Under the Table: Cooking, Eating & Mothering in Mexico

Published September 14, 2023

by Noreen Cáceres

Clicking My Heels

It was about 20 years ago that I started my restaurant career. I walked into a corner building that was for rent, 2 and a half blocks up from San Miguel’s center square, which, at the time, was considered far off the tourist trail. It had been a dark, dirty bar that the proprietors abandoned, leaving behind debts, piles of garbage and a flat-top grill, that I would end up purchasing from the landlord. All the windows had cardboard boxes nailed over them and thick, red curtains covering the boxes. To match was wall to wall, cigarette burned, puke stained, red carpeting. None of the doors that opened onto the 2 small patios closed, so the building smelled of the 6 months that the neighborhood cats had been squatting there leaving behind the heads and tails of mice that had been burrowing in the garbage. Honestly what was I thinking? How could I walk in there and think it was the perfect place to move into with 2 small children and open a business that I had no training or experience in?

I spent at least a couple of months cleaning, painting and furnishing the street level dining space, along with having the plumbing repaired. During that time the kid’s father and I were co-habitating, since the kitchen and bathrooms were not yet functional. I cooked dinner at home, but picked up tortas from the sandwich shop a few doors down for the painter and myself. I moved the kids and I into our new home and spent 1 month in bed with 2 types of typhoid plus a potpourri of bacterias and parasites. Luckily my kids’ aunt, Flor, was there to take care of them while I layed in bed shivering, sweating and running to the bathroom with severe vomiting and diarrhea. Once I was well enough to get out of bed and return to the grind of getting kids to school, I resumed executing the dream of a restaurant that I had been fantasizing about for months. Only in my fantasy it was a family oriented restaurant with games for the kids, and a Donkey named Tito Ele Burrito, basically a Mexican Chuck E. Cheese, since there was nothing like that here. But a project like that would have required an investment much larger than what my mom could provide. So, I downsized on the dream, printed out a short menu, went shopping, prepared the food and opened El Burrito Bistro. I usually had 2 helpers. 1 in the kitchen, 1 to wait tables and myself to do some of both. It was a routine that had me on my feet all day every day.

About 2 years into my venture I began having a sharp pain in my right heel. This was new. I got an xray that showed spikey formations growing out of both of my heels, but for some reason the only one that hurt was the right one. It was painful to take my first steps in the morning and I was limping through my labors. I went to a traumatologist who gave me very painful shots of steroids right into my heel with a really long needle. I went to a naturopath who collected bees in a jar and gave me strategic stings on my foot. The stings swelled and itched and my heel still hurt. I did a past life regression to confront unresolved issues with my feet. One life set me back as a soldier in a war where I/he stepped on a landmine that left me/him without a leg and very bitter. And another as a Native American woman who was tied at the ankles, dragged from the back of a horse by a soldier who took me/her to a shack, raped me/her and slit my/her neck. The regression provided relief for a few days. Then on a 2 week trip to visit my family in the States my mom got me my first pair of MBT sandals. Aaahh, to be able to walk again. And no matter how ugly and expensive, they were the only shoes I wore. After many pain-free years, according to me I was cured. Not like I started buying cowboy boots or pumps, but I could finally purchase comfortable walking sandals and sneakers that didn’t cost $200 dollars like other people.

For over a year now I’ve been doing yoga every morning, I drink plenty of water, I don’t eat junk or processed foods, I sleep better than ever, I take my vitamins, I don’t snort white powders and I only drink alcohol on the weekends. I’d say I’m one of the healthiest, most well-behaved versions of me yet. So you can imagine how shocked I was when I stepped off my bed one morning onto a spike sending pain up my right leg. Only now it wasn’t going away as I warmed up during the day or when I layed down at night. My sleep was disturbed by the aching in the soles of my feet and constant need to flex. I decided I would fix it with yoga, didn’t work. Massage, nope. Then they opened a wellness center in my gated community. There’s a physical therapist that does all kinds of therapies. She started with acupuncture and electromagnetic waves. She found a ball of knotted up tendon in my right calf and stuck a needle right into it. I responded with something between a groan and a growl, truly not expecting pain that intense. I’m used to the kind of acupuncture that relaxes me into an altered state of consciousness.

The therapist sent me away with a prescription, a stretching routine, a list of pain control methods and orders to stay off my feet. Ha! Like that’s gonna happen!

“There could come a day when you might not be able to walk,” she warned.

I left a little worried. I pulled the leg elevating ramp out of my closet and set it on my bed with an infrared heating pad to wrap around my calves and ice packs in the freezer to pillow my feet at night. I am awaiting the arrival of the expensive, orthopedic shoes that I ordered. I get home from work and after brushing my teeth and washing my face, I attend to my feet and legs. I close my eyes and click my heels. I imagine waking up, setting my feet on the floor as if stepping onto a marshmallow. The therapist’s warning is forgotten like a bad dream by noon. I can walk, I can jump, I can fly.

La Frontera

Refugio Sur #28

Tel: 152-4265

Hrs: Mon-Sat 12pm-8am

Many people consider this restaurant one of the best Mexican restaurants in town. Noren Carceres who owned El Burrito Bistro, oversees the food preparation