From:           	DesertAO7 at aol.com
Date sent:      	Mon, 20 Sep 1999 16:57:15 EDT
Subject:        	breakfast burrito
To:             	johnny at charm.net
Send reply to:  	johnny at charm.net



In a message dated 9/20/99 3:31:24 PM Central Daylight Time, 
ulysses at mindspring.com writes:

<< Ok, I'm seriously jonesing now.  Mr. Breslin, could I get you to run
to,
 say, Tomasita's and describe the meal in excruciating detail?
  >>

Ah- here- I will describe the breakfast burrito I had yesterday at
Horseman's Haven.  Horseman's Haven, for those of you who don't know, is a
tiny little place attached to a Texaco station on Cerrillos south of
Airport, run by the Romero family for the past 18 years.  The walls are
covered with cartoons about cowboys, and news clippings about their son's
many triumphs as a wrestler for Capitol High School.

Anyway, their breakfast burrito, Christmas, is a huge portion of spicy
scrambled eggs, interlaced with crisp bacon, wrapped in a homemade and
fresh flour tortilla.  The burrito is than covered on one side with smoky,
dense and piquant red chile sauce, just the right slightly grainy texture,
and possessing that "autumn air" pinon wood fire aftertaste.  Hacking off
a bit of tortilla, some eggs, and a lagniappe of bacon, rolling it in the
red chile sauce, and taking the morsel into one's mouth is to first
experience the sharp and pungent burn of the sauce, then the mellowing
influence of the egg and tortilla, followed by the salty campfire crunch
of the still hot bacon, and, after swallowing, the initial burn of the red
chile echoing into that smoky autumnal aftertaste.  An entirely different
gustatory experience awaits the fortunate diner just inches away on the
plate- the sublime and lively green chile side.  Having sampled every
version of chile sauce both in Santa Fe and Espanola, I can safely assert
that Horseman's Haven's green is the hottest and the most undeniably
complex.  The green explodes against the tongue at first as if one had
ingested the sheer hot dry sun and pure blue sky of New Mexico- the
immediate sharp burning of the sauce dances there in one's mouth, just on
the edge of not being bearable.  Less smoky and profound, the green chile
still has several different layers of flavor- that startling hot dance,
the undertones of pork drippings and onion and garlic, the sweetness like
a soft shadow to the initial burn.  

Eating one of these breakfast burritos is a truly spiritual experience. 
God (or the absence of all Gods) bless the flour in the tortilla, the
chickens who lay the eggs, the pig who gave its life for the bacon and the
drippings in the sauce, but most of all- all the figments or realities of
the universe bless those red and green chiles, and the Romero family for
their arcane and priestly understanding of what to do with them.

Breslin
Santa Fe
A '85