COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Anyone who’s been around long enough for a green-and-red chile (notice the word ends in an “e,” not an “i”) inauguration knows the beneficial effects of eating it. It can cure gout, asthma, the common cold, rheumatism, depression, indigestion and a bad attitude.
True, we all know the best places in town to find it, but it seems none of the dozens of restaurants that prepare chile know how to classify it. It’s not really Mexican food. Go to Mexico City and try to order enchiladas, tamales and refritos and you get a blank stare.
So it is Spanish food? No, their national dish is paella, a fish-rice-snails concoction. But the same probably goes for other favorites of other countries. Try ordering pizza in Rome. Maybe we need a term that includes “southwestern food” or Rio Grande-style food.
Well, never one to give up, I was craving something spicy after we left Las Vegas last week. We have a son, daughter-in-law and now a granddaughter in Denmark, and for that reason, we’re on our fourth trip to the land of the Little Mermaid and Hans Christian Andersen.
There’s a large area of town reserved for pedestrians. It features the usual Burger Kings and McDonald’s fast-food outlets, with the same fare that you get in America. The same, with the exception of packets of mayonnaise instead of ketchup, to adorn your fries.
Mayonnaise is to fast food what menudo is to good nutrition. But let’s take this issue to a real experience that happened recently, right here in Copenhagen. A pedestrians-only mall featuring interesting shops and eateries lies in the Stroll area, one of several downtowns in this city of more than 1.5 million. We were craving something ethnic when my wife Bonnie spotted a Mexican buffet with sidewalk tables. She peeked in and returned with, “The owner looks like he could be from Las Vegas.”
How would she guess that? It turns out the man carries a hundred extra pounds and speaks with a northern New Mexico accent. “He just looks familiar,” Bonnie said, “like someone we’ve seen waiting tables in town.” When I saw the man, I didn’t push it more than that. I didn’t say, for example, “People in my hometown are getting so heavy that the City Council is planning to change traffic lights to read “Waddle” and “Don’t Waddle.” No, I didn’t say that.
But eager to strike up a conversation with the might-be Vegas transplant, I entered the restaurant and greeted the owner with a friendly “¿Como estás?” Then, as he pondered his health, I added, in Spanglish, “Is it all right for me to get into the buffet line?”
All he said at the time was “Qué?” But here we need some explanation: “Qué,” without multiple punctuation marks, can mean simply “what?” But with more stress behind it, and a rising inflection, it becomes “¿¡Qué!?” which is roughly similar to “What did you say?” But even that needs some glossing: “What did you say?” usually carries the intonation of “I double-dare you to say that again, so I can pop you one.”
My only choice was to answer his “¿¡Qué!?” quite politely, by asking if it’d be all right for us to start with the buffet. His laconicism guaranteed he wouldn’t be asking me back-home questions about Hermit’s Peak, Storrie Lake, McAllister, the Stopulation Explosion, the Conspicuous Construction or even the Nat Gold Players. He simply said that I’d have to ask the waiters whether it was OK to get in the buffet line, with the implication that I must’ve expected special privileges by speaking Spanish directly to the manager.
Well, things become anti-climactic from there. Too intimidated to ask any more questions, I kept quiet when I noticed that the pre-shaped corn tortillas had the necessary fixings: lettuce, tomato, cheese, salsa and even onions, and as a bonus, mayonnaise.
But where was the flavored ground beef that holds the stuff together, the main reason we Norteño Estella’s Cafeanos and Taco Bellians eat tacos? Well, I found no beef at all and soon noticed customers scooping the other ingredients into the taco shells, as if beef were simply neither tolerated nor necessary.
After we sat down, trying to fill up on the barely warm boiled potatoes that accompanied the Mexican buffet, our son Stan explained that he’d eaten at a number of Scandinavian buffets that offered Mexican food and stopped expecting to find ground beef. I’ve gotten used to going without,” he said.
Do you suppose you offended the gentleman by addressing him in the familiar form? I read an article today that “pura vida” is the “in” thing to say in Costa Rica in response to Como estas. Do you think it could become the official state response to publicize New Mexico? Here’s the link.
Pura vida, Benito
http://spanish.about.com/b/2010/08/12/in-costa-rica-all-is-pura-vida.htm