Iguana

Got a postcard of the Red Iguana with our gift certificate from D's parents. It's actually pretty nice for a restaurant card. But I keep thinking of the postcards of The Alamo, that make it look like it's in the middle of a Texas desert. And it is crowded into a narrow street with buildings right up against both sides. The Red Iguana is in a rough part of town, with its parking lot separating it from a Wonder Bread depot, the other side is an old, cheap motel with a truly Roadside America worthy sculpture garden in concrete. It's right down the road from the plasma center, where the poor can sell their bodily fluid for cash. Across the six lanes of traffic, a shabby Frontier Pies hunkers.

The whole neighborhood, such as it is, will soon change into a construction zone as the train tracks are laid out to the airport. Possibly it will improve. Possibly it will simply be a sterile, national-chain-warehouse-store ridden, stretch of nothing much. But the Red Iguana has opened a second restaurant, not far from the current location, but out of harms way. Obviously well thought out, well executed, not a copy but keeping much of the same tone, and all of the same food. With room to develop the catering they've not been able to at the old kitchens. A wonder to behold, people being very smart, planning ahead, making good, long term decisions.

I know much of this because I was unabashedly eavesdropping as the "husband of the owner" (as he described himself) chatted with friends sitting at the counter of the RI2 next to us.

One feature of the new venue, the Union Pacific tracks run right in front, and I got to watch trains as we ate the best empanadas anywhere.