave him (somewhere south of two bucks) that I gave him twenty more.  (I wonder how you say "sucker" en Espanol?)

Another awesome find was Joe Jack's Fish Shack, home of the tastiest fish tacos I've ever had the pleasure of devouring. Lightly battered and fried red snapper in home-made tortillas with cabbage slaw and tomatillo cream will improve your outlook on life dramatically. Coco's Kitchen has a ridonkulously palate pleasing smoked salmon and cream cheese omelette served with a weird Mexican biscuit.  (I've pretty much decided that all baked goods in Mexico are lardy yet strangely dry and tasteless so I avoid them unless forced on me by well-intentioned ex-pats who think I just need to develop a taste for them.  I don't think I will ever enjoy chewing faintly sweet, mealy dog biscuits, but I appreciate their encouragement and belief in my ability to change.) I'm a little embarrassed to say I love Fajita Republic, which I suspect locals loathe as much as I do Chili's or Chik-fil-hate, because I am positive an American wearing a sombrero and a fake droopy black mustache came up with the concept, which is kind of an On the Border across the border.

Have I mentioned Garbo yet?  It is a smart martini bar with live jazz or show tunes which the barman and owner, Hermann, presides over with gracious hospitality and a heavy pour. We love that place and usually throw back handfuls of Japanese peanuts while we are there.  (Not sure what makes them Japanese -- perhaps they are good at math and science, smoke a lot of cigarettes and live for karaoke.) Garbo also sports the most workingest a/c unit in PV.  Sometimes it is so refreshingly cold in there I have to throw a serape over my tank top.  All of my friends refer to it as Garbo's but there isn't really a Garbo so it doesn't belong to her but I never correct them until just now in this blog because I don't like to be perceived as a know-it-all.  (The universe just threw back its head and roared with mean-spirited laughter).

In conclusion, I would like to posit that Puerto Vallarta is an unrecognized, formidable force in the food world at which I would encourage anyone to vacation and dine.  I personally have never seen a decapitated body in a shallow grave anywhere near there so I am sure it is perfectly safe.  (Plus their commercially baked bread loaves are made by a company named Bimbo and seeing their delivery vans is always good for a juvenile chortle until I think of those awful Kardashians and then I am depressed and have no recourse but to head back to Garbo no 's.)

Hasta la vista, baby.  La cuenta por favor.