My friends and I tried a Mexican restaurant, newly opened, located on the west side, and where is the diarrhea? I was promised there would be diarrhea.
Actually, it was awesome. It’s called Petty Cash, and it specializes in street food served high end. Grilled octopus tacos. Beef brisket quesadillas. A really nice place, only strangely way too affordable. Here’s what I mean:
Dorados. Crispy, rolled potato tacos with tomatillo sauce and cortijo cheese. The only thing this hefty serving seemed to be missing was a digit on the price. It was $4.50.
Negra Modelo beer-battered mahi-mahi taco – six bucks. Yeah, that just happened.
Great energy. It really felt like LA on a Saturday night, so imagine the aneurism I had.
Incandescent bulbs, which I believe are outlawed in California. (Counter-balancing that: a rooftop garden, in which many of the menu’s ingredients are grown.) Also, hand-painted murals by local street artist RETNA.
Besides the inexplicably low-priced dishes (I’d pay triple what they charge), is the restaurant’s peculiar location – about 50 feet from El Coyote, a landmark Mexican joint since 1931. Seeing it as we entered Petty Cash reminded me of what I wrote a few years ago, after attending my first game at new Yankee Stadium, while the old stadium had yet to be razed: “Seeing the old stadium across the street made me feel like I was at my new, hot young girlfriend’s place, peeking through the curtains at my ex-wife’s house. Sure, the missus and I had a lot of good times, but she’s old and smelly now.”
