Take a close look at this photograph:
It represents a slice of heaven and, fittingly, is the inaugural "My Favorite Meal".
Before El Buen Gusto existed, before I'd ever eaten Super Cuca's, before breakfast burritos at The Cantina and dirty burritos at Tio Albertos, I fell in love with chilaquiles at The Rose Cafe, my favorite rendition of chilaquiles that I've had to this day. I don't want to spend too much time explaining how good it is, because I'd much rather that everyone who reads this heads down to the Rose on Haley, saddle up to the counter and order it up right now.
It was a little odd tonight because everyone out surfing with me after work followed me to The Rose Café on Haley. That’s right, they all came. All none of them. While 658 guys fought for scraps at perfect Rincon, I surfed 2 hours of chest to overhead waves at a clean peeling beachbreak less than two miles down the road with no one else in the water (actually, that’s a lie, there was ONE other guy for a while).
So of course afterwards I was hungry and picked up Deb when she got off work. As often happens, we ended up at The Rose. Now The Rose Café is like the Rincon of Santa Barbara Mexican food. It is truly world class, except that unlike Rincon, tonight there wasn’t anybody at all relishing in her glory. We sat down, ordered, got our food in about ten minutes, paid and tipped ‘em good for the slow night, then headed home. Meanwhile over at The Sojourner Café, which is world class at absolutely nothing , there was a wait to get a table. Are you kidding me? What the fuck is wrong with people? But hey, I’m not complaining.
But shabby surf metaphors aside, I had the Red Chile, which is pork cooked ranchero style. I don’t often get this, and yet again, I wonder why. It was off the charts tasty. Deb had an enchilada/relleno combo, equally as good.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll trade. Everyone who was at Rincon can go to where I was surfing, and I’ll have my way at head high Rincon alone. Then I’ll hit the Soj and they can swamp The Rose.
