Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

CHAPULINES, MOLE, AND FOUR POZOLES

158 Oaxaca,฀Mexico,฀1996 On a blisteringly hot afternoon in Oaxaca, my friend Nancy and I stroll north from the Zocalo in search of a restaurant called Las Quince Letras. The guidebook warns that Las Quince Letras is easy to miss: we’re to look for a plain purple entryway and a sign saying “restaurante.” We fail to spot it on the first pass, peering foolishly at rows of unmarked doorways for the address, Abasolo 300. The street is deserted, soundless. We feel disoriented. Behind the ubiquitous closed shutters, are local residents eating their comida in silence? Or, having finished the midday meal, are they grabbing a siesta before the second half of a long working day? Although we have been in Mexico for almost two weeks and feel no jet lag, our clocks still don’t run on local time. It’s shortly after 3:00 p.m. when el restaurante snaps into view. “Gracias a dios,” I catch myself thinking, a phrase I never use in English, but one that falls naturally from my lips in Spanish. The proprietor of Las Quince Letras greets us with polite restraint. But when I ask quickly si podemos comer, hoping that it is not too late, he flashes a smile and waves us in. We follow him through a cool, darkened room into a plant-filled courtyard where lunch will be served—to us, and to us alone. Although Las Quince Letras has been touted as “an outstanding small restaurant ,” more than just another comida is riding on this visit. I have come for the house specialty, botana oaxaqueña—an array of twelve appetizers, including raw vegetables, chorizos, chicarrones (fried pork skin), tacos, guacamole, quesadilla, and my nervous passion, chapulines. Chapulines, fried grasshoppers, are distinctly Oaxacan. At daybreak during the summer months, the small bugs are harvested in cornfields with fine nets, killed in a bath of scalding water, fried in lard, seasoned, and carried to market. They are sold from straw baskets on the main streets of the city by dozens of women and girls, who nibble as they walk, hand to basket to mouth. The bright red, crunchy snack—to be munched like peanuts or pepitas, pumpkin seeds—is seasoned with garlic, chili powder, and lime juice. Chapulines are nippy and, for Oaxacans, addictive. CHAPULINES,฀MOLE,฀AND฀฀ FOUR฀POZOLES฀ CHAPULINES, MOLE, AND FOUR POZOLES 159 On my first trip to Oaxaca, in 1966, the mere mention of chapulines unsettled my stomach. Tasting them was out of the question. I feel differently now, more attuned to the vagaries of human consumption and more avid for oddball edibles. My stomach is different too: educated, over the past three decades, in New York’s ethnic eateries and in exotic venues from Rio to Cairo and Kyoto to Kathmandu, to appreciate strong tastes and weird textures. I’ve also learned, on trips like this, to cushion my digestive system with a morning cocktail of Pepto-Bismol and to keep a stash of Gelusil in my Sportsac along with Band-Aids, bug spray, and sunblock. In the cool of the courtyard, Nancy and I wolf down warm tortillas and guzzle Coronas. When the botanos are spread out before us, I fixate on the dish of bright red chapulines catching the afternoon light. They glow. Our table, with its red, blue, and green striped cloth, gaily painted crockery, and yellow zinnias, also glows. The owner, Señor Alberto, stands by, alert to our needs. His wife, Susana, the cook, grins encouragingly at us from the doorway of the kitchen. Three preteen children sprawl on the floor near her, drawing contentedly. My tourist anxieties fall away. This tranquil domestic setting offers more protection to two gringas than a squadron of police: protection from beggars and sellers of trinkets and lottery tickets, from the din of traffic and dirt on the streets, from an overactive imagination of disease. I turn off the movie in my head of female vendors fondling chapulines with their well-licked fingers and reach for “our” chapulines. I sprinkle a few on a bit of A GLOBAL APPETITE 160 tortilla slavered with guacamole and take a cautious bite. The bland tortilla, the smooth-cool guacamole, the wake-up call of citrus and spice, and the airy crunch of chapulines make music in my mouth—not Mozart or hard rock but jazz riffs, full of...