Truluck's Influencers' Event 4/7/2010

Truluck's, a small and growing chain of upscale seafood restaurants, recently sponsored an "influencers event" at its Houston location.

Truluck's Influencer's Event

An "influencer" is the newish umbrella term created by P.R. professionals that refers to traditional media plus social media types — bloggers, Twitterers and the like. It's what a "media tasting" used to be when there were just radio, TV, and newspapers. The dinner was complimentary to those who attended, including me.

Like several of my dining companions at the event, Truluck's had been completely off my restaurant radar. I remembered going there once in the distant past, when it was in a curvy, shiny, ship-like building a bit further down Westheimer. My only other recollection was that it specialized in stone crab claws.

On this Wednesday in April, Truluck's was doing a booming business in it's sleek bar and dining room, located in a strip center just past the Galleria on Westheimer. The bar was mainly filled with professional types from surrounding Galleria-area offices. An enthusiastic piano player belted out hits from R.E.M. and Steely Dan.

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Truluck's is still very much known for its Florida stone crab claws and seafood in general. It's also taken up the cause of sustainable seafood — always a plus for upscale fish restaurants. Florida stone crab claws are by nature one of the great matches of sustainability and human consumption — the big "crusher claw" that we all love to eat is harvested (ouch!) from the live crab which is then returned to the farm/ocean. It will then conveniently grow another claw in about a year. Talk about a renewable resource.

The Florida stone crab claws that came with the seafood platter were indeed delicious and I could eat my way through quite a few of them. The other appetizers were all quite good except the wedge salad which seemed dreary and droopy, and the gumbo which included tomatoes as an ingredient. This is Houston — don't put tomatoes in your gumbo, please.

The entrees were all generally good and plentiful. Texas Striped Bass Pontchartrain being a highlight. Having grown up in Southeast Texas eating pontchartrain dishes I can say this one was well executed. The Miso-Glazed Chilean Sea Bass was another standout. Chilean sea bass is usually shunned for its un-sustainability, but according to Truluck's they get their's from a sustainable farm off the coast of Chile (or is that Argentina?).

Service for the evening was professional and friendly. The general manager made frequent trips to the table and seemed genuinely interested in our experience. The wine pairings were good for the mid-range wines they served us.

Overall, Truluck's made a very positive showing for this influencer's dinner. If I'm in the mood for Florida stone crab claws, this will be the first place I think about and will go out of the way to get there. If I'm in the Galleria area without plans for lunch or dinner, and I'm in the mood for seafood, I'd definitely consider visiting Truluck's.

Houston Press Menu of Menus Extravaganza

It's springtime in Houston, and that means a flurry of festival activity: wine, food, crawfish, art, art cars — we've got it all. One of my favorites is the Houston Press Menu of Menus Extravanganza.

I've attended the last couple of years and it's a great way to taste offerings from Houston's best restaurants in one location. This year two of my personal favorites, Danton's Gulf Coast Seafood and Nelore Churrascaria, are featured prominently. Other restaurants that I've been meaning to try out but have not yet visited like Laurenzo's, Hearsay, and Blue Nile will be there. It will also be interesting to see what Textile Restaurant — known for the meticulous execution of high-end dishes — serves for the event.

And of course there's always a sleeper restaurant that uses the Menu of Menu's as a springboard to prominence. Last year, an unknown (and not yet opened) wine bar known as Block 7 created enough buzz to make it one of the most heralded openings of an Houston restaurant in a while.

This year's event takes place at West Avenue, an ambitious mixed-use development at the corner of Kirby and Westheimer. You don't see a lot of forward-thinking urban developments like this in Houston, and I'm curious to get a look. All proceeds from the event benefit Discovery Green and The Center for Hearing and Speech. Tickets are available on the Houston Press website.

Full disclosure: I have written for the Houston Press food blog Eating Our Words in the past and received two complimentary tickets to this year's event.

A Catfish Out of Water

There's a Texas A&M banner hanging over the door to the restrooms at Lafayette Cajun Seafood Restaurant. It's only one example of the endearing quirkiness of this Cajun seafood restaurant located in a crazy-quilt neighborhood surrounding the intersection of West Bellfort and Wilcrest in southwest Houston.

Lafayette Seafood Restaurant - Fried Catfish

I'm a sucker for anything food-related that's labeled "Cajun." It's a weakness I fully accept, and it led me to pull into the parking lot of the down-at-the-heels mini-mall that Lafayette Cajun Seafood shares with a washateria (coin-operated). It's an improbable location for a seafood restaurant, surrounded by smoke shops, taco trucks, and Middle Eastern ethnic markets. My philosophy about seafood restaurants is, "How bad can you screw up fried catfish?" Of course, it's really quite easy to screw up fried catfish. But I'm an optimist.

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Lafayette Seafood Restaurant

Even before you step into the restaurant, you are confronted with five, count'em five, signs taped to the front door that say "No public restrooms." Maybe the A&M banner is some kind of final warning?

Lafayette Seafood Restaurant

I was seated at a table by myself in a half full restaurant around lunchtime on a Saturday. Inexplicably, each table had a removable tag with a number on it. Presumably the table number? I'd certainly never seen this before in a restaurant. As the friendly and efficient waiter took my order, I imagined the owner shuffling the numbers every morning just to keep the waiters on their toes. I liked that.

Every Cajun seafood restaurant can be judged by two things: gumbo and fried catfish. I ordered a cup of gumbo, and the fried shrimp and catfish combo. Really, just typing the words "fried shrimp and catfish" makes my mouth water. Coon-ass conditioning you might call it.

When I ordered the gumbo, I asked the waiter about the "chicken gumbo" on the menu. "Is that chicken and sausage gumbo?" I inquired. "No," he replied, "just chicken. But I can throw some sausage in there too if you like." I ordered the shrimp gumbo. When it came out, it had the requisite dark roux, but several small, rubbery shrimp were elbowed out by giant chunks of bell pepper and celery (where was the onion?). The gumbo soup was thin and one-dimensional, supported mostly with a generous component of salt. In a town with lots of good gumbo, this didn't measure up.

I didn't have much hope for the fried shrimp and catfish and resigned myself to taking one for the team. But when the dish came out, it didn't look half bad. The shrimp were small but capably fried, and quite tasty. The two generously-sized catfish fillets were fresh, flaky, moist, and covered in a finely-textured cornmeal batter. A heaping helping of dirty rice was properly prepared with flakes of meat and giblets, and mercifully devoid of any extraneous ingredients like green onions or parsley. The tartar sauce and cocktail sauce were better than expected.

As I sat and enjoyed my Cajun meal, listening to piped-in music that veered from Willie Nelson to something that sounded like Mannheim Steamroller to "Panama" by Van Halen, I asked myself, "Why, other than the competent seafood and quirky atmosphere, would someone come here rather than one of the many other Cajun restaurants in Houston?" The answer was on the menu in the form of prices. Most of the main dishes were under $10. My satisfying shrimp and catfish dinner cost all of $9.75. The same dish is listed as $18.95 at Pappadeaux and $21.00 at Danton's. It's cheap, it's good, it's Cajun. I'd go back.

This blog entry was originally posted 24 May 2010 on the www.29-95.com website.

On This Day, Louie Mueller Takes the Prize

You can almost see the weight of 60 years of barbecue tradition bearing down on the shoulders of Wayne Mueller, third generation heir to the Louie Mueller Texas barbecue dynasty.

The faithful line up at Louie Mueller Barbecue

I say "almost" because 1) Wayne is at least 6'4" and built like a linebacker and it would take a lot of weight to double him over, and 2) more practically, it's hard to catch a glimpse of the guy as he darts around the perpetually smoky main dining room of Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, Texas.

Of course I'm speaking figuratively — the burden to which I refer is traditional, not physical. And although Wayne's physical bearing may help alleviate the daily grind of producing world class barbecue, it doesn't offer much protection (other than maybe a thick skin developed over many years in front of a firebox) from the inevitable and unavoidable opinions that Louie Mueller Barbecue just isn't the same since Wayne's father, Bobby Mueller, passed away suddenly in 2008.

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To be clear, such suggestions are completely unfounded. Louie Mueller Barbecue is easily as good as, and possibly better than, when the James Beard Award-winning Bobby Mueller ran the operation. It's obvious that whatever tradition and goodwill that Louie Mueller garnered over the decades will not go gentle into that good night if it's up to Wayne Mueller.

On a recent Saturday I stepped up to the counter at Louie Mueller Barbecue and was warmly greeted by Wayne himself, who was working the carving block just like his father did before him. We chatted briefly and Wayne stepped over to shake my hand, but being covered from fingers to elbows with the carbonized debris of barbecued meat, he offered a sweaty elbow bump in exchange.

I ordered a half pound of the fatty brisket and in no time a quivering, steaming pile of meat lay before me on the counter. The crust on this brisket was coarse and complex, and of the same dark brown/black color of the smoke-caked walls of the main dining room. You might imagine that if someone got up the gumption to take a big lick of the dining room's walls, it would taste something like the crust on this brisket.

Louie Mueller brisket

Louie Mueller's rub is famously simple and effective: coarse ground black pepper and salt. That such a complex overall flavor can be imparted through barbecued meat is, in my opinion, a tribute to Mueller's decades-old brick barbecue pits — layers of smoke have built up over the decades to infuse a rich smokiness to the meat that just can't be duplicated elsewhere. Post oak wood is used as the smoke source ("Where do you get your wood?" "From trees!") and adds another layer of flavor complexity.

On this day, the slices of fatty brisket were exceptionally moist and tender, with a dense web of gelatinized collagen that had seeped into the surrounding meat. The fat had been completely rendered and had the texture of butter and an exquisite flavor of smoked meat. The crust was pleasantly peppery, not too much salt, and a slightly bitter note of chocolate and coffee.

After I took the first few bites of this brisket, I announced to my tablemates, "This is the best brisket I've ever had." Which is something. I've had the brisket at every one of Texas Monthly's top five barbecue joints, and up until this time, I had Snow's BBQ brisket as my favorite. But today, the barbecue Gods aligned the planets over Taylor, Texas: the perfect piece of brisket, perfectly smoked, perfectly seasoned and perfectly served with a generous helping of sincere friendliness and tradition.

As one of my dining companions so thoughtfully suggested: Texas barbecue joints are a lot like human beings, they have good days and bad days and you're never sure who's going to show up. Which is both frustrating and exhilarating at the same time; will I get a piece of meat as tough as shoe leather, or a transcendent slice of smoky, fatty goodness? With Texas barbecue, as with people and boxes of chocolate, you never know what you're gonna get.

Wayne Mueller has stated publicly that his vision for Louie Mueller Barbecue is to maintain both tradition and consistency. I can see how some people believe that when Louie Mueller is "on" (which is more often than not), when it's having a good day, when everything is clicking and smoke and tradition soak everything, it's the best barbecue in Texas, and therefore the world.

Louie Mueller Barbecue
206 West 2nd Street
Taylor, TX 76574
512-352-6206

This blog entry was originally posted 9 March 2010 on the www.29-95.com website.

An Ode to Octopus

The first time I ate octopus was in a sun-drenched back alley on the Greek island of Santorini where tourists — mostly young Americans and Brits — go to act stupid.

Taverna with Octopi http://www.flickr.com/photos/byrdiegyrl/ / CC BY 2.0

The days there begin at night, in some unnamed taverna, usually involving table dancing and copious libations followed by a drunken, groping tryst in a spartan hotel room or, more uncomfortably, on the black volcanic sands of an ancient Aegean beach. Sleep is minimal, and morning demands a brief respite of coffee and "continental breakfast." This is followed by an adjournment back to the beach, often with your companion of the night before, topless depending on nationality (oh, those German girls) and supine yet again, but this time in the worship of Apollo (the sun) rather than of Eros or Dionysus.

In such a cycle of debauchery, food is a necessity rather than a pleasure or diversion. The main goal is to line your stomach with material that will soak up the deluge of alcohol that will flow in the next few hours. With this in mind, the tourist haunts of Greek islands earn their reputation for shoddy food. Hawkers use broken English to shepherd you into their establishment where gooey moussaka is the standard fare.

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Tenderizing Octopus http://www.flickr.com/photos/63391301@N00/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

And then there's the octopus. It's a dish that's on almost every menu in the Greek islands, and will often be the focus of a restaurateur's tourist-inspired show — if it's not the dancing or the plate breaking, it's a swarthy Greek fisherman pounding a newly caught octopus against a rock to soften its notorious toughness. Preparation is almost always grilled, and when it's done well, octopus is a culinary revelation for even the most sun-burnt and hung-over international tourist.

Grilled octopus is prepared by cleaning fresh octopus, marinating it overnight in a citrus/olive oil/white wine/herb mixture, and then grilling it on an open flame while basting it with more citrus and olive oil. To ensure tenderness, the octopus will often be boiled for 30 minutes to 1 hour before marinating. The end result will be both visually stunning — long, suction-cupped, tapering tendrils of caramelized octopus arms — and wonderfully flavorful. The mild seafood flavor of the octopus combined with the citrus and olive oil, and a dusting of sea salt and oregano, results in a classic and timeless Mediterranean delicacy.

Grilled Octopus http://www.flickr.com/photos/prettykatemachine/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In Houston, a few Greek restaurants have grilled octopus on the menu, usually as an appetizer. Occasionally it seems to be on the menu as an afterthought, mainly to uphold the Greek-menu-street-cred of the restaurant — no octopus means not really a Greek restaurant. Grilled octopus at Houston Greek food joints is usually pretty decent, with a few caveats.

The grilled octopus at Alexander the Great restaurant near the Galleria is a good example of what's good and bad in a typically Americanized and tourist-ified grilled octopus dish. The octopus itself is nicely grilled with a smoky char, and reasonably tender. But in deference to American squeamishness toward eating anything that looks vaguely monster-ish, including things like suction-cupped tentacles, this octopus has been roughly chopped into mouth-size chunks.

Grilled Octopus Salad at Alexander the Great

The surrounding salad is all quite average, punctuated by a flabby and uninspired dressing of olive oil and citrus, and some obligatory cucumbers, tomatoes and olives. Really, the octopus here could be replaced by chicken, tofu, or shrimp, and there wouldn't be a noticeable difference. Next time I visit I'll just ask for the whole octopus arms on a plate, with a wedge of lemon and sea salt on the side.

On the upper end of the Houston restaurant scale, grilled or braised octopus will often appear on seafood menus. On a recent visit to Tesar's Modern Steak and Seafood in The Woodlands, the menu included a wonderful braised octopus with avocado, aioli, chorizo, and braised celery.

Braised Octopus at Tesar's

This may seem like an unusual combination of ingredients. But after tasting it, you realize there's a sophisticated thought process involved in the combination of flavors and textures. First, the mild seafoody/briny flavor of the octopus is offset by the rich, buttery flavor of the avocados and the tart aioli. The chorizo flakes offer an extra dimension of spiciness to the dish.

Texture-wise, the braising technique yields an al dente but not chewy hunk of octopus arm. Combined with the creamy avocados and the crunchy slices of celery, there's an inspired formulation of textures in this dish.

Finally, presentation has not been sacrificed — a whole octopus arm is seductively coiled around itself, suction cups protruding unapologetically. The rusty red octopus floats on a slick of pale green of avocado aioli. Flecks of orange chorizo float throughout.

It's the best octopus dish I've had in greater Houston. I'd make the journey out to The Woodlands just for this dish. Although no one will ever mistake The Woodlands for a Greek island, apparently there's still delicious mischief to be had.

A version of this blog entry was originally posted 29 Jan 2010 on the www.29-95.com website.

New Ruggles Grill: Southwest meets Slow Food

Back in the day, Ruggles Grill was big. Big food with big flavor served in big portions to big people with big hair who drove big cars and lived in big houses.

The Ruggles Grill

It was richly rewarded with accolades ranging from "best restaurant" to "most popular restaurant." It became a Montrose institution.

Then the eighties and nineties turned in to the oughties and new restaurants popped up all over lower Westheimer. Ruggles' big, meandering menu looked unfocused compared to restaurants like nearby Da Marco or Dolce Vita, which brought clarity and focus to a specific cuisine, in this case Italian. But Ruggles still did a good business, even with the calcified menu, until a big storm called Ike put the kibosh on the martini-and-mimosa-fueled party.

Damaged by Ike, Ruggles remained closed for more than a year after the storm, even as other restaurants celebrated grand re-openings. Insurance and city permit problems contributed to the delay, and surely the bad economy didn't help. Riding out the storm, both literally and economically, seemed a wise strategy for many restaurateurs.

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Meanwhile, owner Bruce Molzan partnered with Federico Marques to open Ruggles Green on West Alabama. This casual, counter service restaurant focused on organic and locally sourced ingredients and "green" restaurant procedures such as intensive recycling programs and styrofoam-free to-go containers. It became a big hit.

Fast forward to New Years Eve 2009. I was driving by Ruggles Grill and saw a banner draped across the front that announced it would reopen that night. Reservations were being taken. The reopening of Ruggles Grill was imminent. I checked the restaurant's website and found the same pre-Ike menus. This was disappointing, but curiosity led me to visit the restaurant the following week.

The first thing you notice is that the dining room is basically the same, but spruced up a bit. The main room to the left of the entrance is still where all the action is, with a small bar in the far corner and the hustle and bustle of Westheimer a few feet away through the French doors along the front. But that's where the similarities to the pre-Ike Ruggles end. The menu is a different story.

The new menu at Ruggles Grill retains some of the highlights of the old menu but with a lot of tweaks and a strong push for organic and locally sourced ingredients. Local vendors listed include a who's who of local farms: Gundermann, Georgia's, and Hatterman, to name a few. The dishes are far from minimal, and retain a Southwestern feel with lots of peppers and chiles and chipotles spread throughout. All of the dishes we sampled were fresh and well-executed.

Organic tofu and tomato salad

One of the more successful dishes of the visit was the organic tofu and Gundermann Farms tomato salad with Animal Farm mixed greens, dried blueberries, and organic shoa mai vinaigrette. Yes, it's a vegetarian dish, but Ruggle's philosophy of throwing lots of ingredients and flavors at a dish works well in this case. Yes, it's swimming in some kind of crazy vinaigrette, but the flavors are bright and well-balanced. Vegetarians, forever the red-headed stepchildren of fine dining, finally have a dish they can sink their teeth into. As someone who is as far removed from vegetarianism as you can get, I'd actually order this as a starter.

Grass-fed, bacon-wrapped filet with quinoa salsa

A less successful dish was the grass-fed, bacon-wrapped filet with passion fruit demi-sauce and spicy roasted pineapple organic fair trade quinoa salsa (it's a mouthful to say and to eat). There's something cheeky about pairing a thick cut of grass-fed tenderloin with quinoa, a couscous-like grain that's a trendy ingredient for the rabbit food crowd. It could work, but the dish also includes a roasted pineapple salsa whose plethora of ingredients detonate like a cluster bomb on the unsuspecting palate. This was the embodiment of an overwrought dish. Editing the ingredients and components would be welcome.

It's obvious that Chef Molzan has created a clever fusion between ingredients and dishes from the previous incarnation of Ruggles Grill and the organic/local/green lessons he's learned from the success of Ruggles Green. The question is, if you re-build it, will they come? It's quite possible that the River Oaks crowd will make the trek down Westheimer to get a taste of Ruggles past and present, and to see and be seen. And the vegetarians and Green Party voters who inhabit the surrounding Montrose neighborhood will walk or drive over in their Smart cars to feel that they've eaten well and responsibly. If these two constituencies can be reliably satisfied, Ruggles Grill may have a new life after all.

This blog entry was originally posted 22 Dec 2009 on the www.29-95.com website.

Looking for Tacos in All the Wrong Places

Baytown's not Pasadena. Pasadena's known for Gilley's and Bud and Sissy and oil refineries, and even stakes a claim to culinary celebrity with world's largest strawberry shortcake.

Taqueria Sahuayo in Baytown

Baytown's got the refineries and suburbs and a giant shopping mall right off I-10, but it lacks whatever faded patina of glamour that Hollywood bestowed upon its neighbor many years ago. And when you think of food destinations in and around Houston, Baytown never gets mentioned. That's why I had to go there.

There's an old traveler's trick I use when searching out interesting places or people. I ask a local resident where a tourist should never go, and then that's where I go. This inevitably results in the most interesting experiences. Many years ago, on the advice of a Frenchman, I stumbled into eastern Europe and spent a week in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, at the start of that country's civil war. That was memorable. Turns out that responses for where tourists should never go often involve war-torn countries.

This technique also works for food exploring: ask someone from Houston where they would never go to eat good food, and Baytown usually gets the nod. The problem is trying to get anyone to go with you; even the most hardened food explorers shy away from Baytown. You have to get creative to find a dining companion.

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So I convinced my friend and fellow 29-95 blogger Jay (GunsandTacos) into joining me by telling him that Chamillionaire was giving a free Saturday morning concert at the Baytown Masonic Lodge, complete with a bricklaying exhibition and a BBQ and haggis potluck. He was initially skeptical, doubting I could ever be admitted to such an august group like the Masons, and suggesting that the Baytown Masons' musical tastes probably skew more toward Chingo Bling anyway. So I made up a few secret handshakes on the fly and showed him how they worked. He was impressed and liked them a lot, maybe too much, giggling and shaking hands with himself most of the rest of the day when he wasn't holding a taco. Anyway, he was on board.

Birria de Cabrito

Our first stop was Taqueria Sahuayo in an old part of Baytown that butts up against the mammoth ExxonMobil oil refinery. It's in an old Dairy Queen building, with a hand painted sign and blacked-out windows. Most people think that establishments with blacked-out windows are places where you should never go. Indeed, in my experience, such places yield great reward or great punishment. Nothing in between.

Among the smorgasbord of inexpensive tacos, caldos, and menudos that we ordered was one of the best dishes I've eaten in a long time: birria de cabrito (goat stew). Birria doesn't have anything to do with beer; rather, it's a traditional Mexican meat stew. There are generally two preparation styles: "guisada" or "tatemada." Guisada style involves tossing chiles, aromatics and meat into a pot and slow cooking it until the flavors combine into a traditional stew-like dish.

Tatemada style involves adding chiles and aromatics (and sometimes offal) to a vat of water, then the meat is suspended in a rack over the water and is steamed as the pot is heated. Juices from the meat drip into the broth below. The meat is removed and then cooked a second time -- grilled or roasted. The broth is strained and poured into a bowl and big chunks of (bone-in) meat are added to the broth.

The birria de cabrito at Taqueria Sahuayo is tatemada style. The broth (consomé de birria) is brought to your table in a giant steaming bowl and has a wonderful clarity of flavor marked by an intensely meaty (but not too gamey) essence and a restrained amount of seasoning. The chunks of meat range from chewy to falling-off-the-bone. Grab a homemade tortilla, spoon in some meat (it's OK if you accidentally-on-purpose drip some broth on there), add onions, cilantro and lime juice, then dredge the lot of it in the broth and take a bite. Once you've shredded the last piece of meat off the bones, mix some onions and cilantro into the liquid and drink the broth right out of the bowl. It's one of the most rewarding cold weather dishes I've ever had.

Bigotes food truck

On our way back to Houston, Jay and I decided to explore closer to town and exited at Freeport Street, just inside the Beltway. This was a shot in the dark; no one had ever mentioned this street to me as a food destination. It paid off. Block after block of taco trucks, carnicerias and elotes stands. We stopped at the Bigotes ("mustache") taco truck in the parking lot of E.J.'s Tire Shop at the corner of Freeport and McNair Streets.

As we studied the menu, a Hispanic gentleman sidled up to me and said something I thought was "sabado" or "sebadoh." The "sabado" made sense because it was Saturday, but I wasn't sure why he was asking about Sebadoh, one of my favorite indie rock bands. Jay stepped in and clarified that the gentlemen was actually saying "Salvador," which is the type of food made by this truck. Jay introduced himself to the gentleman and shook his hand, at which point the man got a funny look on his face and walked away quickly.

Pupusas are the calling card of any good Salvadoran street food vendor, and this truck specialized in it. Pupusas are thick corn tortillas stuffed with various fillings. I ordered a queso y chicharrón pupusa filled with cheese and finely chopped pork. It came out so hot I couldn't touch it, so I sprinkled on some curtido (pickled cabbage, onions and carrots) and tomato sauce. I took a bite. The savory, fatty pork combined with the pungent, chalky cheese and the sweet corn and tomato sauce, mixing with the vinegary curtido, was a symphonic taste experience. I ordered a couple of pupusas to-go for reheating later.

Pupusa from Bigotes food truck

On our way back to town we passed a flea market just off of I-10 and decided to stop in. The front half of the barn-like building was an actual Mexican flea market, the rear half was occupied by a dance club, complete with disco ball, throbbing music and a long bar packed with folks with nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon. One surmises that if a metal detector were installed at the door, it would be a different crowd, or no crowd. Gringos who show up here, according to Jay, are either la migra or la policía. "It's a place you should never go," he whispered as he grabbed my sleeve and dragged me out to the parking lot. I really wish he hadn't said that.

This blog entry was originally posted 22 Dec 2009 on the www.29-95.com website.