Tampico!
Tampico! Tampico!
Mahadevan_ramesh@hotmail.com
1975 Mexican restaurant magnate Marno McDermott and investor and ex-Green Bay Packer football star, Max McGee, opened the first Chi-Chi’s restaurant in Minneapolis, Minn. Over the next several decades, the restaurant chain grows in size and stature.
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About an eternity ago, I
was studying in the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Unlike most desi
students, I was among a handful that chose to
live in the dorms and eat in the Commons. (For those of you who reckon things
in Queen's English, the 'Commons' is American for 'Mess'). The food was not
exactly gourmet, obviously, but it met our loose student standards of
plentiful-ness and junkiness. The tragedy of the situation was that dinner
services closed at 6.30 itself and come ten in the night, we would get those
monstrous hunger pangs, threatening to implode our stomach walls.
Like primitive predators,
we would prowl along the hallways, stand paralyzed near vending machines
without proper change and finally, gather similarly afflicted people and head
straight towards possible sources of food – just about anything on the food
chain with the possible exception of nascent nitrogen. Any sane person would
probably hit the local McDonald’s or grab a bag of chips at the nearest
convenient store. But as students, we suffered from a chronic shortage of
money, no matter which phase of the economic cycle prevailed. We had to be
fiscally clever. And that’s when somebody snooped around and discovered that
various watering holes around the campus have been on a promotional campaign, offering
free munchies if we bought their cheap alcohol.. It took our graduate students
brains just five seconds to figure that campus bars are the ideal solution to
whet all our collective appetites – with junk food and drinks. With the minimal
opening of the wallet too.
If you had ever been to
the Ohio State University campus, you will know that the campus is spang in the
middle of a forest of bars and pubs. And this process of choosing an ideal bar
for our nocturnal pursuits was not easy. There were happy hours and happy
hours. Impromptu promos. Unreliable word of the mouth endorsements. One wrong
move, you would pay five bucks for a lousy beer and get a mere five morsels of
non-biodegradable popcorn. Sometimes we had to scour the entire stretch of High
Street to discover that el cheapo bar du jour.
. .
It was in these desperate
times that I had my first brush with the Chi-Chi’s haute couture .
One day, someone packed
some six of us in his huge Chevy and drove to the nearest Chi-Chi’s. The car
ride took an awful long time and we almost had to reach the left armpit of the
city.
At first glance, the Chi-Chi’s
restaurant was stunning. Even though we confined our presence to only the bar
area, it wasn't like anything I had been in before. It was very modern compared
to the Mohenjadaro-esque campus salons. When we kept our elbows on the table,
they didn't get stuck to the table. The waiters and bartenders were patrician
in their manners, unlike the boorish campus area waiters who were grumpily
moonlighting to eke out that minimum wage. The atmosphere was so festive it was
like a mega party was going on, to which we somehow managed to finagle an
invitation. We felt very self conscious and half-expected someone to discover that
we didn’t belong in there and throw us out.
The drinks were pricey,
of course. So, we had to nurse one single margarita for hours and hours and put
on our best faces when the waiter came back for the thirteenth time asking us
if we needed our next drink. There was food, food and more free food in the
bar, which was why we were there in the first place. All kinds of dips, salsas
and cheesy goo to go with a seemingly bottomless basket of chips.
On one of our subsequent
trips, we found out that on certain days of the week, until the Cinderella
hour, they sold their margaritas for a mere 99 cents, (Still a substantial sum,
given our abject poverty) which made it all affordable. We soon had our second
margarita, and then a third, in the same night. We even experimented with all
sorts of margaritas - strawberry, gold and blue - you name it - margaritas on
the rock, with crushed ice, with salt, and margaritas made out of god's own
manna.
We would wistfully look
at the restaurant section of the house, watching all those well-dressed gentry
being hustled to their table by a goddess-like usher, almost like
kindergartners being led by their teacher. Not that we could not have afforded
an occasional Chi-Chi’s meal. But it was
just that our restaurant dollars were reserved for stuffing our faces in the
Indian buffet restaurants.
One day, just some day, I
too will get to eat in a Chi-Chi’s, I
resolved.
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That 'some day' came very
soon, right after I moved to Pittsburgh.
Me and a bunch of ‘Fresh
off the Boat’ desis were hanging around
the Parkway Center Mall, when we noticed a Chi-Chi’s restaurant situated at the
perimeter of the Mall, almost like an afterthought. On an impulse, we made a
beeline for it, although none of the other guys had ever been inside a
Chi-Chi’s before, obviously. A minor financial note here - Carnegie Mellon
University paid their Graduate students better than the Ohio State those days
and so, money wasn't a major hassle.
"Oh, you will like
it." I hyped it. "I have never been to the restaurant section myself.
Been only to the bar."
We opened the massive
fortress-like doors. Inside, the atmosphere was just as cheerful and festive as
in its Columbus counterpart. A bevy of hostesses wearing low, low, low-cut
blouses confronted us and seductively asked us if we could spend the rest of
our lives with them, er, I mean said their usual "Welcome to Chi-Chi’s."
My friends were suitably
impressed by the place, by our reception. This was one of those experiences
they would not wait to tell their long distance friends about.
'This way, please.' the
shepherd among the waitress gang, led us into the restaurant, hiding her
spacious bosom behind a thick stack of Menu booklets. Suddenly a whole new
world came into existence in front of us. There were elegant tables,
chandeliers, pretty looking things hanging on the walls for no reason, fake
plants, sizzle of fajitas, genteel,
unimposing conversation noise all around etc. etc. Is this how it was supposed
to look? I savored every bit of what I saw. It was a major Rite of Passage for all
of us - from the ignoble days of coupon clipping at the campus McDonalds and
the shameless binge eating at the desi restaurants.
I had finally arrived - to act like a gentleman and eat like a gastronome.
Once we sat down, my
friends first opted for that Official Desi
Drink - Water Without Ice, for they were still nervous. I put my foot down and
made it a margarita for everyone. We then cracked open the menu and studied it
like a research paper.
"Have you all
decided what you want?" the angel appeared after five minutes and asked
us.
"Yes, I will go for
a Tampico."
"I too will go for
it. I am a vegetarian. and this is the only veggie dish they have."
"Make it three,
please."
"Copy cats! I was
going to go for it first. I will have a Tampico too." - Me.
"So, lets see, all
of you want Tampico, is that right?"
the surprised waitress asked, just to make sure.
Pitchers of margaritas
were imbibed. Tampicos came and got
devoured. Great conversation occurred. It was a consummate dining experience
and finally I got to enjoy it. At the
end, we even left a generous tip and Manohar Rao, being the mathematics whiz
kid, quickly figured in his head how much each of us owed. Once the bill was
settled, we staggered out of the place in a state of supreme bliss.
Burrrrrrrp!!!!
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We desis in the Carnegie Mellon area, Pittsburgh, existed
those days like one big monolith. A virtual joint family. Every desi did exactly what every other desi did. We all patronized Salim’s pita bread, had the same design on our Corelle plates and shaved
off our sorry mustaches the same eventful week in spring. – and we began to
flock to Chi-Chi’s like there was no tomorrow..
Chi-Chi’s was where
Anurag ‘treated’ us for his summer internship and brought a closure to the
whole issue. This was where Abhishek Bacchan (not his real name) first noticed
how cute Aishwarya Rai (again, not the real name) looked and proceeded to
romance her and marry her eventually. This was where Arti Gupta’s brother who
came from out of town met with R. S. Srinivas’s friend, who had also come from
out of town and discovered that their respective (desi) advisers were blood brothers.
What would start out as a
romantic evening by a desi couple would
evolve into a major social event, with the Squirrel Hill gang deciding to show
up as well. We broke all kinds of records for the number of people in our party.
When the waitress (who would be dressed like a bridesmaid in a society wedding)
took our orders, we would go ‘tampico, tampico’ like a jury handing out its verdict. We consumed so
many tampicos like they were going out
of fashion. And finally, at the end of each
session, Manohar Rao would use his abacus brains to crunch the numbers to the
second decimal point and settled accounts then and there..
Oh, yes, someone even
gave our party’s name as ‘Janata’ just
to hear the ‘Janata Party, your table
for ten is ready’ go up on the Public Address system
One day, someone
discovered that the Chi-Chi’s performed a near-tribal ritual on your birthday –
with a bunch of waiters and waitresses clapping their hands and singing an
off-Spanish birthday ditty, embarrassing the hell out of even the most
thick-skinned, hard-assed desi student.
There was even a free, albeit cheap, cake to boot. And since most new students
had just bought their first expensive cameras, this was an ideal occasion to break
them in, Soon everybody’s calendar was recalibrated to include everyone else’s
birthdays.
Such fun!!! Those were
the days, my friend. Each of our lives was weaved together with everyone
else's, like a large multi-colored quilt. The desi Golden age in Pittsburgh!!!!
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Like
a lot of things in life, even Chi-Chi’s got to be a bit stale with the passing
of time. There were newer, snazzier restaurants cropping up all around us. In
fact, Satish Dharmaraj discovered an ‘authentic’ Mexican restaurant, about two
tunnels and five Burroughs away, where they made you wait for two hours for a
table, as if that was a hallmark of authenticity. Just as Chi-Chi’s was
beginning to fade away entirely from the Pittsburgh desi radar screen, an unusual turn of events gave it a
second wind.
That
turn of events had to do with our old, clunkers of a car that many of us had
bought the previous summer in one major buying spree, They all had to undergo a
draconian State Vehicle Inspection for them to be registered for another year
and our cars were flunking the inspection left and right, Either we forked out
hundreds of dollars and got our cars fixed or forever kept them off the road.
Which was when the desi ingenuity took
the center stage and Lalit discovered an unsung car mechanic – a Greek immigrant called Guz – operating out
of a dirty, concealed garage on a hillside, He had a seemingly infinite inventory of junkyard parts.
Once he stuck the right metal thing in, it would breathe new life into our cars
and make them pass the State Inspection. And what’s more, he was far and out
cheaper than Midas and Muffler King.
The
only problem with Guz was that his garage was in such a godforsaken place that
only Lalit knew how to get there. This was the pre-cell phone days, folks and
all our desi heuristics did not help us.
Fortunately, the nearest major landmark was of course, the Chi-Chi’s – which
every one of us could navigate to with our eyes closed. Our logistics became
very simple - carloads of desis drive
their beat up cars, converge on the Chi-Chi’s and after lunch, go in a convoy behind
Lalit to Guz’s garage.
My
final Chi-Chi’s visit was actually a farewell party to me and Manohar Rao,
organized by the rest of the gang. For one last time, we ordered our margarita
on the rocks and for one last time we filled the atmosphere with the Gregorian
Chants of ‘tampico, tampico, tampico’.
And for one last time, Manohar Rao figured out the per-capita dollar damage and
helped with real-time settling of accounts, although both he and I were excused
from payment, since it was our sendoff ‘treat’.
I
then moved to the Denver area. Even though I made good faith effort, I could
not find a Chi-Chi’s in and around Denver, I was told that they did not operate
there. Slowly and slowly, Chi-Chi’s began to evaporate out of my system..
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2003. “Over
four hundred people were infected with Hepatitis A virus in the Pittsburgh area
and three died of it, after eating in the Chi-Chi’s Mexican restaurant” -
Oh, my god!!! The news
item shocked me to no end. Unbelievable!!! Heck, it could have been us desis!!! How many zillion times have we eaten there!!! I
began to wallow in a huge dose of nostalgia. My thoughts drifted aimlessly from
episode to episode of my Pittsburgh days, from one Pittsburgh friend to another.
All the good times, some bad times and a lot of time-pass times. On an impulse,
I reached for the phone and dialed up one of the guys, who had since moved back
to India. We hadn’t spoken in over five years now. Not even email exchanges for
over a year now.
He was surprised out of
his wits to get my phone call. After an exuberant exchange of initial
pleasantries, I told him about the Chi-Chi’s news and he 'Aw shuck'-ed the loss of lives.
.
"It wasn't our Chi-Chi’s"
I informed him. "I believe this one is in the northern suburbs of
Pittsburgh"
We moved away from
Chi-Chi’s and kept rambling on. Suddenly we realized that our conversation
wasn’t going anywhere. There was a hint of embarrassment, unease and sheer
boredom. What the hell was happening?
We made a detour and started
talking about our common friends.
“Wonder what Manohar must
be doing now.”
“Haven’t heard from him
in a while. He must be calculating the Federal Budget Deficit for the fiscal
year 2002 in his mind.”
There was a labored laugh
at the other end. The more we kept talking, the more we felt strange. It wasn’t
like old times. What in the world was going on? We came back to Chi-Chi’s.
“We must have been the
largest consumers of tampico.”
He agreed meekly. We
perfunctorily discussed each other’s jobs, almost hoping that the other person
would say a bye and hang up. There was a pregnant pause, which was threatening
to become terminal. Can this be the same
guy with whom I used to have long
conversations till the wee hours of the morning?.
It was then time to play
the end game - meandering from silly topic to silly topic and losing our grip
on the conversation completely. He tried to pump up the enthusiasm level by
asking a few anthropological questions about desis and India Association in Denver.
Finally we came back to
Chi-Chi’s.
“How could something in
the stratosphere of fine eating go through such a mess?” he asked
philosophically.
Again there was a
suspenseful pause. Can this be the same person who shared my life in
Pittsburgh?.
“When you come to India,
be sure to visit me” he implored me.
Then we said our byes and
hung up, just like that. I felt a huge sense of disappointment, I am sure he
too was not too thrilled to have gone through an interruptive, semi-meaningless
phone call. We both hurriedly retreated into our respective bubbles - populated
by our today's friends, today's family and today's worries. Once upon a time we
remembered and celebrated each other's birthdays. Now we don't even phone each
other to announce births, deaths and marriages. I knew - and I am sure he too
knew - that we wouldn't call each other up for another five years - at least.
The phone call was such an anti-climax.
My thinking about my
Pittsburgh days became more and more cloudy. I couldn't even begin to guess how
many zigzags my life had taken since those days. Nostalgia is good for the soul
and the heart, But heck, we have moved on. I will live another week and at the
end of it, I will have forgotten the Chi-Chi’s entirely.
Tampico, tampico, tampico.
The round robin
pronouncement coming from ten desis
sitting around a table, is still ringing in my ears.
God! It seems like it was
only yesterday. It also seems like it was a million years ago. All I know is a
lot of innocence has been lost between then and now.
2004 Chi-Chi’s shuts all units; Outback buys site rights: Mexican chain, in Chapter 11, retains brand, operations, recipes, trade secrets
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Copyrighted by Mahadevan
Ramesh
Visit www.mahadevanramesh.com