El exito (And yes; I am aware that this is Spanish)

My bed smells like cigarette smoke and stale beer. This is the result of the end of my evening on Wednesday night... Scratch that, Thursday morning. It all began Wednesday with the coming of our Tex-Mex party at cafe il Poggo. I burned two cds with all the Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff I could find to achieve the correct ambiance, and I went to work on the final prep for the feast. I was serving four courses including dessert plus margaritas, buckets of corona (they had never heard of this concept before) and tequila shooters. One little fact about working here is that Lorenza never knows how many people will actually be coming to events because apparently Italians do not care to make reservations or arrive in a timely manner. So what I am getting at is, that I have to be ready for anywhere from 20-40 people arriving whenever they feel like it and oh, they will probably eat for 60 people.

Menu

1st course- Selection of salsa, guacamole three ways and chile con queso in the style of Felix Restaurant in Houston.
2nd course- Quesadilla of beans and queso fresco
3rd course- Tacos de carnitas with traditional condiments
Dessert- Cheese cake (I know this is not Mexican but my host really wanted me to do it)

I ended up having everything ready with my avacados ripening just enough at the very last minute. We even made fresh tortillas right up until we served our second course. Everything went fairly smoothly and they sure did eat for more bodies than were present. We sold out of Corona (around 60 bottles), one bottle of tequila to a really rowdy group, countless glasses of prosecco, champagne, brunello, margaritas and shooters. And that is where things began to get a little fuzzy.

I met many of the large groups thanking them for coming and they bought me tequilla shots at the bar all night. Now, I like a cocktail but five shots of tequilla in a matter of thirty minutes is ridiculous. Somehow I managed to keep up with these Mexican/Italians and they had been drinking all night! To make matters worse (or better), I could not refuse a drink because most of these people were good friends of Lorenza and regulars of the cafe or restaurant. I like to think I was also helping out the business by selling alcohol. I was trapped in a precarious yet satisfying situation to say the least.

After drinking with the locals until about 12:30, or maybe it was 1:00am, they all convinced me to go to their house for spaghetti (these people just finished eating a four course meal only two hours earlier). I walked with them to one of the couple's homes, playing awful music on a severely out of tune guitar a man brought along with his sombrero. We arrived and all sat around a large kitchen table with two bottles of wine. They talked and I attempted to. We sat up for what must have been hours laughing, them smoking cigarettes (which by the way is an Italian birthright) and drinking wine. We ate a meal of course, fatty home made salami and wheat bread, followed by spaghetti boiled and then cooked with garlic and oil. This was perhaps one of the best meals of my life. It was so simple yet sublime. I have literally never experienced anything like that in my life and it was a perfect ending to the night.

I woke up the next morning with a headache and my sheets smelling to high heavens. All I can say is good thing the housekeeper was washing my sheets on Thursday.