Day 114 - I Take It All Back About Mexican Food

Author – Grant
From – New Orleans, Louisiana
To – Houston, Texas
Miles Driven – 353

Today’s Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157614508258494/

Given that we drove 353 miles and taking into account that we have to stop every 45 minutes for toilet stops and every 30 minutes for snacks, there wasn’t much time for anything else other than travelling on Day 114. Well there’s always time for food of course and lunch was at a completely randomly chosen café in a completely randomly chosen town 225 miles from New Orleans just before the Louisiana / Texas border. Imagine our surprise and mild disappointment when the theme of the café was Bourbon Street, New Orleans – a place we have just spent 4 hours driving in the opposite direction of! Still, the po-boys were excellent and the service was super-friendly with everyone except the dishwasher asking about our heritage and making the same joke that the food was “better than your fish and chips, eh?!”. Hey, it was nice food but I swear I’ll cut the next person who declares that there is a food stuff on earth better than fish, chips and mushy peas…

Given that it was late afternoon before we arrived in the metropolis that is Houston, that meant that if today was going to contain anything more interesting than driving, we had to cram it into the latter half of the day. One quick run in the humid 80 degree Houston evening and it was time to find food. I’ve gone on a bit too much in the past about the homogenous, bland Mexican food available in most of the non-Mexican world but Houston prides itself on some particularly authentic fare which isn’t surprising given that the place is just a 350 mile drive away. Furthermore, Hope had passed on a particular recommendation to Kate which, incredibly, she remembered so off we set to the original Ninfa’s restaurant on Navigation “where Mama Ninfa first stuffed chargrilled sliced beef into a handmade flour tortilla and launched the national fajita craze”. Whilst dithering over what to order, a mountain of tortilla chips with two types of salsa arrived (a tomato based spicy little number and an avocado based milder one) were shortly followed by a mountain of fresh, creamy guacamole with raw diced peppers, onions and tomatoes on the side to mix in as you desired - a rather nice touch we thought as you could customise your own guacamole even when sharing a single portion.

Unsure of exactly what to order, we shared a platter for two which contained a mountainous hulk of pork carnitas (basically child’s fist size hunks of slow cooked pork), chicken and beef fajitas, grilled jumbo shrimp, a half rack of ribs and one cheese stuffed poblano pepper all served on a couple of pounds of seasoned onions. In addition (yes, there’s more), it came with yellow rice, refried beans, the regular fajita trimmings (sour cream, tomato salsa and yet more chunky guacamole) and half-a-dozen homemade tortillas. Literally every single thing that we ate was fantastic perhaps with the exception of the cheese stuffed poblano which was denser than the centre of a black hole. The carnitas and ribs were falling apart, the chicken was juicy, the beef was tender and the shrimp had an almost lobster-like texture. But the star of the show by a mile and a half were the homemade tortillas which had more in common with Indian paratha bread than the plastic pre-made supermarket jobbies. So, to be clear, we’re talking flour tortillas here, not corn tortillas. The ingredients are as simple as AP Flour, baking powder, salt, oil and milk…hand pressed and cooked on a cast iron griddle. Indeed it seemed to be one girl’s job just to press and cook these bad boys all night just to keep up with the rampant demand from the hoards of slavering customers but she deserves the freedom of the city for her work as I’ve never tasted a fajita like it. It was sublime and the resultant desire to continue eating long after my “full” sensors had started to sound ensured a fairly uncomfortable remainder of the day but I still claim it was well worth it. From now on I’ll be sure to exclude this particular restaurant from my “Mexican food is shit” rants.

Unable to converse or function in the real world after such a ridiculous meal, we headed to the theater district of Houston to take our places for The Man Who Came To Dinner. This supposedly “hilarious” comedy is set in the 1950s and is the story of a writer / radio broadcaster who falls on some ice outside the house of his dinner hosts and is subsequently house-bound there for several weeks and is generally a pain in the arse to everyone unless they can help him in some way. Kate enjoyed it but I was a bit to embarrassed about the loud digestive noises my stomach was making during the quieter, mood portions of the show to be able to fully relax and enjoy myself. As such, when the final curtain dropped, I was fairly relieved to get back into the street with its hum of background noise. Kate, however, was less pleased as she got crapped on by one of the thousands of large black grackle birds that live in the magnolia trees in this region. Supposedly it’s good luck but, judging by the expression on her face, it didn’t feel that way at the time…

Tomorrow is a fairly free day ahead of Saturday morning’s 10k but a quick check of Ticketmaster has unveiled that the World Championship of BBQ is being held in Houston tomorrow. Looks like we’ll be protein loading rather than carb loading for the race then...