If I had a tumor, I'd name it Flauta.

Mexican food is hard to find here. Let me rephrase that. Good, nay decent, Mexican food is hard to find here. Southern California is probably the closest thing to taco perfection short of living IN Mexico, and we left it all behind to feel, after every meal, that we've just eaten something that came out of a box. A box it was in for a very, very long time.

My sister and I have been searching for a decent taco since we moved here in August. We've been eating our way through "tortilla" soup that was really more like chicken vegetable. You know, due to the lack of TORTILLAS in it. Or cheese. Or avocado. Or tomato.

We've eaten gross, crumbly tamales with weird sauces, sour cream that tastes like glue, salsa that tastes like tomato paste with cilantro in it, and cardboard chips. They're effing up CHIPS, folks. HOW?

Tonight's dining experience takes the cake, though. How can a flauta taste like nothing? Literally, nothing. We knew there was food in our mouths, because we were chewing, but aside from that, there was no indication. Lucky for us, the flautas came with a side of refried beans. Unlucky for us, the beans tasted nothing like beans. In fact, they were so odd that I couldn't even bring myself to take a second bite to help me decipher why they were odd. I just knew that I didn't want to eat any more of them. My sister described the flavor as "if melanoma had a taste." That's right, kids, we are eating Mexicancer.

To top it off, on the way out we noticed that the Health Department had given the place a rating of "satisfactory." The optimist in me is hoping that there are only two ratings, satisfactory and unsatisfactory, and that our health has not been compromised. The realist in me is thinking that there are probably a few ratings above satisfactory, and nothing below or between satisfactory and condemned. Lord knows what's in those terrifying "beans."

It doesn't help that most of the restaurants in our neck of the woods are BYOB, so we can't even fool ourselves into liking the food by drowning our sorrows in an overly sweetened Margarita with an aftertaste like rotten grapefruit juice and fish sauce. BYOB is the worst thing to happen to me since that bullshit ending of The Sopranos. The only thing better than going out to dinner and not having to wash dishes is going out to dinner, getting drunk, and not having to wash dishes. When I go home to visit, I am hooking myself up with a cancer-free Mexican smorgasbord and a baker's dozen of Margaritas. Ole!