Saturday, I'm up early, doing nothing but G things, baby. Which means only one possible thing: Having a breakfast shot & beer with my meds while doing the laundry and watching gardening shows.
After a while, Kath gets up and brews a K cup and is not all that impressed with the gardening show and says she wants to go to a park. I tell her that sounds good, how about we go to Eagan? They take care of their parks in Eagan. Golden Valley has OK parks. Brooklyn Center has OK parks. Edina parks are fine but feel ignored. Saint Louis Park has never met a park it couldn't turn into a sports facility. But Eagan? Eagan has some damned fine parks. So she looks for Eagan parks and finds Caponi Art Park, a park that's half, uh, park and half museum. So we go there, go wandering on the nature trails, see some cool, uh, plant life but it's all beautifully maintained, then we go to the, uh, art... part and that was really cool and I donated my two $2 bills on the way out because I like the whole vibe there and you should go.
Then we came home and made our way over to the newest installation on Eat Street, Centro, a hipster (Are we still saying "hipster" in twenty twenty two?) Mexican joint that for some reason felt the need to include a mission statement on their website that I didn't bother to read because let's just be honest with ourselves and others:
Nobody cares about a fucking mission statement.
If a restaurant tells me the onions were grown in a backyard hot house less than a mile from this location and delivered by bike as a commitment to sourcing locally and reducing green house emissions from delivery vehicles, does it really actually literally really actually make the onions taste different? No. It doesn't. It has no actual literally real impact on the actual flavor. So I didn't read the mission statement because:
Nobody cares about a fucking mission statement.
Especially under late stage capitalism. I turn a skeptical eye to everything a business does and certainly don't believe a single word a business says. I would hope that every employee from the porters and the dishwashers on up would have full health insurance as good as my government employee ass and maybe they do. Maybe that was in the mission statement. Maybe that and that maybe they pay their employees a living wage, maybe that's in the mission statement I didn't read it, I'll never know. It'd be a good explanation for why the signage at the tables say that you're going to have ten percent automatically added to your bill before tip to cover employee wages AND that this is not a tip. YOU, as opposed to the employer, are still responsible for whether the employee makes their rent this month which, let me see, is how TIPS work.
Or, you know, maybe I wouldn't read anything about any of that in the mission statement because mission statements are usually just word salads anyway and again:
Nobody cares about a fucking mission statement.
HOWEVER, I get why they add a ten percent upcharge to the bill. Your server doesn't take your order. You don't even have a server, it's just whichever person happens to pick up your shit. So nobody takes your order, you have to punch it in on your phone using a QR code on the sign on your table. Your "server" doesn't even bring you water, you get it yourself. Somebody you've seen around the restaurant brings you your drink that you ordered in that app, though. Maybe that same person, maybe somebody else entirely, brings you your food. And then that's it. Nada. Bupkis. Unless you scan the QR code and order a-whole-nother thing, nobody's fucking with your table. Which begs the two-part question: Why would you tip and what would you be tipping for?
I mean, yes, you're including the gratuity for the fact that you asked somebody to make your food for you but - stay with me, now - you don't tip in other countries where you receive more service than this. This is bare bones service and I'm told I'm getting charged an extra ten percent to cover employee wages like it's somebody's - maybe mine, maybe Obama's - fault the employees are, I'm sure, getting paid [sarcasm starts now:] living wages with full health insurance [end sarcasm]. That might be in the mission statement. I wouldn't know because, hey:
Nobody cares about a fucking mission statement.
ANYhoo, I ordered three tacos for four fifty a piece, something like that and Kath got a chicken tinga quesadilla. I also got us an order of yucca fries and a Not-garita for Kath and a Michelada for me. I'd not had a Michelada before so I didn't know it would taste like this:
Except cold.
It was alright, that is my favorite ramen flavor, after all.
My tacos - two tinga and one carnitas en adobo - came out first and I sat there unsure of where Kath's food was for like a minute before I assumed it was coming right up and housed the tacos.
The tinga was good, it's been too long since I've had tinga so there wasn't anything I could measure this against but I'll say it tastes the way I'm familiar with tinga tasting, which is smoky, spicy, and tangy. There's that just right amount of cumin present under the vinegar and chilis. It was topped with cotija and sour cream to balance out the flavor and thinly sliced radish for texture rather than kick. I opted out of the beans because, you know, IBS things.
The carnitas en adobo was dece but the pickled onion and pineapple salsa - that's two things, not a pickled onion and pineapple salsa but pickled onion and then pineapple salsa - were necessary. There was something a little overly salty? earthy? about the meat. I made a lot of pork shoulder over this past winter and I think that might have been a little of the flavor I was picking up. I think the majority of the flavor I was picking up when the onions and pineapple weren't present was the adobo sauce. It wasn't bad but a good meat-sauce combo shouldn't require the add-ons to "fix" or otherwise obscure the shortcomings.
It was something I thought before eating the second tinga taco: Were they trying to cover up the tinga's shortcomings with the dairy elements? Well, "No," I reasoned to myself. That's balance. Balance is different from trying to compensate. Balance is saying these things pair well, compensating is adding bold flavors on top of bold flavors. In the case of the tinga, it was the main attraction on the taco and the dairy was there to support it. But with the carnitas, you have too many elements competing for the front of the flavor profile.
After about six years and seven months of waiting, Kath's quesadilla came out with our yucca fries. She said it was good. She also said she would need a fork and knife because her quesadilla, upon picking it up and taking one bite, proved itself to be a sloppy baby. I didn't grill her with a whole lot of questions because she was hungry and just watched me house three tacos long before her food came out. I passed the time drinking my iced lime chili shrimp ramen broth Michelada.
We finished up and made our way out, me nervous the entire time that we should have bussed our own table but there were staff who were doing that.
On the way home, Kath wondered if Yeah Yeah Taco was pissed that they now had direct competition right next door to them. I said something snarky like, "They wouldn't have to worry about it if their food wasn't so greasy." Even if that isn't verbatim, it's still true that Yeah Yeah Taco is greasy as fuck.
After dinner that night (adobo chicken), we took a walk and passed by the Hennepin History Museum and I asked Kath if she remembered how we went to the pedestrian bridge festival and waited for the one food truck there to get fired up. She said yeah and remembered that we went to Yeah Yeah Taco but we left before placing an order because the wait was so long and I reminded her that we actually got food and we were walking home and saw this influencer standing in front of this old dude's rowhouse, having just yanked some flowers out of his garden and her dumb dick boyfriend sitting flat on his ass in the middle of twenty fifth street to take pictures of her and we're walking by and the old dude comes out his door and yells (and this is verbatim, I will remember this until I die), "Are you kidding me!? You pick my flowers!? How about I come down there and cut your hair!?"
It stopped everybody on the block (like two people on the sidewalk, two or three on their porches) and they all started laughing at this dumb dumb influencer who was dumb.
Because I'll let you in on something: My maternal grandfather, a child of the depression who fought in Korea and came back to be a welder also loved growing flowers and he took me to greenhouses when I was a kid and I met other old men with battleship tattoos on their forearms and they were into flowers. Leathery battle-scarred old men love them some flowers. Don't fuck with their flowers.
But back to Centro. The question remains as to whether I can recommend you give them your money.
Eh...
Look, the food is really good but I can go a few blocks south and go to an actual taqueria and get charged half of what I paid here because, yeah, inflation but still: Three tacos, a quesadilla, a side of yucca fries, a cocktail, and a mocktail shouldn't cost fifty bucks after tip (after the first tip).
Don't get me wrong: Every staff member there was really nice and really cordial, I guess you could say but still... And, hey, hate to say it but in terms of competing with Yeah Yeah Taco next door, they're charging the same prices so I can't even be mister snarkasaurus rex and tell you to go next door. You just pay ten percent less at Yeah Yeah Taco.
So, yes, my food was good. Yes, the staff are nice. But the price tag turns me away. No matter what the mission statement that I didn't read says.
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