I could eat Americanized Mexican food for most meals without ever tiring of it. It has so many things that I love: gooey, salty melted cheese, creamy beans & spanish rice, generous amounts of onions, avocado, and carbs in both chewy & crunchy forms. Sure, the often greasy and rich Mexican-inspired cuisine in the U.S., like Chinese, is far removed from its original form (chimichangas, for example, are a purely American dish), and yes, there’s the curious fact that most anything you order in many Mexican restaurants appears to be the exact same combination of ingredients. It doesn’t matter. I adore it, and therefore spent two meals over the past three days happily noshing on chips and salsa.

At Centrico: chips with mole, tomatillo and jalapeno sauces; pineapple salsa, spicy guacamole and red onion & mango salsa.

At Mary Ann’s: the Santa Fe burrito with grilled sirloin, pinto beans, lettuce, salsa , guacamole and melted Jack cheese.

It’s my grandpa’s birthday weekend, so most of my family was in New York to celebrate, which mostly meant a whole lot of celebratory eating (we also went to see The Book of Mormon, which lived up to its reviews). Friday night was dinner at Rosa Mexicano (the 1st Ave location), which despite being derided for having turned into a high-end chain restaurant with very strong margaritas is, I think, still reliable for quality and atmosphere. They were doing a whole lot of press for their upcoming Mexican Passover menu, which was kind of curious. I had short ribs with mole on my step-grandmother’s recommendation: they were tender and flavorful and shared pretty much in half between my boyfriend and my mom. I had quite a bit of his chicken tortilla pie, which was floating in some verdantly green poblano cream sauce (it was very cheesy and very weird-looking: definitely what I’d recommend ordering for the under-thirteen crowd).

My mom valiantly ordered a salad, and ended up eating it for breakfast the next morning after polishing off an entire short rib for dinner. Also, I’m just this moment remembering that we’d been set on trying the sweet potato fries and completely forgot to order them (it’s true, the margaritas here are very strong).

Shared dessert was a sort of strange caramelized banana chocolate chip cake. It wasn’t really up my alley, but I ate most of it anyway. 

I woke up on Saturday morning still uncomfortable full from dinner, which meant figuring out a way to get through day two of celebrations while doing a little bit of detox. That goal was made infinitely easier by lunch at Quintessence in the East Village with my mom and our friend Stacy, where we had some miso vegetable stew with hijiki and burdock root and a raw vegan caesar salad to share. Quintessence was a raw food restaurant until quite recently, when they integrated some organic cooked vegan options into their menu as a response to the popularized idea among raw foodists that introducing small and nutritious amounts of cooked vegan or even animal-based foods into a mostly raw diet can result in benefits that outweigh the risks. 

Saturday night was birthday cake & presents.

The obligatory Harry & David. I’m shocked that my family hasn’t singlehandedly kept them from going bankrupt. 

We went to Frankie & Johnnie’s before the show, where I completely couldn’t bro up and order an enormous steak. I had oysters instead, since they’re pretty much my latest obsession and have a very detox-friendly nutritional profile: very low-calorie and low-fat, they have large amounts of protein, vitamins and minerals including zinc, magnesium and calcium. Of course, I took home plenty of steak and chocolate cake leftovers to eat for breakfast today.