Diary 9|1|2014: Labor Day. The Hottest Dish. 100 Steps.

[title type="h5"]Monday, Labor Day, September 1, 2014. More Breakfast Contretemps. Convincing Mexican Restaurant. The Hundred-Foot Journey. No In-And-Out Burger. [/title] Mary Ann and I are up at around the same time, and we head down to pool side for breakfast. We go through the ritual in which she tells me she doesn't want to eat. "Order whatever you want and I'll pick from your plate." "What would you like?" I ask. She picks up the menu and begins reading. "There's huevos rancheros. American breakfast combination. Any kind of omelette. Pancakes." She keeps looking, but I figure I'll go with the first item she mentioned. "Huevos rancheros," I tell the server. After she departs, Mary Ann asks, "Why did you get huevos rancheros, of all things?" [caption id="attachment_43731" align="alignnone" width="480"] Huevos rancheros. [/caption] "It was the first thing you mentioned," I tell her. "I assumed it's what you wanted." "What?" she asks. "When have I ever ordered huevos rancheros?" "I can't remember, but if you don't like it, why did you suggest it?" This line of conversation played on until the Mexican-style eggs arrived and revealed themselves as a particularly poor version of the dish. I would be castigated for the next hour about this. You can't win. Fortunately, we have a distraction. A table of eight French people were at the next table. One of them, looking to be in her young teens, was having a birthday. A chocolate mousse cake came out, big enough to give everyone there an enormous slice. They didn't sing happy birthday--apparently, the song is unknown in France. Nice people. They sent us slices of the cake, which proved to be the best thing I would eat in this hotel during this stay. I have done no work at all on this trip, so full does Mary Ann make the days. We have some spare time this morning, and I fire up the laptop to do a little bit of writing. I try a new strategy for updating my data. Instead of backing it up from the desktop and restoring it to the laptop as I have always done, I would put it all on a 16 gig thumb drive. Why had I never thought of that before? More important, why had I left the thumb drive at home? I plug in the laptop upstairs, but wind up spending two hours discovering that without my data up to date I would get nothing accomplished. So this becomes an actual vacation. Just as well. Jude and Suzanne show up around lunchtime. We drive around downtown looking at restaurants and menus. Among them are several high-end chains, located in large shopping malls. Jude and his lady seem to take such places seriously. It's Labor Day, when a higher percentage of white-tablecloth eateries are closed than any other day of the year, with the possible exception of Christmas. Jude knows of a few places open for certain. After a short discussion, the choices are winnowed down to two. Sycamore is in brunch mode, most of its outdoor tables filled. But the heat wave continues to make patio dining uncomfortable, so we look inside. It's smaller and a bit cramped. Mary Ann votes no, and that is that. [caption id="attachment_43733" align="alignnone" width="480"] Tinga.[/caption] Across the street is Tinga, a Mexican restaurant. It's grubby and beat up--no doubt intentionally, to create the look of a real Mexican cantina. A sort of cubist design merges with cartoons about friends of the restaurant. Cool place. Such spots are common in Southern California, for obvious reasons. They are much better than comparable New Orleans places, because the population of Latinos who know what this cuisine is all about is so much larger. [caption id="attachment_43730" align="alignnone" width="480"] Guacamole, the Tinga way.[/caption] A cheery, free spirit of a Latina waitress begins offering the many explanations we need before we can order. We decide to split a bunch of appetizers. The most memorable are the guacamole scattered with fresh cheese and spicy red onions, and nachos with various peppers, cheeses, and sauces. The chili con queso is more chile than queso, but enjoyable anyway. [caption id="attachment_43732" align="alignnone" width="480"] Queso and chiles at Tinga.[/caption] I know that a couple of entrees came out, but all I can remember now was a plate of corn tortillas with carnitas, peppers, and a sauce the waitress warns me about. "It's pretty hot," she says. I'm used to hearing that. But I don't eat in places like this much, where almost everybody is inured to the pepper levels for which Mexican food is celebrated. [caption id="attachment_43729" align="alignnone" width="480"] Mind-blowingly hot pork tacos.[/caption] I can't remember eating anything quite as hot as this before. The pepper flavor was literally blinding, absorbing my consciousness and making my brain throb. Habanero peppers were the main active ingredient, I learn, when I can focus well enough to speak. Not diluted with milder ingredients, but full force. Wow. I manage to get it down, but it was touch and go for a minute there. Jude has picked up the unusual habit of dining fully in one restaurant, than moving straight ahead to another one, and eating again. This time, the second restaurant is a block away. It's a new style of coffeehouse, Starbucks blended with luncheonette. I order an espresso--about all I could hold, after the Huevos Rancheros Massacree and the brain-blowing Mexican pile at Tinga. They have china cups for this, but hand the squirt of java (very good, I must say) to me in a paper cup. The rest of the gang gets fruit juice and muffins and the like. We could also have had wine--dispense from beer-style taps. No place to sit for long. I don't know when I've seen less service for the dollar than here. But the place is full. New, that's why. We go to a party at Suzanne's parents' house celebrating the 100th birthday of a close friend of the family. The birthday girl is a holocaust survivor who escaped the Nazis by walking over the Alps, as in "The Sound Of Music." Mary Ann and I have been talking about what we will say to her or ask her, but we needn't have. She can't communicate well anymore. I do get a smile from her in response to my grasping her hand. She seems to be reasonably healthy, getting around on a walker. I talk at length with Suzanne's dad about his superb old wooden, 1930s radio. He made an interesting deal for it with a friend, too complex to relate. He found a guy who replaced the old tubes (they must be hand-blown in glass). He turns it on, and it indeed works. The house is on a mountainside and has a great view. They bought it 1976. I ask whether he has renovated over the years. He shows me matching lintels over three doors and says, "Those are the only original parts of the house." Jude and MA decree that the perfect ending to the day would be a movie. We go to a theater in Hollywood. Mary Ann sees a crazy old man walking down the street, beating himself about the head. She decides that she must be at least ten miles away from this person to avoid contamination. So we leave the first theater, unpark the car, and drive the miles to a newer, nicer theater. There we see what will go down as one of the four or five best movies ever made about cooking and eating. "The 100-Foot Journey" traces the career of a teenage boy whose family runs a restaurant in India. The restaurant burns down in a riot, and the family goes refugee, winding up first in England then in France. They open a small Indian restaurant in a small French town. Across the street is a Michelin-starred restaurant owned by a woman who operates in the classical French style. The competition between the two restaurant is highly comical. The Indian boy is found to be a natural cook. He makes a success of his family's unlikely restaurant, has it out with the French restaurant, becomes its chef, gets another Michelin star for the place, is hired by a big-deal restaurant in Paris, and becomes a superstar. And then. . . well, the movie must be seen to be appreciated. I see only one flaw in the production. The omelette with which the boy impresses the French restaurant lady is very badly done on camera. Scorched eggs! Mon Dieu! After the movie, MA wants to go to In-And-Out Burger, a ritual for many visitors to Los Angeles. (But not me! It's better than fast food, but much overrated.) All the In-And-Out Burger places we see have long lines of cars. She has to admit that the last thing she needs is more food at one a.m. New Orleans time after four days of overeating.