"Bacon?!"

A family of four was seated next to us. The little girl was probably 10, and her brother was about 5. The boy was very antsy and everyone else in his family was obviously already irritated with him.

"Pancakes!" he whined. "I want pancakes!"

"No, honey, we told you, they don't have pancakes here," said Mom. The four of them got their menus as the little boy continued to mumble about pancakes.

He flipped through the heavy menu and stared blankly at a page. Then suddenly, he looked up, desperately. "Bacon?? Do they have bacon here?!?!"

Finally big sister piped up. "This is a Cuban restaurant, not a breakfast restaurant! They don't have those kinds of things here!" The little boy sunk his forehead down onto the edge of the table, where it remained for about six minutes.

As Ben and I were not in the mood for pancakes, we greatly enjoyed our Cuban dinners at Cafe Bolero. I had a great chicken dish with potatoes, plantains, rice and beans in a mild, slightly tomatoey sauce, with the signature Havana martini. Ben had steak and onions with a mojito. I realized I had never tasted non-shitty rum. It's pretty good. We had a good meal and then went to see Babel. It was nice to have a little date, and exciting to go to a restaurant where we were going to spend more than six dollars each. Babel is a good movie, well done, interesting, but spirals out into a big depressing mess and then kind of ends. Still worth seeing though.

Before we ended up at Cafe Bolero we had tried to go to La Bonita Ixcapuzalco. It was a very big Mexican restaurant. When we drove up, we thought it was closed, because it was very dark inside and we couldn't see any diners, just an occasional person's shadow walking through the room. We went in anyway, to check it out. The hostess was there, wearing her winter coat with a big furry hood, and assured us that they were open, and that the lights were set at an intensional level of darkness. She lead us through the big, totally empty restaurant, and then sat us at a table directly next to the only other people there, who had also just come in. We heard their conversation about how they had just turned on the heat and it would be warming up soon. Ben shook his head at me and we walked out. It was very weird. The restaurant had moved from a previous, popular location into this bigger place, had changed ownership, and did not seem to be doing too well. I didn't feel bad about walking out, because we didn't want to eat in a totally empty, cold, dark restaurant. But I did feel bad that the restaurant is not going to succeed. We were there on Friday night at 7:00 and it was completely dead. It was beautiful inside, and looked like it should have been a great restaurant by the decor, place settings, art, etc. There were just no people inside. Or heat.

OR pancakes.