Hamburguesa

It was late Sunday night. I had just played my first worship service in an old discotech that was being rehabbed into an Iglesia. There was no power because the wiring had not been installed. The keyboard was powered by batteries. The new congregation was very forgiving as I played worship songs that sounded like a large cell-phone tooting unto heaven.

But back to the food. The five of us EstadoUnideans were hungry, and we were tired. We didn't want a large meal so late, so we started scouting for a sandwich shop. We spied the bright "Hamburger Tower" sign promising large cokes, big fries and fast service. It was a cop-out and we all knew it...

The waiter had a gameboy looking thingy strapped to his massive belt. He sat us at a table along a bright red and yellow wall and typed something furiously into his gameboy/order taker keyboard. In the next room was a net full of plastic balls that the Ninos could scrabble about in. Our table was under a vent and the cold air wafted down like love from a dark forrest clearing.

Three of us ordered the "Big Tower Menu" which consisted of a drink, a Hamburguesa, Patatas, and a desert of some sort. We found out that CokeLight does not count as a beverage. It is a special beverage that is too expensive for the Big Tower Menu. So my three companeros got their hamburguesas with water. Roamer ordered a Grand Royal Flauta that turned out to be a huge sandwich (GRAND ROYALE!?!?) I orderded the Bistec Flauta with tomatoes and "earth something or other".

The hamgurguesas were not American. They were a new invention from the old-world. (I dared not tell our new missionary friend Sandy, who gets queasy quite easily that her hamburguesa patty reminded me of ground-up newborn pinkie mice.)

But our flauta sandwiches were on golden crusty bread, moistened on the inside with fresh tomato spread and extra/extra virgin olive oil, just enough to keep the bread nice and soft on the palate. The various grilled steak slivers and bacon/ham meats and cheeses within the flauta were savory and blended well. They were flat-out great tasting! Roamer put this flauta on her top five sandwich list of all time. Mine was dang good food for a hungry hombre. The fries were golden and crunchy with big crystals of kosher-salt. They obviously fried them twice in oil from the other foods, because the flavor was intense and sharp. We ate them with little bitty plastic forks. I had a can of CokeLight, which earned me some frowns from my unhappy agua-sipping buddies. But they were soon distracted with their deserts of tiny hazle-nut ice-cream cups. (Fast food doesn't mean you get it all at once, but in a fast series of waiter visits)

Burger Tower was a popular spot. Before we left at 10pm, all of the seats were full of hungry smokers trying to order some good food very fastly from the gameboy waiter with the utility belt. As we left, the gameboy waiter was facing an air-brushed mural of fries and cokes trying to get a stubborn cork out of a bottle of Red Wine with a well-used corkscrew. Ahhhh..... Burger Tower!