The people who write
menus for New Mexican restaurants are obviously not grammarians because
they consistently forget the "i before e" rule and commit the
grievous sin of spelling New Mexico's favorite cash crop (legal cash
crop, that is) with two "i's" and no "e's." By
insisting that "i" follows "i" and spelling it
"chili," they immediately insult traditionalists and bring to
question the authenticity of their product.
If it is truly
"chili" as Texans would spell it, there are many native New
Mexicans who wouldn't even eat it, but if it's "chile" as it
has been prepared for centuries, it should be spelled correctly.
This unpaid, non-political diatribe was brought to you by one of those
natives who has found that with few exceptions, restaurants on whose
menus "chile" is spelled with two "i's" just don't
prepare it quite as well. Tio Oscar's is such a restaurant.
Launched in late May,
2005, it is owned by Oscar Calderon whose family coat of arms festoons
every page on the menu. Prominent on that coat of arms are five
cauldrons (the English translation of Calderon). Legally blind,
Oscar pursued his dream of cooking at his own restaurant through the
help and training of the New Mexico Commission for the Blind. The
menus are printed both in Braille and in a large font for people with
visual impairments (my own impairment being the inability to get past
the spelling "chili" at a New Mexican restaurant).
That menu includes many
New Mexican favorites and every meal begins with salsa and chips.
The salsa is nearly as piquant as the salsa served at neighboring
Sadie's with eye-watering jalapeņos and cilantro in two-part
harmony.
Alas, the
"chili" on the stuffed sopaipillas barely registered on the
Scoville scale. Sopaipillas can be stuffed with beans, beef or
chicken and an order comes with two in any combination. The carne
adovada, which Kim ordered without chili, was somewhat overdone and
greasy. Each entree is accompanied by your choice of two of the
following: refried beans, calavasitas (the menu's spelling, not mine)
and papitas. The papitas were cubed potatoes almost as crispy as
tater tots. The calavasitas and refried beans were very good as
were the sopaipillas.
A dessert offering
called a biscochitos sundae was very much reminiscent of fried ice cream
desserts you'll find at many Anglosized Mexican restaurants. A buņelo
(fried bread) was topped with ice cream, whipped cream, caramel and pine
nuts. The buņelo was so tough that I bent my spoon trying to cut
through it (rather than risk using an obscure Dennis Miller type
reference to Uri Gellar, that's all I'll say about the bent spoon).
Tio Oscar's wait staff was friendly and attentive. New Mexican
music provided by KANW piped through the speakers. If only Tio
Oscar served chile.
