It is a strange holiday, to be sure - the commemoration of a relatively unimportant battle in what was for the Mexicans, at least initially, an unsuccessful war (against the French invasion of 1862, which for a few years managed to install the Emperor Maximilian, an Austrian princeling, as the country's ruler).
Most Americans I know are convinced that it is a major holiday south of the border, and many even suppose it to be Mexico's Independence Day, or at least a day of similar import. I gather that it is, in fact, far more a Mexican American celebration. Curious, curious.
However, I am partial to an occasional indulgence in tequila (it's not very nice, but it does seem to make you fly more than any other spirit I know), and indeed I am also quite fond of Mexican beer (Dos Equis, anyway; not Corona!); so, I have been looking forward to a bit of a splurge tonight. In fact, I had been sort of planning to whip up a little party of my own, but..... I didn't fancy trying to do something like that in my apartment on a week night, and there really isn't any bar I'd like to spend the evening in but the dear old Pool Bar - but ideas based around that have been disrupted by Luke's not unnatural preoccupation last week with the small matter of getting married (Crazy Chris and I were trying to persuade him to lay in a case or two of Dos Equis and a few extra bottles of tequila, but I don't think he got round to it).
In the past couple of years, I've been invited to house parties by American friends on this day (falling over the weekend was useful!).... but I haven't got wind of anything of that nature taking place this year. And the year before that, we hung out on the roof terrace at The Mexican Wave - Beijing's oldest "Mexican" restaurant, but expensive and not really very good (though it was at that time under the management of my friend G, and for those few months enjoyed a significant improvement in the quality of its food and the generosity of its happy hour). Alas, there is really no decent Mexican food to be had in Beijing (well, I hear there's one promising restaurant out in the upscale expat ghetto of Shunyi, but that's far too far away). I suppose we might try Texas Tim's BBQ (so-so food, but a good party atmosphere), or the newly opened Saddle Cantina (I hear it's a bit on the expensive side), or maybe the old Saddle (completely unchanged, except in its name - Luga's - and now being run by the Chinese guy who used to be an under-manager at The Rickshaw), or......
Well, we'll see. It will be a highly improvisatory sort of evening, I think. So long as the Margaritas flow, I shall be happy.
And it is a pretty fair bet that we will end up in the Pool Bar by midnight.
Such a pity I have to work tomorrow!
9 comments:
I had a burrito for lunch if that counts.
Well, it's a start.
I think you need to quaff a couple of pitchers of Margarita on happy hour to really get into the spirit. I did.
I hate Margaritas. Tequila is Satan's urine.
The Devil has all the best booze.
I said in the post that I don't much like the taste of tequila but it gets you away like almost no other liquor.
It gets me to the bathroom. While I haven't thrown the stuff up in a LONG time, it certainly gets the mouth salivating and creates that dangerous impression that a reappearance might be on the cards.
I can nowadays just about drink good tequila. I am just not sure that good tequila would be on the menu in Beijing.
Well, we got Cuervo Gold, rather than some poteen you might have had in a Texas roadhouse somewhere.
I was surprised to discover a few years ago (in Beijing, although it was a one-off event organised through the Mexican Embassy) that the high-end stuff can be a reasonable facsimile of Cognac.
I am including Cuervo Gold in the crappy tequila category. It's the standard bar swill over here.
I think I'd put Gold at about the same level as Grant's Scotch - undistinguished but not nasty.... very drinkable.
It is a shot tequila. Just about palatable if thrown back to avoid the tastebuds. It certainly isn't a sipping tequila.
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