Guacamole

Since I've arrived in Kyiv, I've had a multitude of cultural dishes - Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, and French.  Sadly, no Tex-Mex or anything that could resemble Tex-Mex, until today.  I have been craving Chips and Queso, Tortialla Soup, and Tortillas and have even mentioned it to the team.... if only I had a tortilla at breakfast I could make a breakfast taco.  Today Paul, Shiva, and I had a really late lunch, about 2:00 p.m. and then we worked till about 7:00 p.m., so when Darren sent me a text letting me know they would be gathering at 8:00 for dinner, I wasn't sure I'd go.  But then I thought to myself, I see Paul and Shiva every day, it's not often I get to see "the Kids" so I should go.  We, the Oldies in the group (Paul, Shiva, Cheryl, and I) have affectionately tagged everyone under the age of 35 as "the Kids".  This is the group that went off to Lviv this past weekend and spent nearly 32 hours on the go trying to see and do as much as they could in one day.  I'm just not up for that, neither were any of the other "Oldies".

So off I went with "the Kids" and we went to a place that is almost right next door to the hotel.  I was looking at the menu and trying to decide what to eat when Satish, who like Shiva is vegetarian, asked what something was on the vegetarian menu that he had been given.  He asked, "What's Guacamole?"  My ears pricked up and I asked to see his menu.  On it was an appetizer of guacamole with corn chips, ding ding ding I know what I'm having.  I tried to keep an open mind as to what my dish would look and taste like and I was very pleasantly surprised when it was delivered - it looked beautiful and it tasted lovely.  OK, I needed to add just a little bit of salt but who's complaining.

While we were waiting we exchanged stories from the weekend and I mentioned that I wish the TVs in our room had a movie channel or pay-per-view, I'd be happy to pay for a movie at this point.  I wouldn't even mind a bad movie that was dubbed or sub-titled in English, there is only so much BBC News and CNBC Financial News one can watch - ask me I know.  That's when I found out that Srikanta (India) has a 4 TB external disk drive with movies down in his room.  (For those not in the technology world, it's a really large storage drive).  Srikanta was explaining that he likes to watch movies and he usually watches one to two a day - he goes to bed late apparently.  He offered to let me watch a few and we joked about having a movie night in the hotel.

While Srikanta was telling me about some of his latest movie titles, trying to help me decide on what to watch, we didn't notice that he kept re-arranging Flavia's place mat.  We had crowded seven people around a six person table and Srikanta and Flavia were sharing an end and each had a place mat.  Flavia's was at an angle and without really noticing, Srikanta would turn it straight, and then a few minutes later Flavia would turn it back, and then a few minutes later Srikanta would "fix it again."  Flavia finally called him out on it and we teased him in good fun about his "obsessive compulsive disorder" which he readily admits he has - he likes things to be orderly and in place.  He managed to leave Flavia's place mat alone for the rest of the evening, but it did make for a good laugh.

Our dinners arrived and yes, I took a picture to show you how well the food is presented here, it's quite beautiful, although I would have preferred a larger serving of guacamole and a bowl of chips, and of course, a margarita.  I'll be home soon, and I think my first few meals are going to be Garcia's in Buda and Chuy's over by Costco.

By the way, I think I'm going to start with Lincoln and Argo, now if I can just find some popcorn!