Tonight, I was enjoying some music as you can see here and relaxing to a day off having to do any work for my other websites.
The last two nights were “day offs.”
Finally, tonight is the night that I can relax, right?
Well, this will be the only article I write tonight because the next 5 hours are just going to be relaxing after a whole month of working everyday on different projects.
And, as I was listening to music, I figured it was time to get some food.
Upon leaving my apartment, I head for the place nearby (and the only place that I have noticed) that sells boneless.
Oddly enough, I haven’t found anyone else in my neighborhood that sells boneless so this one place I know is basically the only place I can get it at unless I order with Uber Eats.
A few days ago on Monday, I stopped by the same spot and this woman working there told me that they’d have boneless by today (Wednesday).
Fake news?
Well, as I walked over at around 10 PM, I stopped by and waited a minute for the owner (a young man who could pass for his early 30s) came out from the back room to greet me.
And, unfortunately, there was no boneless.
Bamboozled once again!
And, to be honest, I was contemplating the possibility that they wouldn’t have boneless as I walked over.
Given they are the only place that serves boneless, I have to go to them.
And, over my nearly 2 months here now, I’ve gone there enough times literally to know that I got a 1 in 3 shot at showing up at the right time where they actually got boneless.
But, for obvious reasons, if I want better luck, visiting on the weekend works better.
Still, as I walked over contemplating that they might bamboozle me once again, I did think about what else I could say.
And, knowing that they got beef nachos, I figured that could serve as an alright alternative.
“Y los nachos?” I asked him.
The dude picked up some small box and told me that was the portion size they came in but that, unfortunately, they only have them “on Fridays and Saturdays.”
God fucking damn it.
Then I look at the menu again.
“OK, what else could I eat?”
And he points out that they only have two items on the menu – salchipapa and fries.
Not even wings.
And, at least in my experience, their salchipapa isn’t that good but it is one thing I like about this neighborhood – it’s damn easy to find salchipapa compared to other parts of Mexico City.
At any rate, I didn’t feel like eating salchipapa that day and confirmed with him again on when they’ll have boneless.
“Tomorrow. Without question” he told me.
“Alright, thanks. Be back tomorrow then” I told him before handing back the menu and walking down the street.
It was that moment, looking towards the direction of both sides of the road, that I contemplated what I want to eat.
And, truth be told, this isn’t the only time I’ve been I this situation.
I have stood at that exact corner down the road from that place serving boneless after being told “no boneless” several times now during the night and thinking “OK, where do I go for food? What else sounds good?”
On a rare few of those occasions, I’ve even arrived to other places afterwards to buy something – like gorditas one time – only to be told “we don’t got anymore gorditas tonight, joven.”
As I wrote in a previous article, there’s a cute chick who sells gorditas about 10 feet away from my apartment and she normally has them but has failed me a few times.
And, funny enough, I have been failed by here also immediately after being failed by the Boneless Man.
It’s almost comical.
Go from one place to the next and to be told time and time again that “sorry, we don’t have xyc on the menu.”
And, as I said, that happens in other countries like the US too!
I worked in food service before (Subway, Jimmy Johns, a pizza buffet place for college students, etc).
Not unusual for a restaurant to run out of a specific item once in a while.
However, in Latin America, it just seemingly happens much more than what you are accustomed to.
When I lived in the US, I can’t even remember the last time that I was told that an item was not available from the menu.
Has it happened? Maybe.
Though I have told other customers – maybe 2 times in my life – that the food is gone.
The most notable example when I worked at this pizza buffet place and was asked for “Peanut Butter Jelly Pizza” and told the dude that it’s out.
Now, to be fair, “Peanut Butter Jelly Pizza” sounds gross but it’s actually tasty. I’ve tried it.
Extremely fucking messy and you’ll need a hundred napkins but tasty nonetheless.
And the dude looked at me as if I called his mom a whore.
“What? No Peanut Butter Jelly Pizza??!?”
Which, to be fair, was the only pizza we were "out of." We were never actually out of it. The cook simply didn't want to make it most of the time because it was supposedly a pain in the ass to make.
Outside of that and one time telling a customer that we got not chicken left, I can’t remember, as of right now, other moments where we ran out of food unless it was literally right before we closed.
And the chicken example was literally when we were about to close.
Like Subway running out of a certain type of bread near closing.
So, as I said, it happens in the US also!
But, in my entire time in the US as a customer, I can’t remember it happening to me as of right now and I can only remember a few times as an employee telling others we don’t have something specific.
And that is over 20 years.
Either way, there might be other moments like those above from the US that have slipped my mind but it's been so long since I worked in food service up there.
In contrast, while living in Mexico and having spent time in other Latin American countries, I can count numerous times where random items on the menu aren’t available.
Now, to be fair, it’s not a big deal.
Like with the Boneless Man – I’ll just come back later to check up another time to see if they have it yet and eat somewhere else.
It’s an inconvenience to be sure and even more so when, as with his case tonight, literally 90% of the menu was not available.
And while the issue is more common in poorer areas, I’ve had it happen many times over in touristy parts of town also.
In the moment, I did ask him out of curiosity “how come no nachos?”
And the answer was normal – they get more customers on the weekend and so they prefer having nachos ready when there’s more demand.
Which makes sense.
Either way, it’s not necessarily a judgement against Latin America but just a point to mention for folks thinking of a life in Latin America.
I don’t want to overemphasize how common this issue is because, truth be told, it’s not a daily occurrence or even close to that.
Only that, in contrast to where you might be from, you might notice a lot more times where items on the menu (or even more than half of the menu in numerous moments) is completely unavailable.
Either way, as I stood at the corner in the night after walking away from the Boneless restaurant, I contemplated my options tonight.
And opted for a chicken and ham sandwich.
Tomorrow I will have some bonless.
Ojala.
Anyway, that’s all there is to say for the moment.
Drop any comments below.
And follow my Twitter here.
Thanks for reading.
Best regards,
Matt
PS: I just remembered that I wrote about this topic before with other examples where I have encountered this issue. If you want to read more examples of this happening, check out this article I wrote here.
Update: In the days after I wrote this article, the boneless place continued to not have boneless even though they often said that "they'll have it the next day." One week later and they messaged me "we got it" as you can see here. Though, to my luck, I didn't want boneless that specific day and they told me that they didn't have it the day after. Life in Latin America.
