Mexico, anyone?

I started my life in Chicago during an eight week internship two years ago. My first weekend in Chicago some friends and I were searching for a Mexican restaurant. We lived in the south loop (where there is nothing, besides a roof top restaurant and a Bar Louie). So we started walking, looking for the some lunch. After about 10 minutes we were starving and couldn’t find anything but a few expensive chain restaurants (we had gone out the night before and were in despite need for some greasy food and a diet coke, or twelve). We stop a couple walking down the street and ask them if they knew of any great Mexican restaurants in the area. They look at each other, and the slightest smirk came over the man’s face (we wouldn’t realize why until much later). He turns to us and says "no Mexican restaurants here but get on the pink line and take it to a 18th. You'll find a great Mexican restaurant there". Naïve little interns, we hop right on the pink line like we were Chicago natives and not temporary implants.

As we rode the pink line west more people exited the train. I remember turning to one of my friends and saying, “I don’t think this is right… we are really far out from the city”, and we were. By the time we got to the stop, the city was a skyline and we were very much in Mexico. The stop was painted like Cancun, Spanish, everywhere. In fact, you couldn’t find English anywhere. We tried stopping a few people on the street asking for a good restaurant, they didn’t speak English… We stepped off the train and into a third world country (or so it felt like)!

No one spoke English, there were no usual Chicago stores (7 Eleven, McDonalds, Corner Bakery) Just a few local stores and a street fair/ parade. We walked around for what felt like forever, looking for somewhere we could sit down and have lunch. Looking back, we were probably in a pretty bad area of Chicago, in fact, I know we were. It was pretty sketchy, and we couldn’t even find a restaurant that was open and looked clean enough to serve food. We finally chose somewhere to eat at, and as were eating I almost spit out my soda in mid air, we didn’t even look if the restaurant took credit card! That’s all we had. Thankfully, they took VISA… and no one got sick after our lunch. We hurried back to the train and headed towards the city.

That next Monday I told my boss that we went that West on the pink line to a Mexican Restaurant and her eyes bugged out at me.. “YOU went WHERE!?” She asked. She immediately called her fiancé and said, “You’ll never believe where Kate went this weekend, all the way…”, this confirmed the smirk on that man’s face, he sent us into trouble, and we, ate pretty decent Mexican food.