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I’ve just begun reading Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw (finally!) and I just finished the chapter in which he describes in lustful detail his love affair with Vietnamese pho. If it was two hours earlier in the evening, I would have run out to my local pho spot (in which all food is cooked by a first-generation Vietnamese woman, with her hilarious son taking orders up front) and I would have bought a large quantity of it because the cravings resulting from his description alone were that intense. Alas, they close at 9.
I digress. I was spurred to write this post based upon his descriptions of street food, something you are only able to get in its purest, most delicious form in a country other than the one I’m currently residing in. Alas, alas.
But, the memory I have of the most delicious street food I have ever encountered took place several years ago when touring with my college concert band to Mexico. We had arrived in Puerto Vallarta for the last few days of our trip, and we could not check into our hotel until the next day, so we stayed with local residents for the night. My good friend N., who played the oboe (pictured above), and I were assigned a young, 20-year-old Mexican woman who lived with her roommate in a second floor apartment that had exactly two rooms: one for the kitchen, one for the bedroom and the bathroom had no door—just a curtain. We arrived, put down our suitcases and she said, “Are you hungry?” Yes, we were hungry! “I know a good place,” she said.
We went on foot, walking for several blocks, talking about boys and about her job and about her roommate and she said, “Do you like Mexican food?” Of course we did. But while the other members of our music group were off getting their kicks at the local Hooters (yes, there is a Hooters there), she took us to a street vendor making potato and cheese empanadas, with families sitting anywhere, everywhere they could, all over the sidewalks, on the stairs, on some chairs, eating, eating, eating. N. and I were a bit nervous at first—is that lettuce we spotted?! But, I didn’t care. It smelled too good. It looked too good. For godssake, there were 30-some people crowding around these 3 people serving empanadas at 11 p.m. on a Friday night. I was going to eat these empanadas, lettuce be damned.
I cannot express to you how perfectly cooked these empanadas were. Hot, sweet, savory, with a homemade salsa to die for. A spoon of sour cream out of a huge vat, some runny guacamole and then—“We have a spicy sauce for on top. Do you like spicy food?” YES. They dropped that on too.
So, N. and I sat there, having a new plate shoved in front of us the second we finished off the last, eating, eating, eating, without a care in the world save for our poor brethren taking in the world-famous chicken wings about a mile north at the local Hooters. There’s more to life than too-short orange shorts, my friend!
It is a testament to how delicious these empanadas were that even the mere writing of this post makes me salivate, nearly makes me cry at the memory and how wonderful it was. I have never experienced such a fun evening, ending with us all piled on top of a bed in a ramshackle apartment discussing boys and boys…and more boys with our host and her roommate in a haphazard Spanglish conversation.
And it didn’t end there. The next morning? Our host made us breakfast.
My only regret from the experience is that I did not get her e-mail address, or even her physical address—no way to contact her but through my memories of her kindness and her hospitality to two college American women she had met a mere 10 minutes before.
I have traveled to Greece, Italy, Great Britain, France, Canada, Hawaii, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, but the food I will always remember from my travels came from a street vendor in Puerto Vallerta, Mexico.
A million times gracias.
xo
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