Cemitas Puebla - A dry, artisinal run

How much weight do you attach to the culinary pronouncements of a grown man dressed like a suburban 12-year old circa 1998? You would think being a 30-something year old decked out in cargo shorts, wrap-around Oakleys, a flaming dice shirt, and platinum bleached locks aggressively spiked for a DragonBallZ convention would disqualify your judgment across a slew of categories.

Well, when you're Mumbles my former roommate, you take a certain amount of pride in your populism. You see, his antagonism towards "the elites" predates Palin, when in the early aughts he felt no one gave him enough credit for wearing faded, form-fitting shirts before the Strokes or American Apparel stormed anti-popular aesthetics.

Incidentally, the Gentile perfection of Mumbles and his partner DiaBetty threw Sizzlenuts for a goyem curve, but he recovered in fine form. One can only imagine how Sizzlenuts would just clean house on J-Date were he ever to concentrate his charm on fellow tribeswomen. Although I will miss ToucanSam during his winter in Sweden, Sizzlenuts brings a similar joie de vivre coupled with a certain Les extrêmes se touchent about him.

The eponymous dish at Cemitas (3619 W North Ave) is your standard torta, only with sesame seed bread encapsulating the avocado, meat, adobo chipotle peppers, fresh Oaxacan cheese and papalo filler. Yelp, the staff, Mr. Fieri; they all recommend the cemita atomica or the cemita milanesa. The atomica has three kinds of pork – milanesa, carne enchilada, and jamón. I feel guilty now for ordering the atomica, a full $3 more than any of the mono-carnal alternatives. Mumbles had to pay for my dinner since he had been foolish enough to make a bench press-related wager with me.

Visually the atomica was pleasing, but in combination the three meats muted each other out. Mumbles’s pastor cemita was far more rollicking while the carne enchilada apart from the cemita had a certain artisanal complexity. Like the 2004 Lakers, the cemita atomica whole was less than the sum of its parts. Looking through the Cemitas Puebla menu, I see several other dishes that fly under the radar, like the chalupas (not like Taco Bell chalupas) or the cecina tacos (don’t buy into the tacos arabes parade, btw).

On the drive back, as I smothered my farts into the seat to avoid rolling down the windows on a chilly December night, I realized I was the richest man of all…just as long as we avoid measures of money, power, and prestige.

Don't forget to check out all our trips on the food map