I wrote this a couple of months ago, but from time to time, I still find myself in the same situation.
I have been living in Tokyo for about 4 months and I must say, I am still trying to adapt to the culinary variety that Japan has to offer. I come from a Central American country; therefore I am not very familiar with the Japanese cuisine. All the Japanese dishes that I’ve tried in the past months are because my teachers or friends have taken me to eat amazing dishes such as okonomiyaki, tempura, and sushi.
When I go out by myself, it's a whole different story. I haven’t dared myself to go into a restaurant and order a random dish on the menu, so whenever I go out, I basically eat McDonald’s in order to avoid the humiliation of not being able to master the chopsticks or not knowing what is actually going inside my body.
Last Friday, at around 3:00 pm, my younger brother and I were hanging out at Nishi Asabu. We were both extremely hungry and decided to make a quick stop at a convenient store to grab some food. The display of obentos didn’t look appealing to our eyes so we decided to go to a place called ZEST Cantina. We’ve been there a couple of times; the waiter immediately recognized us. He handed us two menus including the drink menu and we couldn’t decide what we wanted to eat. All of a sudden, at the top of the right page of the menu, I saw a picture of what I would associate with comfort food from back home, and I was not wrong. It was the first time that I saw that specific dish on the menu (I usually do not even look at the menu, I just order a hamburger) so without a doubt in my mind, I decided to order tacos and my brother ordered an enchilada. While we were waiting for the food, we decided to freshen up with cocktails. A couple of minutes later, the waiter handed me a plate with 3 flour tortillas, guacamole, diced tomatoes, beef fajitas, and lettuce. It all looked amazing but something was missing. No need to worry though, ZEST Cantina has it all. I asked the waiter if he could bring me sour cream, he immediately came back with a small bowl of sour cream. I started making the tacos, adding a little bit of everything to the corn tortilla. I rolled the tortilla and gave it the first bite. For a brief moment I got disconnected and felt like I was in Honduras. I looked at my brother, and he was happily devouring his enchilada. I asked him it was good, just to make sure that we were both on the same page but he was so busy eating he just gave me a quick nod of approval. I continued eating my taco, and added some extra sour cream. Then, without even realizing it, Juan Luis Guerra’s’ “Llave de Mi Corazón” started sounding over the speakers. My brother was so excited when the song started playing; I was still confused about my current location, but it was a good feeling of confusion. I finally realized that I can be millions of miles away from home, yet I can still find a place to eat comfort food and feel exactly where I belong.
If you’re ever craving tacos or enchiladas, ZEST Cantina is the place to go.
Order a frozen strawberry daiquiri too and let us toast to comfort food.