Beer Palace

Cinco de Mayo Beer Display. (Tomasito photo, 2009)

I have told you that Escondido has become a Mexican town in the last decade--which is fine by us since Mexicans seem to have more fun. We shop at a very nice, clean supermarket a 15 minute walk from our apartment--and lucky for us--it is a big Mexican super market--which means it has a LOT of Mexicanismo!

The name of the place is Vallarta, of course, and as soon as you walk in the door you've crossed the border.

Salsa music instead of Muzak--bright, colorful decorations instead of the usual insipid "buy me" stuff--good smells from the deli department--bakers slapping bollios into shape by hand--big tortilla machine cranking thousands of the flat things out to package in large family-size quantities--cactus leaves and all kinds of chilis as well as the usual great California fruits and vegetables--huge cooking kettles for tamales--saints statues and candles--it's a whole different scene!

The whole place, which operates with as much pizazz and high-tech precision as you would want in a supermarket, is a folk-culture experience.

The prepared meats in the deli have been shaped into little piggie-wees as decoration for example--and the fruit salads have boats and flowers, carved from the same fruits, perched on the trays!

Food as art!

Good for the soul as well as for the tummy.

But the latest display--made up for the coming Cinco de Mayo celebration--is a castle like construction made of pretty cases of beer! It is SO bizarre that I took a photo (above) of the building work--but when I went in for fresh bolillos this morning the construction was finished in such an hilarious way that I had to take another photo--I'll show it to you on May fifth!

You can just wait in suspense (in suspenders as we say) until then!

Tomasito, 2009


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