Odd? Yes. Good? well......

Perhaps I shouldn't take the last post too far. Go ahead, read the last post. I'll wait.

I was talking about the part about spurning one's genes in favor of a more self-deterministic outlook on life. There are a few things that I am, and a few things that I am not. One of the things I am not is a social person.

Unfortunately I forgot that today, and when I found out that there was a Indian / Mexican restaurant in Ulaanbaatar I invited a few people out to eat. In retrospect I suppose I knew this was a dumb idea, I've just taken to ignoring my gut instincts in favor of a more interesting life.

Los Bandidos claimed to be an exotic restaurant offering both Indian and Mexican food. A review or two had warned me that it was more expensive than the average UB restaurant, but this was not surprising considering a meal in the average UB restaurant will set you back less than $5. Before my family moved to Asia I had been raised mostly on Mexican food and Adventist style veggie meat, so those are the two things I've been craving. I was willing to pay American prices for some good Mexican food.

Five of us went to the restaurant, crowding into a single taxi which weaved it's way through the crowded streets, toying with death at the chaotic intersections. After a little searching we found the restaurant and walked in.

The first bad sign met me at the door. Next to a small marker board with the specials on it (in English) there was a dish of sugar-coated fennel. The dish of fennel was unapologetically Indian. It wasn't even trying to pretend that it was Mexican.

The feel of the place was not helped by the Indian paintings on the wall, the statues of elephants and gods that stood on every available surface, or the smell which wasn't Mexican at all. It may have been a good Indian restaurant, but it was most assuredly not a Mexican one by any stretch of the imagination.

A second problem came to my attention when we sat down and ordered. I had brought the wrong people along. Mongolians have the least adventurous palate of any people I know. Of course they would probably say the same thing about me, because of the interesting colors I turn when I unexpectedly bite into a mutton-paste stuffed dumpling, but we'll let you be the judges on this one. My friends examined the Mexican menu, discussed it at length, examined the Indian menu, discussed it at length, then decided to order tea and some salads.

One of the problems may have been the price. Reviews had given me the impression that the prices were American (outrageously expensive here), but those reviews were out of date by a few years. The prices were, in fact, high even by American standards. My friends expected me to pay (because I had the last time, when the total bill for the five of us was about $15), and this may have contributed to their assertion that they had "already eaten".

I ordered vegetarian burritos, mostly because they looked like they were the thing on the menu most likely to contain large quantities of refried beans.

As we sat around waiting for the food to arrive I became more and more uncomfortable, mostly because I felt like I should talk to people (since I had invited them all out) but my language skills dictate that I can only comment on what other people say, because I can usually understand but hardly ever construct my own complete sentences. This results in a conversation which is mostly in Mongolian where I make occasional comments in English.

Eventually the food arrived, but we didn't eat because someone had gotten up and gone to the bathroom. If left to our own devices both the Mongolians and myself would have dug right in, but both of us were too busy getting used to the weirdness of it all to do what we would have normally done.

Eventually the person got back, we prayed, and began to eat. My burritos were interesting, rather like the way that the "Mexican" music and the statues of hindu gods were interesting. The burrito was stuffed with mushrooms, kidney beans, cheese, corn, tomatoes in various forms, potato bits, and paneer; a squishy white Indian cheese.

I was disappointed by three things: the fact that there were no pinto beans, the fact that there were kidney beans, and the fact that the burrito contained potatoes and paneer. We'll count the potatoes and paneer as one thing because they are bad for the same reason: they aren't Mexican, they're Indian (at least in the form in which I encountered them).

This, combined with the fact that the things were small, that they didn't come with a side of beans and rice or salsa, and the fact that they cost me eight dollars, had me rather depressed. Then Gerthle found a hair in her kofta, and that pretty much did it. We finished, I paid $25 (which is a lot considering I was the only one who got a full meal) and we left.

I suppose I shouldn't be annoyed. This is Mongolia. The only way to make sure you have supplies for a restaurant like that is to ship them all in yourself. Still, at prices like that you'd think they would be able to do that.

< / griping session >