Manolo’s Food Blog

Manolo says, Guacamole!

As one would imagine the Manolo he is not immune to the tropical charms of the finely-crafted guacamole. Indeed, it can be among the greatest of the appetizers, if done well.

Avocados, lime juice, the finely-diced red onion, chopped cilantro, the salt and the pepper, and perhaps as the Manolo has done here above, the little chopped tomato. So simple.

Of the course, the secret it is entirely in the quality of the avocados. Bad avocados, bad guacamole. Good avocados, good guacamole.

The Manolo, he is happy to report that the avacodos for this particular guacamole they were fine. Yes, fine, but not superior. For that one must be close to the source, perhaps in the charming town of the Carpinteria, where the living it is easy, and the heavily-laden trees offer up fruit to whomsoever can reach up from the sidewalk and pluck them from the branchs.

Oddly for the Manolo, however, the single best guacamole he has ever consumed it was in most unlikely of places: downtown Tucamcari, in the New Mexico, at the tiny, unassuming mom-and-the-pop restaurant called the El Toro Cafe. The dish it was the “guacamole salad”, presumably because it came with the chopped iceberg lettuce. It was and remains perfectly memorable, with the sort of vegetable-fatty richness and flavor that the Manolo has never again experienced.

The Manolo says, if you are perhaps stranded in the Tucumcari (and who has not, at some point, been stranded in the Tucumcari?) then you must visit the El Toro. He suspects that the guacamole could never again possibly be as good as it was that one time (nothing is ever as good the second time), but the traditional New Mexican food was good enough to justify the visit to this unprepossessing place.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 at 12:05 pm by Manolo the Shoeblogger and is filed under Mexican Food, What the Manolo is Eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.