If you find yourself in Old San Juan and you follow the right
cobblestone street, down the proper narrow alleyways, past the correct
two-story, Spanish-style, a-touch-too-bright-but-not-quite-gaudy orange
apartment building you will see a park. It is unassuming in the purest sense.
Literally, it assumes nothing. It can’t because assumptions are a luxury only
afforded to sentient beings and this park is simply a diminutive but well
apportioned arrangement of trees and benches with a gazebo and some ivy thrown
in for good measure.
Upon entering this park one passes a small population of
slightly cheeky but otherwise apathetic lizards. These graceless reptiles, one
may assume, are likely the last vestiges of a once considerable community of
scaled rodents which, one may further assume, by-and-large abandoned this area
of San Juan right around the time the Spanish claimed the island and gave it
the name “Puerto Rico” in place of “Boriquén,” which was preferred by the
indigenous pagans from whom the Spanish graciously relieved the burdens of
life, liberty, and property. Perhaps the lizards feared the efficiency and
disinterest with which the Spanish exterminated the other native species, or
perhaps they simply took umbrage with the
a-touch-too-bright-but-not-quite-gaudy colors with which the Spaniards
decorated but, irrespective of their entirely hypothetical histories and
motivations, the fact remains that there are not many lizards left in the area
but there are lizards in this park and they are slightly cheeky but otherwise
apathetic.
Beyond the small population of slightly cheeky but otherwise
apathetic lizards lies an even smaller population of wrought iron,
nouveau-style benches cleverly arranged such that any occupant of any bench
could have a view unencumbered by the undoubtedly displeasing form of any other
occupant regardless of his counterpart’s selection of bench. With this
unencumbered view one can, if he so chooses, look directly into the front
window of a small restaurant as proportionately unassuming as the park from
which it is viewed. This restaurant is called El Jibarito (approximately, “The
Little Hillbilly”) and not long ago, my family members were seated inside
discussing their preferences among the subset of the menu they found least
adventurous.
Our trip to Puerto Rico began less than twenty-four hours
prior and already we had amassed several small disappointments. “Small” in the
sense that two hotel rooms are smaller than three and three beds are smaller
than six and a slice of pizza stolen from a discarded pizza box in a hotel
hallway is smaller than a whole dinner. Notwithstanding the fits and starts
with which our vacation began, it had begun to recover its footing thanks in
large part due to our present excursion to Old San Juan.
The outing began adventurously enough with our party
exploring ancient nooks and crannies of the beautiful cobblestone streets and
narrow, timeworn alleyways but the First Law of Thermodynamics mathematically
limited our group to a finite amount of bravado and our reserves were running
low. Needless to say, the food at El Jibarito had not been deemed worthy of our
rapidly diminishing tolerance for excitement, a fact that precipitated the
current impasse between my family and the irredeemably un-American menu.
As an enlightened member of the cult of authenticity I found
this behavior objectively repulsive—though I must admit that this objectively
contradicts the definition of the word, objective. My own flesh-and-blood
acting as modern-day culinary conquistadors, indiscriminately slaying native
delicacies and appointing in their place all that is inoffensive and
Americanized. Extinct will be the pork tripe stew, “Mondongo.” The octopus
salad will be nothing more than a historical footnote along with all of the
other nasty crap that I would never again have the privilege of self-righteously
pretending to like.
I elected to pursue my favored recourse of sanctimonious
badgering and immediately began searching my phone’s thesaurus for synonyms of
“ignorant.” Fortunately for me, I was interrupted by the return of our waiter.
He bore with him some of the most emblematic beverages of the Puerto Rican
culture: a bottle of Coca-Cola with a straw and a pocillo de café. In Puerto
Rico, Coke is still made with cane sugar and served in glass bottles and the
result is something so tyrannically bewitching and addictive that it earns
every bit of the narco-origins of its name. It is drunk through a straw, I must
assume, because otherwise it would present a choking hazard as people would be
driven to finish the entire bottle in one swallow. I would, similarly, drink an
entire pocillo in one gulp if it were not strong, hot coffee that would bring
great discomfort to the back of my throat upon commencing my attempt.
The calm, efficient, and even cheerful manner with which our
waiter carried my mother and brother their respective Coca-Colas and my father
his coffee alarmed me. The man had just witnessed the entire culinary history
of his culture dismissed in favor of quesadillas, French fries, and chicken
strips but made no sign of agitation and smiled as eagerly as ever. Perhaps he
was simply used to Americans ordering American food or perhaps his disaffection
had taken over long ago and he could no longer bother to care about the orders
he received or the food he delivered. More likely, however, the waiter
maintained his cheerful mood because he knew what I would only later realize:
that no outsider can ever do much more than taste another culture. That a sip
of a Puerto Rican coffee is about as much of Puerto Rico’s cuisine as I am
going to be able to comprehend. That the true nuance of other cultures will
remain secrets to be passed openly from generation to generation right before
the eyes of outsiders but in an indecipherable language.
Sure, anyone can appreciate the how inimitably savory lechón
is, but the assumption that I can gather a cultural understanding of Puerto
Rican cuisine by ordering it once at a restaurant insults the experience of
being raised eating that dish at birthdays and festivals and holidays. Does
everyone who eats a hamburger at an “American” restaurant understand the honor
I felt the first time my father allowed me to flip a burger on his grill all by
myself? And what if they thought that they did? Would it not make me laugh a
little on the inside as the waiter surely must have laughed at me?
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