 What's the easiest way to get to Texas?Well, I reckon that depends on your locale at any given moment. Ringo Starr might have said to take a left at Oklahoma but I think it's easier if you look for the big blue stars above the front door just west of Old-Town.
"I'll have the bah-ree-toes," is heard from one table. "A Texas steak and a margarita," comes in a thick Slavic drawl from another. The enthusiasm is high and the blood pressures even higher with each customer's inaugural bite into a bowl of fiery chili. Folks with curious appetites come for a legendary taste and leave with flaming lips and Willie Nelson lyrics in their heads. How did I get to Texas? The boss-lady, Bethany Lindsley, summoned me. A native Texan with the motto, "the secret is to believe," she said that whatever I was doing back in the States could wait and that I needed to get my hind-end across the earth on the double. Combine 30,000 troops in the area, all yearning for a taste of home, with a little pro-American sentiment amongst the natives, and the only logical conclusion was to open a Tex-mex restaurant amongst the rubble and bomb-hollowed buildings. My job? To manage a Bosnian wait-staff, teach them how to act American and sell the heck out of some fajitas. The thing we wanted to accomplish from the outset -- besides the suspension of disbelief -- was the creation of authentic, lip-perspiring, satisfying Tex-Mex food, presented in a festive atmosphere with prompt, yet courteous, service. This was a tall order for a place where residents are only now, after six years, beginning to realize what it is to live in structures with four walls and plumbing. Not only was fun not exactly a priority then, but ingredients and basic restaurant equipment were practically non-existent. Still, we managed to get Texas off the ground, and a few unconventional, yet absolutely necessary, practices continue to keep us afloat. Amongst the most evident oddities is that we employ shoppers, two inventive fellas who work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, scouting the city for ingredients that might possibly "Tex-ify" the food. They are briefed daily on the needs of the moment and then sent on their way to scour the local markets. Bold experimentation is the most important element here, and from this unflappable daring Bosnians have learned to create Tex-Mex food to rival any made back in the States. |  |
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