Morons Talking Loudly

As a friend from out of town noted the other day after a simple lunch at Gingergrass in Silverlake, “We’ve spent hundreds of dollars dining out at expensive restaurants in LA, all of them mediocre.  The best food here is in the cheaper places.”  Which is very true.  One of the best-kept Mexi Cali open secrets in this town is the unpretentious La Esquinita on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park.  It is not only embarrassingly cheap—to the point where you feel like you should maybe offer them a bit more for the delicious bounty they have served you—everything is made absolutely fresh right after you order it.  Regrettably, this includes the fat-bitch chips and salsa.

I say ‘regrettably’ not just because the chips are served in true Mexican style, or warm and coated with oil, accompanied by a choice of several homemade salsas, but because they make a very loud noise when you bite into them, at least twice the loudness of ordinary bagged chips from a store.  And this only added percussion to the braying of a moron seated at the center table of the small restaurant one lunchtime last week.