I want to be honest about the state we arrived in, because it’s the whole reason this entry exists.
It was 10:15 on a Tuesday morning. My four-year-old had been up since 5:30, had already decided that his shoes were wrong, and had cried about it for most of the drive. The baby had a diaper situation I could smell from the front seat. I had exactly one plan, which was food, and I had no backup plan at all.
We came in through the side door with the stroller, which is a squeeze, and a woman working the register — Marisol, it turned out, the one whose name is on the sign — looked at us for about two seconds and said, “Corner booth, it’s quieter back there. Give me the little one’s order first.”
I want to sit with that for a second, because it’s such a small thing and it completely changed my morning. She didn’t ask how many. She didn’t hand me menus. She read the situation and solved the two problems I actually had: a kid who needed to not be looked at, and a kid who needed food faster than the adults.
The changing table situation
Both restrooms. Both of them. I checked the men’s room too because my husband does about half the diaper changes and I’ve stopped assuming.
They’re the fold-down plastic kind, they were clean, and there was a stack of paper liners actually within reach instead of mounted on a wall three feet away. Somebody who has changed a diaper made that decision.
The food, briefly
The ropa vieja was excellent — genuinely the best I’ve had anywhere — and came out in nine minutes, which I know because I was watching the clock the way you do when a countdown is running. The kids’ menu is six dollars and it’s not an afterthought: my son got a small plate of the same roast pork the adults get, plus rice, plus a bit of fruit, and he ate all of it, which almost never happens.
The croquetas are worth ordering even if you’re not hungry. I don’t have a better argument for that. Just get them.
What I’d tell a friend
Go before 11:30. After that the lunch crowd fills the middle of the dining room and getting a stroller through it stops being reasonable. There’s no outdoor seating, so on a beautiful day this isn’t the pick. It’s loud, which I’m counting firmly as a plus — nobody in that room noticed or cared that my son was having a hard morning.
I asked Marisol on the way out how long they’d been open. Eleven years. Her mother started it. She said this like it was an unremarkable fact, and then went back to the register.
That’s the kind of thing I started this blog to write down.