Saturday, December 19, 2009

The First Good News of 2010

Las Brisas is NOT closing 12/31/09! Paula, one of the owners, told us that last night.

To explain, this is our favorite mexican restaurant and we've been going there for nearly 30 years. The menu never changes (cactus soup, winter or summer) and that comforts Richie. When we first started dating (1981) I couldn't get him into a Mexican resto. He'd wrinkle his nose, look doubtful and say, "I don't think the water's safe..." (Not kidding.) Today? He'd eat at Las Brisas once a week if I went along with it.

Both owners and all of the help are related in some fashion or another. We remember Alex, when he was 18 and a busboy. We applauded when he got the scholarship and today he's in computer sciences with a wife and two little kids. Maria cut her waist-length hair and now it's nearly that long again. (Ponytail, don't get excited.) I think of them all as "Cousin."

What most casual diners don't know is that underneath the street-level restaurant is a huge room with a bar, bandstand, booths and entry onto a 50 ft. square patio - complete with a big fountain. The building is set into a hill to explain this layout.

We didn't know about it either until about five years ago when we saw tons of people coming in, opening a door by the kitchen entry and ... disappearing.

The minute I saw the space, I knew I wanted it for our funeral "afters." It was perfect! And then, in September, we were told the building had been sold and the whole shebang was moving to a new location in a shopping market! Bitter tears...

But it isn't going to happen! Our space should be waiting for us 50 years from now. The funniest part of all of this is that the man who was terrified of Mexican food is going to be memorialized in the basement of one! How funny is that?

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