native v. foreign food update

food

And on the subject of local authentic fare, we had the most amazing tortilla chips and salsa last night, and what is more it came free with the Mexican beers. Big huge crunchy slightly warm chips and home-made spicy tomato stuff. You are supposed to scoop up great dollops of salsa with your chips. I dipped the corners of my chips tentatively in the salsa and even then thought I was burning my mouth. Perhaps this will change.

We also played darts. They opened the whole upstairs bar specially for us. "Darts isn't so big anymore," said the landlord. The reason being that they banned smoking in the darts bar. Austin recently passed a law banning smoking in all public places (ie, privately-owned public places) although it has not come into full effect yet. There are a lot of smokers in Austin and the ban on indoor smoking is going to be bad for some people's businesses. If you don't have an outdoor seating area you could lose all your customers to somewhere else that does. There hasn't been a revolution in Ireland yet, which also recently imposed this kind of ban, but the weather there is less good. I imagine smokers would rather sit unsmoking in the warm than spend their evenings shivering outside, even if there is a beer garden.

Personally I prefer sitting outside anyway if possible, unless it's the hottest part of the day in summer. What is the point in being somewhere so sunny and spending all your time indoors? Pizza, coffee and tortilla chips are all better in the open air. They just need to fix up some al fresco dart-boards next.

Fact of the day: cilantro is Spanish for coriander leaves.