Long before I arrived upon these sunny shores, I developed a taste for what I thought was Mexican food: you know, cheddary burritos, black bean chili, ground beef in crispy corn shells, a taco salad on the side and, to wash down all the Tabasco sauce, a brown bottle of Dos Equis Amber with a lemon wedge shoved inside, peel and all. Then, for dessert, a shot of Mexico’s finest, indeed only known tequila, Cuervo Gold, taken the ancient Aztec way: first, sprinkle some salt in the indentation between your thumb’s tendons, slurp it up, then toss down a full shot glass of Gold in one gulp, and finally sink your front teeth into a big lemon wedge. Repeat until you fall down. Good luck finding any of that down here. I challenge anyone to name a Mazatlán restaurant off the beaten track that caters to the locals whose menu contains the words “burrito,” “chili,” “taco salad,” “ground beef,” “black beans,” “cheddar cheese” or “Dos Equis Amber,” and as for straight shooting good tequila, well, que barbaro! Here the citizenry generally sip tequila delicately out of a brandy snifter, and while Jose Cuervo Especial is not unknown, many other brands are more esteemed and popular, such as Don Julio, El Centenario, Sauza, Herradura, Cazadores…. Your typical neighborhood restaurant/bar might have Tabasco sauce, named after a Mexican state and imported from Louisiana, but more likely it will be a milder, tastier, less vinegary Sinaloan salsa brava in a big bottle with a parrot or a bullfighter on it. Or better yet, some fresh salsa casera with all that finely diced tomato, onion, cilantro and green chile to keep your antibodies vitaminized. Taco salad is not only unthinkable, it’s an oxymoron. The only ground beef I’ve seen, aside from hamburguesas which don’t count, comes in the form of albondigas, those savory boiled meatballs which are painstakingly prepared in the home. Tacos might have beans, chicken, goat, pork, even tripe in them, but never ground beef. Crispy corn shells are not folded over to make a container (how do you do that without breaking them?), they generally come flat and round like a 45

record (remember them, oldtimer?) and are known as tostadas, or in a chip form they call totopos. Dos Equis Amber? They quit distributing it around here years ago because everyone seems to prefer the more thirst-quenching green-bottled XX Lager with a squeeze of lime and salt around the lip of the bottle. Or better yet, make it a Pacifico. And believe it or not, even my mother-in-law, who knows everything, had never heard of “chili” and probably thinks I made it up myself. The only black beans I’ve seen on a menu were at Carlos & Lucia’s Cuban restaurant. Cheddar is an oddity; here they go for the pale queso Chihuahua or queso Oaxaca. As for burritos, though I’ve never seen one sold in Mazatlán, the concept apparently does exist as I found out the first time that my then-future-wife invited me to dine with her family. I was clumsily, nervously stuffing the refried beans, browned beef and fixings into a tortilla and she burst out laughing. “Ay, Grrrreg, zhoo are making a burrito out off eberyteeng!” Everyone at the table chuckled while she showed me how tortillas are meant to be eaten, deftly rolling one up between the palms of her hands in a flash like an Havanan with a tobacco leaf and using it as an edible shovel. More fun than chopsticks! Who needs silverware! In the intervening years I have acquired a real appreciation for truly authentic Mexican vittles. (Trivial aside: on the Mexican version of Family Feud, asked to name their favorite delicacy, 100 Mexicanos revealed that pollo con mole, chicken swimming in sweet gravy, was numero uno in popularity. Great stuff, but I think I would personally choose a seafood platter for my last meal -if they ever catch up with me about all those missing nuclear secrets). And by the way, did you know that the singular of “hot tamales” rhymes with “gall” not “golly”? Where was I? Oh, yeah! While I have developed a taste for genuine Mexican cuisine I am by no means an authority on the subject. I know what I like, but for serious advice on the subject I must defer to the Pearl’s culinary expert, Christine Yerbic. She probably knows more about it than anyone in town. But please don’t tell my dear mother-in-law I said so!