Yes, I went to Aqua Santa. Yes, it was all that. (Fennel and olive and blood-orange salad! The pasta with the clams and lamb sausage and helllllla garlic! Lillet up the wazoo!) But NO, those fuckers didn’t have the Meyer lemon mousse. They knew I’d love them anyway, with their cute little flowery thrift-store granny plates, and their butter-yellow walls and their gigantic kilim as the only decoration in the whole room, oh and their fireplace. I had a passionfruit panna cotta instead. I _guess_ that’s OK.

I also went to Tiny’s, a local [New] Mexican institution. Now, Tiny’s—there’s a restaurant you can judge by its exterior. I mean, with a name like that, it’s gonna be good. And the interior was straight from my childhood. It wasn’t an exact replica of my local of yore, Pete’s, aka “The Home of the Half-Breed,” which was the clever name for the steak-enchilada combo plate. But the spirit was the same, in the stucco-texture glossy white walls hung with bad Southwestern art, with lighting a little too bright in the resto and too dim in the lounge. As an added bonus, there was also a large-scale model train running around the central chandelier, and a vast collection of ceramic novelty flagons, all gnomes and pheasants and Bavarians gathering dust. Every person in the place, man and woman, had very obviously dyed hair.

One brassy lady could be me in 40 years, grabbing her wine glass back from the waitress to take one last sip…even though the waitress had brought her a whole fresh glass. Of course she made a saucy joke about it as she did it—but who orders wine in a restaurant where you’re going to eat cheese and chile and fried dough? Only a serious alkie, that’s who. She looked like she was enjoying her night out with her lavender-haired lady friend, so who am I to judge?

I had a big mess o’ chile and cheese in the form of chiles rellenos, a tasty dish in which tortillas, a typical building block of any NM dish, are replaced by deep-fried egg batter. Brilliant. But any sinus-unclogging the chile might have done was surely canceled out by the mucous-enhancing powers of the dairy products. (Did I mention I’ve contracted a hideous cold? I drive around all day sneezing and hoping I don’t drive into oncoming traffic in that second when my eyes squeeze shut.) But even though my green chile didn’t have the instant-healing benefits it’s usually credited with, it was worth it just to sit there and savor all the New Mexican charm, such as the waitress saying, “See ya, Shorty!” to a guy who really was short, and the sound of a heavy ceramic plate hitting the glass tabletop, just as the server gives the obligatory, “This plate is very hot” line. And the band setting up in the lounge saying, “Testing, testing” for the fortieth time.

And the sopaipillas so hot out of the fryer I couldn’t touch them right away. The waiter even brought me butter with them, which I have never, ever encountered. I tried a little, but, for the first time in my life, I have to say they’re better without butter. Just honey. Coming so soon after saying for the first time that I might’ve preferred walking to riding my bike for one particular moment, I feel like the whole world is sort of slipping on its axis. But maybe that’s just the Sudafed talking.

Speaking of the world slipping on its axis…[rant starts here], I’ve been splitting my time between 97.3 KISS FM and 104.1 (“Latino and proud”) for all my latest hip-hop needs, and I heard the song that officially makes me old and cranky: its refrain and tune is taken from one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, but in this case, it’s about gettin’ with his lady: “Sugar on my tongue/Yippee yippee, yum yum.” Normally this doesn’t bother me—it’s the march of progress and postmodern repurposing and all. I didn’t get in a lather like some people when what’s-their-names used “Every Move You Make” as an RIP for whoever-it-was-who-got-shot. At least they meant well. But dang, I hope David Byrne made some cold cash off his song getting sold out for pure skank.[end rant]

Off to bed. Home soon. Home to the land of pavement, where there is no mud, nor big jumpy dogs. Nor men who wear shotgun shells on their belts. Nor green chile, alas. There’s always a trade-off.