K was my traveling companion at the time and we met at LAX airport on that evening in March. It was very nice outside. She spent more time in a cab coming down from Santa Monica than I did flying in from Las Vegas. We waited together in the international terminal for hours, ate some junk food out of machines, and then we finally got on the plane and flew all night from Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. to D.F., Mexico. We were chefs, so we were, by definition, exhausted.

I was in the window seat looking down most of the time, pretending to sleep, and I was struck by the lights of Mexico City, and how they just kept going and going hour after hour down below us in the middle of the night as we flew over this massive sprawl of orange city lights. K caught a few more z’s than I did.

We touched down on a cracked and broken runway where weeds and cactus and grass grew up through the blacktop pavement of the airport landing strip’s surface as the sunlight brought the whole scene to life and K woke up and I go,  ”Hey, check it out.” And she’s like,  ”Oh, cool.”

We got our bags down and caught a green VW beetle taxicab to Coyoacan, an impressive tree-lined, well-manicured city district where a cathedral, blackened by pollution and guarded by automatic rifle bearing Mexican soldiers, dominated Frieda Kahlo’s old neighborhood.

Fatigued from weeks and months of working endless hours as Executive Chefs in each of our respective
restaurants, K and I tipped the cab driver too many pesos and we zombied out of the little car and staggered over to the first food stall we could find. We ate fried empanadas filled with huitlacoche, a black corn mushroom that is considered a delicacy in Mexico that is actually quite delicious especially with a screaming hot chile arbol puree in a red plastic bowl on the counter to dip your empanada in. We had zucchini flower blossoms stuffed with salty queso requeson and batter fried, served with fresh green jalapeno salsa on those little white styrofoam plates and white plastic disposable forks…classic outdoor utensils in any language, in any country.

It’s 8am and we’ve just started eating our way through Mexico.