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No Seconds On Repasts Of the Past
- John Flinn
Sunday, March 18, 2001
I'm the kind of guy who'd happily travel 1,500 miles for a taco. Actually, I'm the kind of guy who has traveled 1,500 miles for a taco.
Understand, please, that this was a sensationally good taco.
It came from a taco stand on the beach next to the Hotel Posada Real in San Jose del Cabo, at the southern tip of Baja California. The warm corn
tortilla was filled with succulent, grilled shrimp right off the boat, gently seasoned and accompanied by a few sweet grilled onions and a touch of
cilantro. One bite and I was hopelessly smitten.
After that first taco, my wife Jeri and I threw out all our dining plans for the trip. Almost every day, for lunch and dinner (and once or twice for
breakfast) we'd walk down to the beach and order a couple of shrimp tacos apiece. We'd squeeze lime wedges onto the shrimp and, with the warm sea
lapping near our feet, we'd sip from chilled, sweating "Coronitas" - 8-ounce bottles of Corona beer. Trust me: life doesn't afford many pleasures as
reliably satisfying as this. One evening we walked into town and dined at a fancy, expensive restaurant, and I spent the whole meal pining for the
seaside taco stand.
As soon as we got home we started planning our next trip, and, with visions of shrimp tacos dancing in our heads, we returned at the earliest
opportunity. Our rooms weren't ready when we arrived, so we dropped our suitcases at the desk and made a dash for the taco stand. I got my taco,
paused briefly to savor the moment, took my first lusty bite, and . . . What the hell?! The shrimp was mushy on the outside, cold and hard on the
inside - as if it had been frozen and not entirely thawed - and as tasteless as cardboard.
I looked up and noticed that the man running the stand wasn't the same as before. "Where did the other guy go?" I demanded. The taco man gave me an
apologetic shrug. "Gone, se?or." Then he put his hand on my shoulder. I must have looked as if I were about to cry.
Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said you can't step into the same river twice and I'll add a third
warning: You can never have the same meal twice.
I first discovered this in Arles, France. A couple of blocks off the Place du Forum, we'd stumbled into a little place called, according to my
15-year- old journal, Restaurant Lou Gardian. For all the vividness of the memory - a decade and a half later, the thought still sets off a wet
Pavlovian response - my notes don't reveal the name of their plat du jour. It was a chicken dish in a tomato sauce tingling with garlic and the herbs
of Provence. This was simple country cooking, but as occasionally happens, magic came out of the kitchen this day. The flavors melded together into a
riot of taste.
Jeri and I were so enraptured that, as we finished our dinners, the chef came out of the kitchen with another pan of sauce and a loaf of crusty french
bread, and stood over us, beaming, as we smacked our lips, rubbed our tummies and made yummy sounds. Afterward we waddled back to our hotel, undid the
top buttons of our pants, collapsed on the bed and groaned contentedly.
It was four years before we could return to France, but when we did we made a detour of several hundred miles to Arles. At the train station I phoned
Restaurant Lou Gardian to make a reservation. No answer. We found a hotel, checked in and phoned again. Still no answer. I set off on foot for the
hotel, determined to make a reservation in person, at any cost. As I strolled through the cobbled back streets of Arles and thought about the meal I
walked faster and faster until I broke into a trot and then a full-out run.
On the restaurant's door was a sign: Ferme - closed. For a moment I held out hope that it would re-open at dinner time, but then I peered through the
window and saw chairs on top of tables, boxes stacked here and there and cobwebs in the corners. The man at a nearby newsstand confirmed my worst
fears:
Restaurant Lou Gardian was closed for the entire month. We dined that night in petulant silence at an overpriced tourist trap on the Place du Forum.
(Don't go to Arles looking for Restaurant Lou Gardian. I can't find mention of it in any current guidebook; I'm guessing it closed permanently.)
In the little village of Murren, high in the Swiss Alps, there's a restaurant in the Hotel Alpina with a picture-window view of one of the most
jaw-droppingly gorgeous mountain panoramas on the planet. Spread out in front of you are the three signature peaks of the Berner Oberland: the
Jungfrau, the Monch and the Eiger (the young woman, the monk and the ogre).
Twenty years ago, Jeri and I found a window seat, ordered a pot of bubbling fondue and a bottle of slightly effervescent Fendant wine and settled back
to watch a dinner show unlike any other. As the sun went down the snowy peaks turned pink, then purple, then exploded in fiery orange - the best
display of alpenglow I've ever seen.
At first the fondue was so sharp with alcohol it burned our throats, but as it boiled off we stabbed chunks of bread and swirled them through the pot
with the traditional figure-eight motion, washing them down with the Fendant. Between bites we'd gawk at the alpenglow and watch the purple shadows
creeping up the valleys. By the time we'd scraped the last bit of fondue out of the pot the mountains had gone dark and the first stars appeared in
the sky.
We've been back to Murren four times since, and each night we've dined at the Hotel Alpina - sitting at the very same table, ordering the very same
fondue and the very same bottle of Fendant. The food is always wonderful, but after that first time the magic alpenglow has never returned. Three of
the four times clouds veiled the mountains.
The moral, I guess, is that you can have the same food, but you can never have the same meal.
Page T - 2
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archiv...
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Mexitron
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Posts: 3397
Registered: 9-21-2003
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
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Mood: Happy!
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.....says a lot about everything else we experience too....nice post!
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