The Peripatetic.

This is the Ceasar Salad from the only known Mexican restaurant in Pasto, Colombia.  A family friend of Mario’s, my generous and beautiful host was not quite sure what to do with it. She had traveled to the U.S. to visit her sister; she’d been to cities I’d never seen.  She commented that North Americans do not eat proper lunches, as in Colombia, where lunch is unequivocally the meal of the day.  She didn’t understand how people could eat so much in the evening.  And, for all her travels and as worldly as she was, she did not understand how people ate salad.  Literally.  We talked about how to put the leaves on a fork and eat them.

It was a big contrast to Bogota, where one of the most frequented restaurant chains, Crepes & Waffles, has a variety of salads to offer.  Lunch on a good day means a line well outside of Crepes, though I think most come for the crepes.

It reminded me of my host family in Bangalore, India almost five years ago.  My American roommate and I decided to cook for our host mother and family, a strong Kerela woman who helped feed the neighborhood.  They hated the salad.  ”Pass, um, the leaves, please…” her daugther-in-law grimaced at the sight of them.  Uncooked vegetables?  Really?  Who eats that?  Few in Bangalore and few in Pasto.

And who in Colombia eats Mexican food?  Few and far between.  (“Latino,” may be a generic term in the U.S., but anyone familiar with Tex-Mex, or Mexican at all, knows the difference.)