While driving back to Robin's, Melissa let all of us know we were definitely going out for Mexican Food for dinner later that evening. My observation of Australians as a group is that they seem to love Mexican food and can't get enough of it when they are in California but the availability of authentic Mexican cuisine in the "Lucky Country" is quite lacking. Melissa proclaimed that this restaurant where we were headed after a stop in Bexley North was as good as it gets in Sydney. I trusted her judgment in that regard because she had been exposed to a good amount of the real stuff in California and Texas, not to mention Hawaii where they do an adequate job of reproducing the cuisine, at least the basics. The thing I always felt Australia was missing when it came to Mexican food were Mexicans to prepare it. We were first going to stop at Robin's place to freshen up and pick up Maggie before travelling to the restaurant where we already had a reservation.
We spent an hour or so at Robin's cleaning up for dinner, collecting Maggie (who had been at work that day) and waiting for Melissa to pack a bag as she let me know she was going to be spending the next couple of nights with me in Darlinghurst, which pleased me to no end. Seeing Melissa toss her bag into Robin's car was all that I needed to be assured that I would be able to spend some quality time with my youngest child. I was so looking forward to it but never wanted to press the issue under the circumstances. That she arrived at this conclusion without coaching from me made me even happier.
We set out with the Friday night traffic to Glebe, where the "Flying Fajita Sistas" restaurant was located. The name apparently combines a play on the "Flying Burrito Brothers" musical group with a term used by African American women when referring to each other. When we arrived at the restaurant after a stop and go trip along with the commuters trying to get home it was pouring rain. Robin left us at the front of the restaurant and went hunting for the ever elusive parking spot. The rest of us entered the Mexican Restaurant where the hostess seated us in the "patio" area, which provided covered outdoor seating at the very back of the facility. Robin joined us shortly after we were seated and the ladies all ordered frozen margaritas. I'm not a big fan of margaritas in any circumstance so I thought the house red wine was a better choice. As we perused the extensive menu it struck me that this Mexican Restaurant had things on the menu I had never seen before. See the Menu Here I laughed to myself as I tried interpreting a couple of the dishes and quickly came to the conclusion that the menu was a mix of different Latin cuisines, including Cuban, although it had some typical Mexican dishes. A number of the selections provided the option of "Ropa Vieja" for the protein, an unfamiliar term to me. I later looked up the definition of "Ropa Vieja" and found this in Wikipedia: "Ropa vieja, which is Spanish for "Old Clothes," is a popular dish of the Canary Islands, Cadiz, Greater Miami and the Caribbean, especially Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. It is a shredded flank steak in a tomato sauce base." No mention of Mexico anywhere in the definition. Nonetheless, the food was good and the eclectic menu provided some interesting topics for conversation.
Geoff always loved Mexican food and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to tell my one of my favorite stories about Geoff and what was one of his first experiences enjoying chips and salsa. When Geoff was barely a year old we made a trip to Maui, Hawaii and stayed in a condo in Kaanapali Beach. Geoff loved to swim even at that young age, but we always had a challenge with teaching him not to ingest the water, be it in the pool or the ocean. We sat down to lunch one afternoon after a morning at the pool and ordered our meals and snacked on the requisite chips and salsa while waiting for the food. I can remember Geoff, just barely able to stand at such a tender age, leaning over the table and helping himself to more of the chips and salsa than he should have and combined with the indeterminable amounts of pool water and chlorine he had already ingested he let loose with the entire contents of his stomach over the dining table just as our food was being served by the waiter. As Robin snatched him up from the chair I instructed the waiter to put our food in a "to go" container, settled the bill, and high tailed it out of the restaurant without making eye contact with a single soul. This story makes me laugh to this day and is as vivid in my memory as when it happened over 25 years ago. We all had another good laugh about it on that Friday night in Glebe.
When we finished dinner Robin, Maggie, Melissa and I drove to Darlinghurst with Jo, having driven her own car, heading back to her home. We located a nearby parking spot on Taylor Street and as we walked toward the unit we passed one of the neighboring homes, only a few doors away, and observed a large party in full swing as the front door was wide open. "Just another Friday night in Darlinghurst" someone remarked as I wondered how much sleeping would actually get accomplished that night. Robin and Maggie grabbed chairs at the dining room table as I helped Melissa take her bag upstairs to the bedroom that had been used up until a day before by Candi. Once she was situated and properly warned about the treacherous stairway we joined the others at the table and had a few wines to help wash down the Tim Tams and Peanut M&M's that became our dessert.
No comments:
Post a Comment