Dinner Mexicano at the SoCal Corral

I am screaming.

Those around me are screaming.

One of my table companions has just stopped screaming- I know this because his lips are no longer moving- and I am attempting to scream back.

I scream ‘till I am hoarse but it’s of no avail as no one can hear me and no one ever will, not here anyway. The “acoustics” in this cave-like rotunda that opens onto to the street are non-existent; it’s just a long space with some tables nearer the sidewalk and others way back in the heart of darkness or should I say el corazon oscuro at this “SoCal” eatery that specializes in something called “Mexican Fusion” even though all the dishes have beans and guacamole and look like tacos and are hot. So there are no acoustics, just silent screams amid the deafening din and collective roar of a hungry crowd.

The place, a bit like a patch of the rodeo, sort of rumbles and can best be described as “all the rage” since both the patrons and servers seem to be in various states of fury. After several minutes of mouthing screams and engaging in other futile pantomimes our waiter finally appears, suddenly and rather startlingly, contentiously aiming a small flashlight at one of the menus, the very one in fact which I am holding every which way in an attempt to decipher the words in the near pitch blackness but with little success; however this almost too sharp beam of LED illumination does not do much to clarify a list of arcane ingredients and dishes which I am having exceptional difficulty in comprehending. The truth is I have never heard of most of these concoctions and suspect that the reason is they do not actually exist, nor have they ever existed prior to the fashioning of this complicated list of “authentic” fare that really is comprised of old dishes with new names. This is of no matter though, as the guy makes it painfully clear that if I do not decide within the next three and a half seconds he simply will move on to a nearby table of screamers and we may never see him again and certainly not until hell freezes over. He seems anxious, petulant and on the verge of bolting, so in a moment of induced hysteria I point frantically to something under the category of “salad” that has the world “tomato” next to it along with some other letters that I cannot make out.

When my plate eventually arrives abut a forty-five minutes later it seems that everything on it is chopped into miniscule pieces and piled up perilously high into a kind of pyramid of diced shards; ironically I am not able to discern anything that resembles tomato. When I tentatively stick my fork into the side of this small, fragile mountain of hotness and tension, the whole thing shudders and shakes somewhat violently and then comes tumbling down like the bric-a-brac off a shelf during a small California earthquake.

I make a small meal of little chunks of bread that taste suspiciously like A & P and hunt for a door frame under which to stand while the others finish their meal. . . .