Travels with The Rayman

“On Tuesday or Thursday, why don’t we go out for Mexican food?”, our good friends asked.  Digressing, the picture below is of Al and Charlie and Beau and the Rayman.

“Great.  We know just the place.  A restaurant  is behind the grocery store.  Plastic chairs, that kind of place.  But the food?  Muy bueno.”, I replied.

“What’s the name of the place?, they quizzed.

“We aren’t sure. But is in Phoenix (a name of a town north of Ashland).  And it’s not too far from the RV place we stayed one night in Medford on our way to be snowed in at the Corvallis Fairgrounds RV “resort”.”

“Okay.”

Anyway, we decided to meet up with Al and Charlie at 5 p.m. and go for a beer at local brewery and then off to Phoenix to eat at La Tapitia.  Incidentally, the young women that served us our beer gave La Tapitia high marks.  I must also inject that Elizabeth, an Ashlandian, loved the restaurant too.

At or about 5:00 p.m. we were off.  Al drove us with some assistance from Charlie to the brewery.  Beer was great.  I had one that used the words old bourbon-soaked tanks and chocolate in the same sentence in it’s description.  Yummy.  Higher than usual alcohol level too.  Anyway, we drank our beer over a bowl of chips that I thought were cooked to order only to discover that they ripped open the bag instead.   But we ate them anyway.  We were hungry.

After a beer had been had, we jumped in the truck (no easy jump for people of a certain age), and headed to La Tapitia.  Only Charlie thought the name of the restaurant was El Tapitio.  “No.”, I said.  It’s La Tapitia.  Well, this went on for many miles because Al took the ramp off the freeway that took the weary traveler to hotels without number, gas stations, restaurants etc.  And on the sign that detailed all this information, El Tapito’s name appeared.   “That’s it!”, exclaimed Charlie.  Certainty was in the air.   But I said, “The next off ramp would have been better.  It is much closer to the RV park we stayed in.”.  “Al and Charlie said, “But we saw it on the sign.”

“Okay, Charlie but the restaurant is north of here.  It’s name is La Tapitia.  “Turn right.”, I ordered.

Al turned right.  So down the road we went while continuing our polite discussion of “was it El or La?”  And may I add, it was also lively.  The polite discussion was lively.

Then Al intimated that we didn’t know what we were talking about.  That was useful.  At this point the decibel label jumped up a notch.  We continued to debate.  Yes, the polite and lively discussion took on overtones of a debate.  Things like, “No IT isn’t.” to “Yes IT is.”

Charlie swore she passed by the place when she was out riding her bike and it was located on the right if we had turned left while I assured her that it was on the right turning right.  That would make each restaurant on the other side of the street.

Charlie speculated that the two establishments might be owned by the same people.  I discounted that out of hand.  My position was based on the assumption that no one would do that.  And the debate continued.  So I did what any modern Milly would do.  I Yelped it.  And Yelp reported that 1.  There is a La Tapatia in Phoenix.  2.  There was no listing for an El Tapitio.  And La Tapatia was closed on Tuesday.  OMG.  It’s Tuesday.

Well, this did not dissuade Charlie from not believing there was no El Tapitio.  She soldiered on believing there was an El Tapitio.  So…I suggested we see what restaurant was No. 2 in Yelp.  No. 2 was in Medford and since El Tapitio existed (at least in Charlie’s mind) in Ashland, we would go there.  And she prevailed but not before we drove by La Tapitia to see the “Closed” sign in the window.

When we arrived at El Tapitio (which was on the right side if we’d turned left, we made the decision that we would check it out and leave if we didn’t like it.  But that was after we refused to believe there was an El Tapitio and then there it was.  It did exist.  Charlie was right.

Upon entering, we were ushered to a booth.  The first thing we noticed were the karaoke singers in the middle of the back wall belting out a song to a crowd of about 3 strong.  And as we passed the table with the diners, the food didn’t look good.  But we sat down for about 10 seconds before we raced out the door with the maitre d’ practically following us to the car as he implored us to stay.  It as a hoot.

By this time we are ravenous and hysterically laughing.  We finally figured out that the reason we were lost, not lost, and thinking there was only a La Tapitia when there was also an El Tapitio…well, you just can’t make this stuff up.  And it happened.  And Rayman and I are pretty sure that it is because they were with us.  We specialize in getting lost in, oh, so many ways.   We can’t help ourselves.  And so we all laughed.

So, let’s recap, folks.  We had a beer at the Caldera Brewery.  We left the brewery to go eat at the Mexican restaurant.  The Mexican restaurant was closed.  Charlie was sure La Tapitia was El Tapitio.  I was certain she was wrong.  We located La Tapitia.  It was closed.  We then located El Tapitio and no one wanted to eat there.  So, what did we do?  We drove back to Caldera Brewery where we ordered dinner with wine and ate outside looking eastward.

And we laughed.   Had a great time.  The food was wonderful and we ended up with this funny story.  At least I hope you, the dear reader, think it is.