Her Ladyship

Notes from the gutter.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Cultural diversity in the heartland

I was flipping impatiently through the Express-News "big" Sunday section yesterday (they had a section of recipes for a Tuscan picnic) when I came across an interview with Eva Longoria. Now, San Antonio looooooves her. She's dating Tony Parker, a star of the Spurs, and they're our small taste of Hollywood glamour.

So it was one of your typical hard-hitting interviews - why is SA the greatest city on the planet, what are her favorite things about SA, how awesome is SA, that sort of thing. She was gamely playing along, kind of giving non-answers, but then the interviewer hit pay dirt. S/he (I dunno exactly) asked Longoria about Tex-Mex food. She went to town talking about all her favorite Tex-Mex places around here. Cool, good to know that these places do rate. Then she goes on to say that she's opening up her own restaurant in LA as "you can't get good Tex-Mex there."

HAHAHAHAHA.

As any displaced Californian will tell you, there IS no good Mexican food outside of California -okay, Mexico doesn't count - as they try and cram Tex-Mex down your throat at every opportunity. And that is simply not Mexican food. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is. (My friend Frequent Flyer has accused me and Grits, another southern Californian, of being Mexican food snobs. I wear that sobriquet with pride.) After having lived here for a while, I've gotten so I can enjoy Tex-Mex, but it's never going to be my favorite.

So I was especially delighted to go to the Folklife Festival this weekend. Even with it being 100 degrees out, it was fun walking around all the booths of all the cultures in the SA area. It was a nice reminder of the diversity that we have here. I had a beef kibbe sandwich (Lebanese), cheese rangoon (Thai/Laotian), baklava (Greek). Only disappointment was that they didn't seem to have an Indian booth, and I had my mouth set on a samosa. Sigh. Best part was the sampling of the Texas wines. You'd think that red wine on a hot day would be unappealing. You would be wrong.

Probably the most exotic thing I had, however, was Lone Star Lite beer. Verdict? Just like water, which, on a 100-degree day, isn't a bad thing. The Texan sniffed that it was sewage water, but since he was holding a Bud Lite at the time, I feel he had little cause to act uppity.

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