50 on the floor, 50 on the ceiling
Today I finally visited the vividly decorated Mexican restaurant El Toreador today. I usually hit West Portal on Mondays, but since this place is closed on Mondays, I’ve tried to remember to come back another day.
The food was pretty good, the salsa was HOT, the service was decent, and the pineapple-papaya nectar was yummy goodness. The walls are adorned with, well, everything. Toy men with horses, signs, little wooden houses, headshots of 30’s-40’s Hollywood starlets, even Pancho Villa. Each of the chairs has a name painted on the back, today I was Zipper and I sat across from Dilbert. There are 50 chairs on the floor, and another 50 on the ceiling.
I remember eating there once when I was a kid. I always remembered a really brightly colored place, with lots of crap hanging on the walls and ceiling, and street cars outside. But I never knew where it was, somewhere far away from the East Bay. Twenty five years later, I happened to walk past it one night, and I was immediately transported to my childhood. Crazy!