I'm from the school of thought whereby the best ethnic food is found in the kind of neighborhoods where you definitely don't wanna be caught slipping after sunset.
We've never let the vIbRAnCy of any hood stand between us & our cravings for ethnic foods & we both agree that a trek through the hood enhances the flavor of the food or maybe it's just the adrenaline that makes it seem that way.
Richmond is kinda like Oakland except without the pro sports teams that make techies & gender studies professors with koolaid colored hair rage-tweet about the rampant tOxIc mAsCuLiNiTy of manspreading & eye raping of attractive women on public transportation from the comfort of Uber.
Flor De Jalisco had the kind of burritos where you thankfully don't have to stand in line behind goofy street cred thirsty hipster poseurs rocking black frame glasses & " Hella Oaklandish" hoodies ordering black bean & vegan chicharrones on soaked sprouted ancient whole grain tortillas in cringe textbook Spanish
We flew past blocks of little old school churches w/o gay flags, mom & pop liquor stores, catalytic converter replacement & glass replacement shops, a fish fry joint where orders are taken behind bullet proof windows, menudo spots where you could also pay your Trac phone bill & cash your checks, beauty supply stores where you could cop a 30 inch Yaki lace front weave on layaway or an EBT card.
The hood was the same pre-gentrification, where the windows had nary a " Hate has no home here" sign & if you were dumb and/ or desperate enough to eff around & find out if you could break into one of those homes, you'd be lucky to escape without getting a chunk taken out of your behind by a pit bull or a Rottweiler with Steel Reserve & Hot Cheeto breath.
We pulled up across the street & peeped red flag number one. Even though it was 5:00 pm, only one dude was standing in line at Flor De Jalisco but still I rushed my husband to turn off the ignition before we got beat by that weird & well known phenomenon of everyone suddenly manifesting seemingly out of the blue & posting up in line at an otherwise uncrowded joint. After assessing that homeboy in front of us had already ordered, we both asked for our familiar go-to burritos of carne asada from the friendly if unrecognized cashier. I ordered extra carne asada with mine with only a tiny bit of rice to ensure that it was packed with mostly steak & beans because I hadn't eaten a damn thing all day.
We posted up to the side of the coach & I smugly crowed to my husband about how we had beaten the line of the dinner rush, even though no one else pulled up to the spot other than a beautiful exotic little bird who was hopping around looking for crumbs around the empty outside seating area like a tweaker with white spot fever on a grimy carpet in a trap house. That was red flag number 2. Red flag number 3 was me realizing that the super dope little Flor De Jalisco grocery store where I used to cop Tamarindo candy was totally empty & locked up with a rusty chain. Still no one else pulled up to the line behind us but I paid it no mind. As I peeked into the empty storefront of what used to be their bustling little mercado on the same lot, I overheard a tweaker who may have only been in his mid 20s but looked old enough to be Salma Hayek's granddad try to bum my husband for a $1.
I politely asked the other female in the truck for some radishes to garnish my burrito. I want to make it clear that this was not the nice young lady who initially took our order but her coworker who actually prepared our order. Whoever in the hell this female was, she looked at me with a look that could curdle horchata & gave me no response about my requested radishes other than a curt & surly " Red or green sauce". I was so confused by her terse reply that I politely doubled down on my request for extra radishes on the side & she again didn't answer except to slightly raise her voice & repeat " RED OR GREEN SAUCE". I said " red is fine" & my husband paid 29.00 bucks for 2 burritos with nary a " thank you". I asked my husband why she spoke to me as if i dipped her Tampax in ghost pepper salsa! I was high key confused about what triggered this female about my innocuous request for radishes & why she thought she could get away with talking crazy to any customer like that, let alone OGs who had been frequenting that truck probably since her pops was putting her pink Barbie jeep up on cinderblocks!
I would've uploaded a pic of it but I ended up eating the whole thing trying to find the extra steak I ordered! Flor De Jalisco has aged badly into a corpse flower that was no longer worth getting shot by a stray bullet to pay 29 bucks for 2 burritos.
Ain't no way I'm putting up with that crap (no free tortilla chips, either) from some Great Value version of that villainess Soraya Montenegro from the Mexican telenovela " Maria La Del Barrio"! read more