Minerva Orduno Rincon

Chipotle's dueling margaritas: Patron and Sauza tequila

Did I just spy a cocktail shaker behind the cashier at my local Chipotle? Why, yes, I did. Chipotle has rolled out a new Patron Margarita, a margarita "so good, you'll forget you're drinking from a plastic cup." Their words, not mine.

I just had to see that shaker in action and find out more about what makes this $6.95 margarita so premium, and how it stacks up to the standard Chipotle margarita.

See Also:
- -What National Chain Restaurants Do You Secretly Like?
- -10 Best Margaritas in Metro Phoenix

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Minerva Orduno Rincon

Views from inside the Mercado Municipal and Gallina Pinta.

The problem with traveling to eat is that by 11 a.m., with terrible coffee, pastries, tortillas and seafood in my stomach, I was full to the point of wanting nothing more than a nap in an air-conditioned room. You know that sun that spreads out throughout the Valley of the Sun? That same sun focuses all its skin-searing intensity on the City of the Sun, as Hermosillo is known. Hermosillo is also known as the birthplace of Minervaland -- and I visited last month for the first time in many years.

The only thing to get me past feeling hot, full, and sluggish was the need to do some shopping and score that perfect pair of cowboy boots. Time to shop and, yes, eat.

See Also:
--Where to Eat and Drink in Hermosillo, Sonora
--Sonoran Dog Skirmish: Nogales Hot Dog vs. El Sabroso Truck

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Minerva Rincon

A food tour of Hermosillo, Mexico.

A few weeks ago, I started counting the years since I've visited my hometown of Hermosillo. After removing my socks so the counting may continue, and hitting the very high number of 10 fingers and 7 toes, I was glad to have toes to spare, but I panicked at my increasing age and resolved to stop the counting right then and there.

Hermosillo is only a six-hour drive away, but it's a drive that easily can get much, much longer due to the border crossing. I decided instead to opt for the hour-long flight to my hometown. At $569, the direct AeroMexico flight isn't cheap, but a small price to pay for skipping a chaotic border crossing in Nogales.

Flight, hotel, and rental car booked -- and passport in hand and stomach rumbling -- it was time to head to the birthplace of Minervaland and eat. And eat and eat and eat and eat.

See also:
-The Hunt for Fresh Mexican Coconut in Metro Phoenix is Over
-Z'Tejas to Debut New Taco Restaurant Concept in Old Phoenix Church

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Minervaland

Dear 5th of May:

We were never together and I never cared about you, but now we're officially over; you were, after all, never that important to me when I lived in Mexico.

It's not like you have ever been a national holiday celebrated with closed banks and schools, paper flower-adorned floats floating down crowded and festive streets throughout the republic, and pigtailed little girls in folk costume waving the Mexican flag while stomping on the French flag . . . Wait, what? No one likes the French and all, but that seems like an extreme non?

It will all make sense in a minute.

See Also:
-3 Tips for Avoiding Beer Tragedies of the Mexican Variety
-8 Great Guacamoles in Metro Phoenix

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Minerva Orduno Rincon

Drinkable rainbow, aguas frescas.

Pick your favorite fruit or color and chances are there is a refreshing agua fresca to match. Pink, yellow, orange, red, white -- a rainbow of glass jugs filled with sweet, icy, thirst-quenching beverages. And they are easy to make.

See Also:
-Scientists Show That A Single Sip of Beer Can Make Men Feel Happier
3 Tips for Avoiding Beer Tragedies of the Mexican Variety

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Minerva Orduno Rincon

Beer Tragedies of the Mexican Variety. These photos were, sadly, not staged.

Not every day in Minervaland is filled with sweet young coconuts stuffed with tender seafood, juicy marinated papaya, and frosty cold cans of Tecate just itching to pop open and receive a finishing touch of salt and a lime squeeze. Tecate, that refreshing, totally drinkable, and, yes, unremarkable Mexican lager, is the stuff of Minervaland beer dreams.

Oh, Tecate, how I love you, how I share stories of you with everyone I drink beer with . . . tasty, tasty Tecate . . .

Wait, where was I? Yes, not every day in Minervaland is sunshine, tasty food, and beer. Some days, gloom rolls in, and Beer Tragedies of the Mexican Variety strike.

See Also:
-La Condesa in Phoenix: Happy Hour Report Card.
-8 Beer Cocktails in Metro Phoenix
- The Hunt for Fresh Mexican Coconut in Phoenix is Over

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Interlink Books

Mention the words 'Mexican food' and the descriptors 'rustic' and 'peasant food' as well as 'burrito' and 'killer tacos' may come to most minds. This narrow and pastoral view of Mexican cuisine -- held not only by the average Joe, but by food writers and chefs alike -- is my greatest current frustration, and not only because of my recent breakup with the taco.

The work of Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless is perhaps responsible for this perception, with the heavy focus on re-creating domestic and mainly rural cookery, rather than professional cuisine. Admittedly, Mexican cuisine may also owe a great debt of gratitude to the pair for its popularity in the United States, but the countless times Bayless has waxed poetic about the importance of the quaint Mariachi-accompanied Mexican fiesta when it comes to enjoying food in everyday life may just result in the creation of a knife-wielding killer taco.

See Also:
- -Home Edition of Six-Volume "Modernist Cuisine" Tome in the Works
- Dearest Taco, We're Over

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Minerva Orduno Rincon

Seafood stuffed fresh coconut.

My search for fresh Mexican coconuts started with a tall tale of a machete-wielding old man running a stand at the Phoenix Park'n Swap selling the hard-shell beauties, breaking them open enough to first enjoy the refreshing water, then fully cutting the top to expose the tender flesh inside, and slashing it with the machete into bite-size pieces, just like at the roadside stands in Mexico. And like all tall tales, it was a big fat lie.

Every aisle of the Park'n Swap was searched, and each one was a disappointment. Drat my gullibility when it comes to tasty childhood obsessions! As I am nothing if not stubborn, I continued my search, driving aimlessly for over an hour following up on recommendations from Yelp, going into every Mexican grocery store with antojos, restaurants, taco stands, asking everywhere for a hint of coconut, and coming up empty. After almost being run over twice in the same parking lot, coconut rage was setting in, as was the thought that there was a giant coconut conspiracy at work. Until the Mexican food gauntlet that is 16th Street gave me coconut gold.

See also:
-Eating 16th Street: Central Phoenix's Mexican Food Mecca
-Ten Favorite Spots for Seafood in Greater Phoenix

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Minerva Orduno Rincon

Duritos and Valentina, pop corn, lime and Cholula.

Growing up in Hermosillo, in northern Mexico, in the 1980s, my school lunchbox was filled with healthy and delicious snacks of juicy orange wedges, crunchy cucumber spears, jicama slices drizzled with lime juice and sprinkled with salt and chile powder, and a cold can of Jumex brand mango nectar. I was one happy kid and well-fed kid.

See also:
-Minervaland: How to Eat Papaya

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Minerva Orduno Rincon

Papaya, rich in color and nutrients, long on prep time.

Mexican papayas are not for the commitment-fearing yet fruit-loving person in your life. This is a fruit that requires careful thought in selection, peeling, deseeding, and cutting. Then, there's the actual preparation. This is not your average brown-bag-lunch kind of fruit. Papaya requires love; it requires patience. And most of all, it requires good forearm muscle.

If you taste a Mexican papaya straight from its thick green-yellow-orange skin, you'll find a taste that is somewhere between vomit and a rotten cantaloupe. And those slimy looking black seeds that dot the hollow interior normally scooped straight into the garbage can? For the first time in my papaya-loving life, I popped one in my mouth after the vague memory of a food-magazine reference to them being a fantastic addition to salads. As the taste of potent mustard seed and gassy fermented cabbage engulfed me, arms waving around helplessly, I thanked my own laziness for not ever building a new screen for my window, and allowed the chewed-up slimy black seed to fly to the hell where bad culinary advice goes to die.

Get the scoop on how to deal with that papaya and enjoy those good-for-you enzymes.

See Also:
-Like a Kid in a Mexican Candy Store.
-DIY Vegetable Candy: Is it a Trick or a Treat?

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