Torgo eats fire

On Saturday, we tried one of the Mexican restaurants in our neighborhood. We'd already covered Japanese, Thai, Ethiopian & Eritrean, Italian, Pub food, Frou Frou American, and several others. We'd gone to one burrito spot, but I didn't like the burritos. I found mine dry. M-N loved hers. For some reason, I really like Chipotle's burritos. I don't like that they're a huge chain. I don't like that McDonald's has an interest in them. But I like their food.

Anyway, we went to a sit-down Mexican place by our apt. The popular dish seemed to be the tostadas, so M-N got one. I got the tostaditas, which I thought was a way of getting a tostada with all the meats in one big bowl, but of course, had I remembered my high school Spanish, I would've realized it was just 3 little tostadas.

The real story of the place was the salsa. Mexican restaurants often hand you chips and salsa when you first sit down. I think this is a way of encouraging drink orders. This restaurant clearly had three kinds of salsa (it was an open kitchen, and I could see the salsas). They gave us one that I'd describe as intolerably, esophagus-scarring hot.

Now, I'm all for hot food. I love a meal that's also an endurance test. But this salsa was beyond "Oh my God, that's so hot!" said with a smile. it was "Oh my ahhh, ahh ahh ahh," said as bits of salsa dribble down your chin.

There's a point at which hot salsa moves from fun to punishing. Maybe my threshhold was just weakened. All I know is that I almost took the bottle from the baby to cool my mouth down. But instead, like most people, probably while the restaurant owners looked on and laughed, I just kept eating it, fighting fire with fire.