Fad food

I will never forget the first time I visited Mexico. Everything was a revelation: the people, the culture, and above all, the cuisine. Mexican food in Mexico was like nothing I had tasted before, from the tamale I bought from a vendor while waiting at a bus stop to the stewed pork and rice I ate in the family kitchen of a 'restaurant' in the village where I was working. Authentic Mexican cuisine absolutely trumps the stuff that is passed off as Mexican food outside of Mexico. So...it was with absolute anticipation that I set off from work on Friday with plans to join Nathan, my sis and brother in law for dinner at Mamasita in the city. Everyone, it seems, has been raving about this place...including Mexicans. But alas...dinner at Mamasita never eventuated. It seems that the rest of Melbourne (in its typical faddish way) has also discovered the delights of authentic Mexican...and Mamasita in particular. Even at 5.30pm, the place was absolutely packed and there was a 2.5 hour wait for a table (I love real mexican but i don't love it that much). And it's not like we didn't try to book a table beforehand but the place is so popular that they have a very strict reservation policy (reservations for groups of 8-10 only and even then, the conditions are stricter than Australia's mandatory detention policy). Alas, authentic Mexican will have to wait another night.