We drove through Bakersfield on the way back from the Sierras last night, and stopped to have dinner with a friend. We went to the Noriega hotel, which serves Basque dinner at 7pm sharp every night. The hotel is in a rundown part of town, next to the train tracks, which reminds me a little bit of the area around Iggy's (my favorite late night joint, on Milwaukee) in Chicago.
Promptly at 7, we were herded into an old dining room set with three long, 50-person tables. She declared "two on one side, one on the other", and seated us right up against the people who'd arrived just before us. Apparently seating people without leaving gaps is a big deal, because someone who arrived after us and wanted to move had to whisper conspiratorially with our friend until they converged on an exit strategy.
The table had already been set with soup (chopped angel hair, hot salsa, and beans, in separate big bowls each, so you could ladle as much of each ingredient as you like), pickled tongue, boiled beets, and potato salad. I had a dry red house wine that went really well. Then out came the cottage cheese, then the first course, beef stew. French fries and baked chicken followed. Then there was amazing bleu cheese, and I had flan -- which I called creme caramele, for which I got a huh? Dinner was $20 a head.
I loved the dingy ambiance, the seating Gestapo, the family style arrangement, and most of all the old Basque gauchos who showed up a little after us to sit down and eat their home-style meal. It was all made even better by the fact that I had no idea at all what I was getting into when I walked in the door.
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