Yo quiero un burrito

I have found heaven in Shanghai and it is called New York City Deli. After scouring the internet for the best Mexican restaurant in Shanghai, the search ended with most every website agreeing that this was the place for burritos. Due to who knows why, they only sell the salsa lovin' food from Friday afternoon through Sunday night, so its weekends only for this delicious lunch treat. Fortunately they deliver free to our office...

Last weekend was the first experiment and the reaction was both simple and universal (even among those who didn't order but simply gazed upon greatness)... "Woah my gosh!! Real Burritos in Shanghai?!?!!!" These beauties were the size of a Nalgene bottle, filled with all the trimmings: sour cream, salsa, rice, beans and delectable carnitas. Perhaps it's because I'm on the soy saucy side of the world, perhaps because I've inhaled too much pollution, but I wanna say that this was more satisfying (and most definitely bigger) than my beloved Anna's.

This discovery may seem unimportant to most readers, sitting only a short drive away from delicious fajitas, tacos and quesedillas, but to someone eating fried noodles and boiled pork the past 9 months the taste of authentic Americanized Mexican food is worth writing home about. I've found I can find nearly any important style of food here - Italian, French, American, Indian, Thai, Chinese (go figure) - in Shanghai except Mexican, so rectifying that unsightly fact is a major cour in our culinary playbook. We repeated this tradition this Saturday, and again it induced an office of once lively, hardworking people into sitting around staring blankly at YouTube in the clutches of an unrelenting food coma.

On a side note, the more Mandarin I learn, not that I'm learning much, the more I forget the Spanish I spent 7 years learning in school. I was never very good, pretty much all I could ever muster was how much I love eating ham (jamon!), but the fact that it is disappearing is sad. With so many of my fellow teachers from the UK and Australia, plus the heavy emphasis on learning Chinese, there is nobody here to speak Spanish with, let alone anyone who understand the quick slang phrases which have permeated English. When I get home, I can only hope it hasn't all left me. Que Lastimo!