catching up

For the first time in months, my basement is empty of rally equipment.

It's not only the physical equipment which has passed beyond my stewardship, at least for a short while. The next rally in the monthly series will be run by Fred Mapplebeck, who as TCNE equipment chair and general poobah-associate is also checking the batteries on the clocks and making some sense of the big box of paperwork. The equipment for the separate championship series (of which Essex Ramble was a part) is on its way to Connecticut for a rally in August, to be put on by a higher mucky-muck than myself.

As my desk gradually reappears from underneath its pile of paperwork, so I find my psyche decompressing as a class of distractions are removed. But both the physical and metaphorical desktops still have quite a lot of accumulated contents to be dealt with before I load them up again.

el palacio

El Palacio Restaurant
401 East Andy Devine Ave (corner 4th st, across from the train station)
Kingman, AZ 86401
Phone: +1 928 718 0018 Fax: +1 928 758 3792
Daily: 1100-2100

Two other locations:
1885 Hwy 95
Bullhead City, AZ 86442
+1 928 763 2494

150 Swanson Ave
Lake Havasu, AZ 86403
+1 928 854 5500

There was once a restaurant guide (the "Gotta Eat", now sadly out of print) to Harvard Square which listed, in addition to the 90 or 100 restaurants in the immediate neighborhood, a few notable restaurants "Outside the Square". Some (such as the Indian and Ethiopian places in Central Square) were a T stop or a long walk away. Some were downtown. Two were outside Massachusetts: Rein's Deli and a steakhouse in North Dakota. Rein's was listed as the canonical place to stop on the way to or from Harvard Square, and the place in North Dakota was listed as the best (or at least, most memorable) restaurant the author had ever eaten at.

Rein's has fallen from my canonical road food list (in favor of the Cromwell Diner, which is even easier to find from the highway than Rein's and is closer to the halfway point with New York City), so it occurs to me to write up this place, which serves absolutely the best Chiles Rellenos I have ever eaten. Perfect consistency of cheese, light crispy batter, flavorful chiles, filling without being heavy. Kingman is pretty much between nowhere and nowhere else, but if you find yourself hungry in that neck of the woods, you owe it to yourself to have a meal there.