Catching Up with the OC Weekly

Went to a local Mexican eatery for lunch earlier today and picked up a copy of last Thursday's OC Weekly, which I don't read very often anymore since I already have all the cosmetic surgery I need, but in looking through it I found out about all these events I missed over the weekend such as a Gustavo Arrelano/Gringo Bandito mashup in Los Angeles and an event called the "White Trash a Go Go Cinco de Mayo!"

Page 20 of this issue shows a bunch of signs from Mexican restaurants around the county, all of which feature a caricatured bandito character and there's plenty of promotion for Gustavo's new book, "Ask a Mexican!" The OC Weekly figures they won't have to promote him anymore after this issue. The only issue I have with "Ask a Mexican!" is that it claims that only gringos call gringos gringos, but that Mexicans call gringos "gabachos." Well, I was called a "gringo" the other day by a Mexican so it does happen.

Take His Job and Shove It

Received an e-mail from Gustavo Arellano yesterday which in effect was asking for people to help lighten his workload as a writer at the OC Weekly. At first, I thought it was intended just for me but then I realized I was supposed to post the "Help Wanted" ad on my blog here. So, all you people who like to eat (not just for reasons of mere subsistence) and . . . and this is the hard part . . . also like to write about their culinary experiences should read this here post: Take My Food Eating Job, por favor. The really hard part is that you have to snail mail your resume in to the Weekly. Just remember you'll be competing with me. Don't say I didn't give you a sporting chance.

Nancy Puebla - Review #2

Date of Visit: July 20, 2006

1221 E 1st St.
Santa Ana, CA 92701

Listing on Yahoo! Local

Listing on Ask.com's Citysearch

No known official website.

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Appetizer: Chips, Beans and Mole
Entree: Gordonices con Salsa Verde
Drink: Cantaloupe aguas frescas

The view from outside

The Real OC

The last time I went to Nancy Puebla's I met up with Omar from SqueezeOC. This time I met up with him again plus Gustavo Arellano from the OC Weekly. I suppose any future visits will have to be us three plus people from the Register, then Orange Coast magazine, OC Metro, cast and crew from The OC, cast and crew from The Real OC, the brand new OC Post, and maybe some other Orange County-based bloggers, etc. And Mark Maguire can come too if he wants.

Omar has already done quite the writeup of our lunch at his OC in the OC blog. We found out that this particular restaurant has outlasted prior restaurants in the same spot by far. The fact that they make their own cheese might help. Make sure you brush up on your "restaurant Spanish" before you go.

The owner, Severiano, holding a picture from a Latino Health Access event at which he provided the aguas frescas.

YouTube!

What kind of blogger (coughcoughhackhack . . . I hate that term) would I be without mentioning YouTube at some point in time? Gustavo can be seen here in a hilarious segment on Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report on Comedy Central.

Garlic Shrimp

Gordonices (Cornish game hen)

Since I had the quail (guilotas) last time I tried the Cornish game hen this time, on Gustavo's recommendation. Good stuff; smoky flavored and drowning in salsa verde, crunchy in just the right spots and tender in the rest. I had a cantaloupe aguas frescas this time but hope to make it back and try their strawberry/watermelon aguas frescas sometime. Then kiwi.

L to R: Omar, Gustavo, and Christian

It got three and a half last time and now I'm upgrading Nancy Puebla to a four Speedy Gonzales rating:



Other Nancy Puebla entries:

• Nancy Puebla - Review #1

The 61 Best

Before I started this blog I searched around and surfed around the 'net to see if a site like this already existed. I found that there were a few others that were similar but they tended to be simply lists of Mexican restaurants in the county (lists that I could always tell were incomplete) or a review of a small handful of Mexican restaurants in the county without any apparent goal to cover any more of them. There are links to some of these sites over in the right-hand column of this blog. My blog that you're reading right now is still in a fledgling state but will attempt to be much more comprehensive and maybe even 100% comprehensive for its subject matter but in the meantime I'll point out an article that was pointed out to me a couple days ago. The OC Weekly recently published an article on Orange County's 61 best Latino restaurantes. Don't ask me how they came up with the number 61. Maybe they know there's only 61 worth going to. But it's still a good resource in the meantime. I've read through a lot of it and I seemed to agree with its assessment of the ones I've been to already and had my curiosity piqued about some of the others I haven't visited yet.
I wondered if their usage of 'Latino' in this instance is a nod to political correctness but then realized that they are simply using it as a term that is a little broader than 'Mexican,' a term that could also include restaurants that focused on food from any Latin American region.

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UPDATE: Gustavo Arellano, the author of the "61 Best" article has just e-mailed me:

The 61 is a completely random number—I could’ve gone on, but didn’t. As for "political correctness"...I take it you don’t read the Weekly much?

Yeah, the whole "political correctness" thing was a thought that came and went very quickly. And I like the number 61. Who says that the number of items in a list has to be a multiple of 5?

NEW UPDATE: I've removed the link as it doesn't seem to be working anymore. If anybody can point me to a properly working link please do so.

LATEST UPDATE: Gustavo has sent me a permanent link.

Is this good for you?

I don't know if posting this will automatically make me lose my credentials as one blogging Mexican restaurants but in all of my years of experience with them it wasn't until last week that I saw a menu board at one where the word "poison" was mentioned in the name of the item. I believe it was a breakfast item and possibly an omelette. Does anybody have an explanation?