Mexican Salt Vampires
1/14/2

A few years ago, maybe four, Camino Real [pronounced Ree-al, for you gringos], served me a chicken fin. You know, the breastbone thing made of cartilage. How do you miss that when you�re making an enchilada? I don�t think you do. We never went back.

And Camino Real was my favorite Mexican restaurant.

Friday, we went to Guadalajara Jalisco [and pronounce both J�s like H�s, gringo], my current favorite Mexican restaurant. Or, I should say, used to be my favorite Mexican restaurant. I�m in favorite Mexican restaurant limbo at the moment.

The salsa and chips came and the salsa was odd. I thought it was hot for a moment, but it wasn�t. It burned my mouth but it wasn�t capsaicin. Aisai figured it out first. It was really salty.

I stopped eating the salsa since it was bothering my mouth and just ate chips as we waited for our dinner. And for once I hadn�t ordered #31, the Mexican Dinner. Instead I got Combo E. The difference is that #31 has a guacamole salad and Combo E has a chile relleno. Otherwise, they both have a beef enchilada, a taco, rice and beans.

Our food came and my chile relleno was really salty. I ate most of it and then started on my enchilada. It was extremely salty. I couldn�t eat it. A bite of taco showed that it was the beef that had been really over salted.

Aisai�s food was similar. Anything with beef was super salty. However, her chalupa had shredded pork on it and it wasn�t very salty.

I drank three 32 oz diet cokes while we were there. We drove home and I was pretty upset and felt horrible. I get shaky if I get too much salt. I was shaky.

I drank two 12 oz glasses of water when we got home and immediately vomited them back up.

Sorry, Guad. You may have made a little more money on your liquor sales, but you lost a loyal customer forever. I don�t forgive Mexican restaurants easily when they intentionally do me wrong.

Feeling our enjoyable eating out was compromised, we went out to eat on Saturday at lunch. We went to Beaurigards, a hot wing place.

Aisai had been before and let me know that she�d had the hot wings before and they aren�t hot at all. She ordered a habanero chicken sandwich. I asked the waitress how big a difference was there from the extra hot to the habanero hot wings.

�A lot.�

I ordered the extra hot. They were pleasantly hot, but not oppressive in any way. Aisai�s sandwich was another matter. She took a bit and told me it was really hot. I told her that when she felt that she couldn�t stand it anymore that we�d trade. A tiny bite later we swapped.

I took a big ol� bite out of her sandwich. It was really good, but it was so hot that I had to have a five minute time period to recover from it. I didn�t want to take another bite. Aisai traded back with me and she mooched fries off me for her meal.

There were actually little chunks of habanero on the sandwich. The equivalent of an entire pepper on the sandwich as a whole.

Back in 1995, when I visited Houston to see my friend Matt, we went to Chuys, which I probably misspelled. I ordered the 911 Enchiladas and ... I could eat them. A great disappointment in my life. If I wanted no pain, I wouldn�t have ordered the 911 variety.

But, a story I will tell at least yearly, and will probably be in my Old Man Stories is when I got habanero shrimp tacos at Cabos in Houston. Ooh, they were so good.