San Francisco is My Home

05
Nov

Mexican food, dead bagels and Wes Anderson

Author: kris, Category: Food, Seen, Shopping

I went to West Portal last night because sometimes I get such a  hankering for it. West Portal is a cute little neighborhood in the city that reminds me of Walnut Creek in the East Bay. Walnut Creek, while it maintains its suburban vibe, also has non-strip-mall shopping and independent bookstores and some decent non-chain restaurants, or at least non-fast-food-chain. West Portal, with its two-story buildings and in-bed-before-10 family vibe, likewise gives me a pleasant Walnut Creek feeling.

My fella and I visit now and then to eat at El Toreador, which is my favorite Mexican restaurant that’s not actually in the Mission. The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in bright-painted toys and figurines, and everything is painted in blues and reds and pinks and greens and you feel like you’ve walked into a big, cheesy Mexican rainbow. The food is not as stellar as the decor but they do have a lot of good beers, which my fella appreciates.

On our way from the MUNI stop to the restaurant (about two blocks), we passed Noah’s Bagels, now closed for the night. The four trashcans outside were overflowing, and I glanced at one and noticed a huge garbage bag full of nothing but bagels.

I am sure that, like me, you’re remembering The Little Princess right now, specifically the scene where saintly Sara Crewe gives her bun to a girl starving even worse than herself, and as a result the bakery winds up giving bread to all starving kids at the end of every day.

In a city full of homeless, I wonder what restaurants’ policies are on leftovers. It seems like it would be good to hand it out the door to whoever was waiting there at the end of the day. Although maybe the employees at this branch know that people will be along to dumpster dive and so this metric ton of bagels is not actually going to waste. Still, it seems more human to actually hand it to someone rather than throwing it in the trash for them to find.

But then, who am I to talk? Did I reach into the trash and haul out the bag and bring it to the homeless folks in my neighborhood? I did not. Did I instead go see the new Wes Anderson movie at the West Portal cinema that is so tiny after the mega-theaters downtown that it seems like one of the figurines glued to the ceiling at El Toreador? Yes, yes I did.