New York Winters Make Me Dream of Mexican Food ...

It takes less than four hours to explore Los Angeles’ Olvera Street in its entirety. Most of it has disintegrated into tourist traps and specialty shops: Augusto’s Leather Shop, Catalina’s Imports, Rudy’s Gifts Imports, Ramon’s Imports, Mexican Imports, … you get the idea. Food peddlers sell the most interesting and (probably) most authentic items there. Taco stands fill the street selling bean and cheese burritos as big as your forearm and crunchy taquitos in spicy chile verde.


As you walk up and down the street surrounded by Mexican kitsch, your eyes – and nose – are automatically drawn to La Golondrina café situated about two-thirds of the way to Cesar Chavez Avenue. The patio sheltered by a wooden roof painted deep maroon, wagon wheel borders and Victorian wired chairs whispers to you of bygone times. It looks more like the stylish 19^th century hacienda that it was built as in 1857 than the restaurant it was been converted into during the 1920’s. The second storey goes almost unnoticed from all the bustling activity on the patio, but if you take the trouble to look up you can see the exposed brick at the windows and cream-white walls that complete the building’s romantic appearance. You can almost see, instead of business men in suits and yuppy moms with cell phones glued to their ears, dark-haired women with flowers in their hair wearing colorful layered skirts, and men with black suits and pristine, crisp white shirts with red ties.


Oh, wait, those are the waiters.

You’re drawn still closer by the waves of cheese and spices flowing at you from the kitchen, making the sad-looking $2 burrito from the taco stand across the way look about as exciting as Sunday night’s leftovers. Golondrina’s home-made tortillas, served in black stone dishes with fitted lids to keep them hot, taste earthy and moist. Dipping sauces range from various red salsas (all the locals will tell you – pico de gallo blows other salsas out of the water), salsa verde, guacamole seasoned with cilantro, garlic, onions and tomatoes, and mole. Make Your Own Burritos, or Burritos A Su Gusto, come with your choice of beef, chicken, pork, vegetables, chorizo (Spanish sausage that can be cooked either hot or sweet). Tacos, tostadas, fajitas and enchiladas come with sides of rice and melted cheese over everything, washed down with horchata, a sweet drink that tastes like a cinnamon milkshake.

Everything smells so delicious that you feel as if you could float up into the air from all the scents. As it is, you find that you’ve floated at least to the entrance of La Golondrina without meaning to. And you don’t even know you’ve done it until the host asks you if you’d like to be seated at a table. Then you realize that you’ve been staring at the plates of food on the patio tables, and you’re pretty much bound by everything your parents taught you about polite behavior to accept the offered table. But, you ask, is it possible to get a seat on the patio?