Friday, May 9, 2008

What The Hell Was That Mexican Restaurant On South Central Called?

I'm attempting  (elsewhere) to write about that amazing Mexican restaurant on South Central Avenue,  just after you went down and through and  up out of the underpass downtown – or hey, la otra vez  if you lived in South Phoenix — where  Wiley and Sharon and I always used to go eat at on Fridays, on paydays.  (Dude, we were broke, and probably we bought David's dinner too. ) It's long since been torn down —   it's Phoenix, after all —  ripped up, stomped on and scattered to the winds of what's left of downtown and the desert, but I'll be damned if I can remember the name, although I can still remember the sopa albondigas con arroz and the machaca and the chile verde.   And those exotic Bohemia beers.   (Dan?   Got any ideas?)  (It definitely wasn't the Mantiki. . . nor Woody's Macayo, (or even Woody's Quien Sabe, or Woody's El Nido), or the Roach, La Cucaracha, on Seventh Street and Indian School, or the TeePee Taproom, or Los Compadres or El Tango on Northern and 19th, (which I later learned was owned by my pal Ted Tang's family, of Tang's Grocery, hence El Tango.....) or Jordan's or Filiberto's.  Or even the Ladmo Drive-In on Bethany, where I bet you could probably have gotten fried burritos or something before they threw in the towel.  (Or the tie-painted t-shirt, in this case.) 

Wait..... wait.... I think, maybe.... I think it was La PiƱata....?  I think.  Maybe.  I think.  Maybe.  Maybe.  Or maybe El Molino.  Something like that, anyway