It’s easy to hate on LA for being such a car-centric town, but only if you forget that most places in the US are equally spread out and pedestrian hostile. Albuquerque, for example. There’s not much to like about the cementitious sprawl of the interior zones, but I enjoyed walking downtown and downtown adjacent nonetheless. It helped that the bleak environs were occupied by a good number of Breaking Bad Jesse-types (wearing beanies!) skulking around. Since I was in town for an art conservation convention, most of my trip was spent listening to biddies and eating quantity-over-quality convention food. I might have been more bratty about the grub if it were not for a Haitian mural conservator privilege checking me by saying he’d never seen so much food in his life. After hearing something like that its impossible to justify complaining about anything, let alone the “bad” bagels.
Banana Caramel Cupcake
On the last day my coworkers left early, so I had free time to cram as many ABQ eats in before my flight as possible. During a break in the sessions I wandered over to The Grove Cafe and Market for a treat. Over the course of the .8 mile walk I realized the cafe was well outside the acceptable walk parameters for non-food obsessed Angelenos, so I was glad I hadn’t insisted my colleagues make the trek earlier in the week. One long street and one strangely lit urine soaked underpass later I arrived at my destination. For the coastally situated The Grove C&M would be a typical locavore place, but apparently in ABQ it’s one of the only places for latte liberals to get their fix. Crowded with a mix of Westside yuppies and linen-clad moms with their organic kids, the cafe had a pleasant urban/rustic aesthetic that one would expect from a place catering to brunch and organic craving affluents. After drooling over digital photos the night earlier I was hoping to try their croque madame, but since I had already eaten lunch I settled on an iced Americano and a small caramel banana cupcake. The cupcake was a moist slightly salted cup of deliciousness worthy of its “treat” designation. The Americano, on the other hand, was another story. Although the beans were from Intelligentsia, the powerfully astringent and bitter beverage was a pretty far cry from what is served at actual Intelligentsia storefronts. I drank it anyway, of course.
Huge hatch chile relleno with red and green chile sauce and carne adovada flauta.
After the final talks of the conference I rushed over to famed southwestern restaurant Mary and Tito’s for an early dinner. On the way there the cab driver told me M&T’s was an “excellent choice”, but later qualified his seal of approval with his disbelief that the place had won a James beard award for – as he put it affectionately – “the same old slop”. True, Mary and Tito’s is not fancy, but the place has an old school sticky table charm that many “authenticity” deprived people find refreshing. Once inside the restaurant and down the treacherous step both the cabbie and a posted signed warned about, I was quickly directed to a booth and given a menu. Although my first impulse was to go crazy and order a carne adovada stuffed sopapilla AND a chile relleno, with the words of the Haitian conservator still lingering in my brain I tempered my inner greedy kid and pared down my order to one chile relleno with red and green sauce and one carne adovada flauta. After a short wait the food arrived and I tucked in. Hoovering the green chile sauced end of the freshly fried chile relleno I hastily noted the dish was very good. After my first bite of the red chile covered relleno, however, my mouth was confronted with a sauce so magically complex and euphoria inducing I had to stop eating and nearly dropped my fork. Instantly regretting I hadn’t ordered everything covered in red sauce, after the moment of mouth zen I quickly resumed the hoovering.
Consumed with sopping up all the divine red chile sauce, I failed to notice a very elderly woman walking up to my table. As she began talking, I realized that I must be talking to Mary, as in Mary and Tito’s. After exchanging niceties and inquiring about the food (of which I lavished praise upon, of course), Mary moved on to attend to other diners. Thrilled as I was to meet THE Mary, I was also – I’m embarrassed to say – a little taken aback by the encounter. Not having experienced anything similar IRL before, prior to the M&T dinner I was pretty sure this kind of face-to-face “Main Street” interaction was the fictionalized stuff of political ads and Food Network shows. Having to ask oneself “Is this real?” is never a good sign, and while pondering the events of the trip on my walk back to the hotel I had to face the brutal truth that I may be out of touch with reality. Luckily I’m not running for office or a spokesperson for anything, but I’m pretty sure I could be used as a case study for why its bad to work in the arts and/or live in big dystopian cities. How did this happen? Can I blame LA again? Probably.
