Restaurant Review: Su Casa

dining notes: (at "Su Casa," 49 E. Ontario, Chicago):

     In Mexico, they smile—as soon as they see another person's face. The waitress did that. To me. She did it as she approached the table, smiling immediately when she saw me. This is touching, isn't it?

     The whole country is friends with itself. 
     Mexico attempts to survive as a culture of empathy, but its world seems to me traumatized, dominated by the culture to the north. That culture to the north is a frenzy of suicidal individualism. 
     There are two different ways of life here. These are of course two different ways of life: individualistic and socialistic. But one dominates the other. One society is dominating the other one. The country of Mexico is traumatized. This is so because the world to the North turns its back on empathy. It will not admit to empathy. This traumatizes Mexico, and Mexico becomes a world traumatized by a world to the north that turns its back on empathy. Or seems to. This is all pretty simple and death stares from the wall in the form of

the wooden statue of a Spanish Conquistador. In fact there are two statues. The face of the second is hidden in shadow. But from the boots, it looks Spanish.


     This restaurant could also be called "57 varieties of weirdness," of which the conquistador statues erupting from the wall are only one example. And that includes some of the people who work there.