Run For the Border

Last night, Beatrix had rehearsal over near the Institute. I was feeling meh but didn't want to stay home alone, and with the snow traffic was slow enough Patrick didn't necessarily want to come home and then drive back to get her. So we decided to grab dinner out. After multiple circles around the block plus pushing one car out of a snowbank (see earlier mention of traffic/parking), we found a spot and headed over to Little Tijuana.

This is, in my lifetime, at least Little T's 3rd incarnation. When I was younger, it was a late night dive bar, good for food as you drank to hopefully mitigate the next day's hangover (and not known for being too fussy about your ID). Awhile back (8 years or so? Longer?), it re-imagined itself as slightly more upscale, and then I think it closed again (I mean, everything did during the first part of the pandemic...)

I had heard good things about the new incarnation...and apparently so had everyone else in Minneapolis. We soon found ourself in a neon-line wait line, drinking amazing margaritas and staring at the 8 tables in the main dining room to bet when they would be done eating (the tiny bar plus some bar seating escaped our watch in the other room). 

The hipness quotient was HIGH; we were surrounded by first dates — "So what exactly do you do? Oh, mental health, that must be interesting" — and the only people near our age were a pair of parents taking their kid and his date out for dinner and picking up the tab. There was one art-school couple that I named the "I had a tea the other day — You couldn't pay — oh, yeah" in homage to Rent and their table, conspicuously empty except for two half-full glasses.

Luckily, the guy managing the list (a dead ringer for a young Jason Barnett) had traffic management skills that befit a German train station, and we were seated in a bar space relatively quickly, where I could admire my drink and think that maybe just maybe I was not healed enough for a big night out quite yet.

Luckily, the food was reviving — a lightly curried palmini for me, which Dara Moscowitz I believe described perfectly as "sturdy, tender, and rich." Patrick's chopped cheese sandwich was like a little trip to a working class bar on the East Coast, while I spirited away as many of his waffle fries with French onion dip as I could. And the good people-watching continued apace in the bar, which felt a lot like being in someone's basement in a really good party where you know no one.

And much as I maybe wasn't ready to go out, hanging out talking to my handsome husband in a fun setting might have been exactly what I needed. We finished *just* in time to pick up Beatrix at rehearsal — though the "Had a tea" couple were still deep in discussion, the levels of their drinks untouched — so I suppose the trendy quotient ended then, but it was nice while it lasted.