¡Hola! from Mexican heaven in Houston! You walk in and everyone speaks Spanish inside! Nothing but…read moreuna telenovela and fútbol are playing on the television overhead! You get brought out free chips with...beans and cheese? Whoopsie, you don't need to tell it to Toto, but we're not in Mexico anymore! The flags adorning the inside of Baleadas Express span the entirety of Central and even South America, the primary clue that this is "somewhere over the rainbow" south of Mexico. Indeed, the title "baleadas" should suffice as a clue that you have walked into a slice of Honduras, a "Chiquita" country that in many Americans' minds has "gone bananas!" However, Honduran food undoubtedly does not "monkey around," as its bang for the buck can arguably beat any Mexican joint in the area, leaving me shockingly stuffed and fed not just in body, but mind and soul.
I now always walk into a Latin restaurant speaking some degree of Spanish, and as typically, I continued to push unabated through responses in English until the waitress pointed out the menu was also printed in English, and so I waved the white flag of "nada más," reluctantly waving it in front of the tempting array of Honduran banana sodas knowing I would be eating a fairly decently sized dinner in a few hours and also that I was an itinerant between work shifts, having decided to drive out to Hong Kong Market thinking it was not far and that this location had banh mi on Tuesdays - and wrong on both counts. We went back and forth about which baleada I should order, eventually settling on the chicken one at $4.50, and thinking from the teensy as a quinceañera dress price that this was an antojito-sized portion, also a plate of pastelitos, with suggestions to get it done muy rapido so I could return to work on time.
But in three regards, I found I got far more than I bargained for, as chips with cheese-topped refried beans came as an appetizer, nearly as smooth as a chocolate mousse and richer than any Mexican brand (and she even offered a refill). Then when the baleada came out, voluminous as Selena Gomez's wardrobe and stuffed even more efficiently than your one permitted carry-on suitcase, I realized I was going to have to make like a competitive eater and bite into this mutant Frisbee of beans, chicken, and cheese. It is like the most enormous breakfast taco ever conceived of, and could serve as a full breakfast at that all by itself, the outside's crispness giving way to smoothly textured beans (again) with lightly spiced chicken a true masterwork of the not-so-bastard taco family. Then out came two glistening deep-fried pastelitos, in their Honduran edition basically like empanadas filled with squash and beef picadillo. While the crisp, reddish purple tomato cabbage slaw underpinning the turnovers, lacking the sourness of curtido but tasting fresher and more like a salad, ended up running onto the plate to soggify their bottom edges, the dough was just thick enough to keep the shape sturdy, the meat moist and the squash melting away into a fatty but comforting interior, steam billowing outward like a train engine as each bite is taken but never quite turning my tongue into a flaming candlewick. They are potentially better than the Argentine empanadas I sampled long ago, and most empanadas on menus here for that matter.
As I remarked to the waitress serving me with unflappable smiles and kind-hearted care, such food is perfect for taking my mind off the world outside, itself at that moment turning into a telenovela plotline. And appropriately, once I bumped into the limits of her English comprehension, I switched the conversation into Spanish for several minutes so she could freely give me all the womanly advice she had on her mind. A "gracias" and many promises of prayers and gestures of encouragement and goodwill later, I left this unexpected angel with a huge tip and a promise to return, wishing I could stay longer but feeling the cold, hard call of reality beckon and dreading its loom over my day job.
But somehow feeling like I'd get through it to the other side, as I have ever since.
And showing that quick, chance encounters are sometimes the most precious and meaningful.
