The Mysterious Man with the Flan
Our Mexico City Hallmark movie
It was in Mexico City of all places that we found ourselves living the ultimate Hallmark movie diner fantasy. A waitress hands you free pie with a note written on a napkin. The note says you have a sweet smile and to enjoy the pie. Except this is Mexico so it wasn’t a pie it was a flan. And due to your poor Spanish the interaction with the waitress was extremely awkward.
Greetings from Mexico!
Leah and I just spent three lovely weeks in Mexico City.
Our first week was spent navigating our very precarious airbnb stairs (think spiral staircase without a railing) and adjusting to the Mexico City altitude. Believe it or not Mexico City is 7,300 ft. above sea level which is higher than Denver (5,800 ft. above sea level). But after a few days of drinking an ungodly amount of water and being out of breath all the time we adjusted and we were ready to explore. We ate some good tacos, did some free walking tours, and went to a flea market where I bought the following very cool pin for 100 pesos (5$).
Then, at the beginning of Week 2 Val arrived. To celebrate her first night in Mexico City the three of us decided to go for dinner at La Casa de Toño which is a Mexican chain sit down restaurant. They’re all over Mexico City and the best way I can describe La Casa de Toño is as the Walker Brothers Pancake House of Mexican food.
Now like many of our meals the communication with the wait staff was going mediocre at best. We did a lot of pointing and hand gesturing and eventually we were able to order some Chilaquiles, Pozole, and Flautas. In terms of our interactions on the trip thus far I’d give us a 6/10.
After we received our food the waitress returned with 3 flans and began placing them on the table. We immediately went into gesturing mode, trying to communicate that we didn’t order the flan. The waitress, however, was unfazed and continued placing the flan on the table. After some back and forth she explained to us that the flan was a gift (“un regalo”) and handed us the following note.
This translates to
This flan is sweet, but your smile is sweeter. Welcome to Mexico. We hope you like it :)
The waitress then pointed to a nearby table where there were 3 guys and a girl.
The mysterious benefactor of our flan wasn’t a man but a whole ass family.
Now I have to give credit, this is really an A+ note. I have no feedback. The message is very solid, tying together the sweetness of our smile and the flan was the appropriate amount of cheesiness for a note written on a restaurant napkin. Adding the little drawings really personalized it. And having the date in the upper right hand corner really added some professionalism to whole thing plus it let us know that they don’t just mass produce these notes to hand out to unsuspecting tourists.
Also whose smile they were referring to in the note we can’t be too sure but I will mention that we were arranged in such a way that my back was to them.
But they really could have been talking about any one of us with equal probability.
There was also a diagram on the note with an arrow pointing at Leah but again I think we really can’t make any assumptions.
So we gave the other table a smile and ate our free flan.
Then, one of them approached us. He asked in limited english if we wanted to go with them for a beer after dinner. He explained that they were all siblings, 3 brothers and a sister, and they were out celebrating one of their birthdays. After some deliberation, we decided we would go for a beer with our new Mexican friends.
The four members of the family were
Adrian - who was the one who originally came over to talk to us. He was flirty, he liked to dance and he really liked Leah :)
Jenny - who didn’t want to be there. She had clearly been dragged into her brothers’ shenanigans and was annoyed but couldn’t leave because it was Hector’s birthday. She was studying to be a lawyer and was always cold so she had her puffer zipped up to her chin the entire night. 10/10 for relatability.
Hector - it was his birthday! He was very sweet, and worked for an American company so his English was good.
Nacho - who like Jenny did not seem to want to be there. He said almost nothing the whole night until the last 20 minutes when he started showing me his tattoo designs. He was a tattoo designer and he ended up being pretty cool.
Because they were the locals we let them pick the bar which ended up being more like a club and because it was Sunday the bar club we went to was completely empty. But that didn’t stop us from ordering a beer tower to celebrate our new friend Hector’s birthday.
Now the communication situation was not ideal because the music in the bar club was really loud, their english wasn’t that good and our Spanish was even worse. But we were able to ascertain the info that they lived in El Centro Histórico (the neighborhood we were in) and their family owned a taco shop (a bit stereotypical if you ask me).
We spent the night chatting, dancing and drinking beer. They taught us how to put Tajín on the rim of our beer glass and Val discovered her new favorite beer, Indio! They also taught us some Salsa and Cumbia moves which we were very grateful for. Eventually we decided it was time to call it, and they walked us back towards our hostel.
I never envisioned that people actually wrote notes on restaurant napkins. I thought it was something made up in movies or that only existed in the pre-tinder era. But I am very thankful that it happened to me at least once in my life. It was the perfect way to kick off Week 2 in Mexico and to celebrate Val’s arrival and who knows, maybe I’ll end up like a classic Hallmark movie protagonist*, quitting my “high powered job in the big city” to fall in love with a taco shop owner in Mexico.
*That would never happen unless I changed everything about my personality which at this point is unlikely.