#442 Fried Yolks

We often make the mistake of talking about “authentic” Mexican food. As if there was one cuisine for an entire country. Not so. That’s like insisting that Washington State chefs know how to cook grits or New Yorkers know how to make salsa picante. Regional cuisine is the order of the day. Like this: As far as we could tell, no one in all of Cabo San Lucas knew what it meant when we said over-medium eggs. Whether we ordered eggs benedict or just fried eggs, at no time did the eggs come back less than 90 percent runny. There are two types of fried eggs in Cabo—runny, and even runnier. The even runnier eggs feature un-gelled white matter as well. Mmm mmm. The closest cuisine comes to raw snot. At one point, I actually saw a McDonalds in Cabo. It was strange how the pictorial representation of Ronaldo McDonald looked just a hint more Mexican than his American counterpart. Like they had somehow merged his cartoon visage with Speedy Gonzales, with a little bit of Yosemite Sam thrown in for color. In any event, I was tempted to go in one morning and try a Huevos McMuffin. But the thought of a tepid, heat-lamped, runny egg engaged my hurl centers. Maybe it was my residual tequila sensitized stomach. And it was hard to send the eggs back cause waiters sucked. Cabo is quite modern in many respects, with power toilets and all, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that just about every restaurant we went to the waiters had PDAs instead of paper tablets. As far as I could tell, no waiter in all of Cabo exercised the time-honored tradition of actually memorizing the order and then delivering it to the appropriate recipient. In fact, about the only time we saw the waiter was when he—inevitably he—took our order. He would tap his stylus against the screen of his PDA and a little while later some other person would bring the food from the kitchen. The PDA must have had a seating chart for every table because the dish was always delivered perfectly. But the deliverer would deposit the plates and disappear quicker than a mouse on meth. If something was wrong with the order, we had no one to complain to. And since they don’t bring water, there were never any refill opportunities to complain either. When we finished our meal, as is, another guy we’d never seen would buss our table. The next time we saw the waiter he was handing us the bill. It all seemed rather rude. Especially since 40 feet distant, out on the street, all kinds of hawkers were bending over backwards offering us the finest service on a variety of trips, meals, and drink specials—if we’d only sit through a timeshare presentation. Come to think of it, the free breakfast we had in the one timeshare presentation we went to was the only time our eggs were cooked perfectly. Of course, they’d been gelling in the buffet chafing dish for an hour. Funny, I’m still not sure how we got yolked into that salespitch.
America ya gotta love it.