Salsa a la Salsa, 15 August 2018 even though I was totally supposed to brown bag it.

So I had to go pick up a prescription today from the clinic down the street from the crib. Figured I would do that on my lunch break. I get out of the clinic (that has a nice ring to it) and go across the street for a burrito and they say they’re out of tortillas.
They’re… out of tortillas? But they make… I thought they… They have a store full of them. OK.
So I go up the street to My Huong to pick up a banh mi. Lemon grass beef, $4.95. Cool. Sign on the register: Card Minimum $8. Well, I don’t… Motherfucker.
OK, ride up the street and think, “Hey, what about the Nicollet Diner? June and I split a patty melt there once and then Lea showed up and was just an abhorrent, self-absorbed sack of boring. That should be a fun throwback.”
Pop in, grab a menu. Patty Melt: $11.95.
Twelve dollars for a goddamned patty melt? How much PCP was on the dick y’all been suckin’? Nowhere in the universe should a patty melt cost more than four dollars, seven dollars with chips and a drink. Jesus.
Go next door to Salsa a la Salsa, where Kafe Nasty and I got take out on plenty of drunken nights. I was a chimichanga man back in the day. Today, I just opted for the tinga burrito because they don’t have lengua.
Now, I know it’s hard to scale that thing in the photo but it is the equivalent of one face* and required two-handed operation. I washed it back with a hibiscus Jarritos because hibiscus is my forever jam.
As far as how it tasted? Well, it was good. There’s no denying that. However, they played it real safe on the tinga. The chicken was more chunked than shredded and the flavor was very mild compared to tingas I’ve gotten from other places. It was basically roasted chicken & refried beans in the burrito. A little sour cream and guacamole placed erratically at one end, cheese might as well have not been in there, pico de gallo and salsa verde helped lighten up the flavor profile but those too were on the mild side.
The mild approach can be forgiven when you consider that a restaurant stays open only as long as it serves its community what it wants and while Marissa’s can thrive on spice, Marissa’s is ten twelve blocks south on the south end of Whittier across a parking lot from a cantina, across the street from a capitol C Chinese joint, and catty corner from a Somali buffet, behind which is a defunct Asian grocer.
Salsa a la Salsa is wedged between over-priced Happy Days looking Nicollet Diner and overpriced Market BBQ across the street from the Music Box Theater which has been running the show Triple Espresso since before I moved here in the middle of Loring which has been an experiment in prolonged gentrification for years, hindered only by the high population of homeless folks centered there. If you want to serve the affluent and upwardly mobile, you gotta go easy on the chiles. If you want to keep the homeless out, you gotta price them out.
Jesus. I hope that’s not what they’re doing.
Let’s be real. The patty melt next door is twelve dollars.
It’s also prime real estate over there, the prices are probably like that to pay the rents and the bills and the staff but… There’s also sales volume to consider. Chipotle can charge eight dollars and have a staff of seven teenagers sloshing out salsas because of how much they’re selling. Salsa a la Salsa, mid day Wednesday, I walked in there were six other people. By the time I was done, I was the only customer left in there.
Look, who knows why the burrito was eleven goddamned dollars? It was huge, OK. But quantity doesn’t make up for quality. If you like spice and flavor and getting a little forehead sweat, this aint the burrito for you. If you’re in the mood to take a gigantic dump and a nap, then this is eleven dollars well spent.

* That’s one quarter Imperial jeans³.