Que Chula, Indeed

By Gina Brower

A quesadilla de flor de calabaza, chips still warm, and a Mexican Pepsi in the glass bottle. A

neighborhood place plates mercy without ceremony—and the day stands up straighter.

I didn’t plan to end up at Que Chula es Puebla. The day had been going along in that gray,

indecisive way city days sometimes do—too chilly for bravado, too bright to hide. Errands made

little stutters of purpose without adding up to a plot. I was walking to prove I could walk. I was

thinking about everything and nothing. Then the smell found me—warm oil, toasted corn, a

flutter of cilantro—and the day made up its mind.

The dining room held a clean kind of welcome: tables wiped to an honest shine, a TV

murmuring an afternoon football game in the corner, the counter stacked with trays that

looked like quiet promises. The walls were the color of a well-meaning sun. It was the hour

when people come not to perform lunch but to eat it. A couple in work boots sat shoulder to

shoulder at a two-top, not talking, at peace in the way that means the day is already hard and

food is the treaty. A mother guided a small boy’s hand through a maze in an activity book; every

time he reached a dead end, she pretended to be surprised. Two teen girls split a straw for a

michelada and rolled their eyes in synchronized affection at a joke I wished I’d heard.

I ordered at the table and tried not to overcomplicate it, the way I often do when presented

with generosity. Quesadilla de flor de calabaza, please—the pumpkin flowers folded into

cheese, those green accents that taste like gardens. The waiter nodded as if I’d remembered a

friend’s name. He brought complimentary house-made tortilla chips and refrieds with queso

fresco, which I knew I would scarf down because restraint is a performance I reserve for less

persuasive days. Then the impulse that felt like a memory instead of a choice: a Mexican Pepsi

in the glass bottle. The waiter popped the cap with a metal opener that had probably freed a

thousand small salvations. He slid the bottle across the counter like a dare to be delighted.

When the plate arrived, it looked like a little stage on which nothing tragic would be allowed to

happen. I chose a table near the window, where a square of light had decided to live for a

while. The quesadilla sat there like something engineered for goodwill—corn tortilla blistered

just enough, cheese soft without surrender, the flor de calabaza peeking out like confetti

stubborn enough to be elegant. On the side: a tidy constellation—shredded lettuce, a slice of

avocado glossy as a promise, two tomato wedges posing like punctuation marks that could turn

any sentence into a surprise.

I started with the quesadilla, because that’s the kind of person I am—let the bite teach the rest

of the meal how to behave. It was sparkling in its sourness and contrasted with the crunchy

and bright shredded lettuce and slice of avocado. The acid set the key; the avocado provided a

bass line; the lettuce supplied the percussion. I am not above metaphors when food is kind to

me. Then the first bite of the quesadilla: the tortilla’s delicate resistance—snap, sigh—followed

by the warmth of cheese and the spring-green hush of the pumpkin blossoms. There’s a way

squash flowers hold onto sunlight even after you take them far from the vine; you can taste the

afternoon they were picked.

I took a sip of the Pepsi and remembered why that glass bottle has survived a century of better

ideas. Cold enough to rehearse the teeth, sweet enough to make the day generous. Like the

“Golden Brown” song by The Stranglers, the Pepsi hit like a tidal wave of fizzy delight. It was

the kind of sweetness that behaves—cane sugar with edges filed down by memory, bubbles

doing small calisthenics on the tongue. It didn’t bully the food; it escorted it.

The chips were still warm, unashamed of their oil. They arrived with that humble confidence

only house-made things carry—the same pride you feel from someone who knows they woke

up early for you. I broke one and dragged it through the refried beans, which were glossy but

not slick, the queso fresco on top a snowfall without drama. The bite landed like a yes I didn’t

have to negotiate. Beans this good make me think of mornings I didn’t see—someone rinsing

and sorting, someone soaking, someone careful with a pot, someone patient with a simmer.

Eating them is like borrowing the reward for work you didn’t do. Gratitude is the only

appropriate posture.

At the next table, two electricians compared notes about a job while quietly demolishing a

platter that could have fed a small committee. One of them, a man with a face that had

memorized weather, found a stray jalapeño under a pile of rice and held it up like an unplanned

assignment. He ate it without flinching, nodded once to himself, and went back to talking about

an outlet that wouldn’t stop misbehaving. I wanted to applaud his lack of theater.

Halfway through the quesadilla, the man who’d taken my order drifted by the tables to make

sure everyone had what they needed. “Everything good?” he asked, which in a place like this

means: Is the world offering you a fair fight today? I said yes in a way that sounded like thank

you. She asked if I wanted more chips, and because I am not a martyr, I said yes. She returned

with a small heap and a wink that said, This is how we fix Tuesdays.

It occurred to me then that Que Chula es Puebla wears its faith lightly—not as ritual but as

craft. The care wasn’t loud or moralizing; it was structural. The tortillas had been pressed with

attention. The oil was at the right temperature, which isn’t romance, it’s discipline. The beans

had that perfect center between sturdy and spreadable. The salsa (I’ve neglected to praise it

because I was too busy obeying it) cut true. None of this asked me to be impressed; it asked me

to be hungry and appreciative, which I was, immensely.

Between bites I watched the room run on good manners learned from ovens. A man in a

courier jacket stood to let a woman slide into the booth; she said gracias like a benediction. A

kid at the counter asked a hundred questions about what was in each tray, and the staff

answered each one as if he were a food critic with a column and a reputation for wounding,

though he was only nine and magnificent. An older woman ate alone at a corner table with a

dignity that made the whole room behave better, myself included. I took smaller bites. I slowed

down.

I thought about how often we chase the grand gesture—a miracle, an omen, a romance that

could lift a car—and how rarely we allow the small ones to notice us back. Maybe that’s what

restaurants like this do. They notice on your behalf. They remember that a day can be turned

by pumpkin blossoms and corn and a bottle cap pried loose with practiced grace. They remind

you that hunger and kindness speak a dialect you don’t have to study to understand.

The electricians got up to leave and bussed their own table without being asked. The cashier

made change with the speed of a card trick and the accuracy of a promise. Someone laughed in

the kitchen, and the laugh came out in the next plate, I swear it did.

By the time I cleaned my tray to a landscape of crumbs and smudges, I’d forgotten what

problem I’d arrived with, which seems as good a measure as any of whether lunch is working. I

carried my bottle to the bin and hesitated—for a second it felt wrong to throw away proof that

the day had been turned. I compromised by taking a picture I’ll never look at again. I wiped my

table with the back of my hand because it felt like part of the agreement. On my way out I told

the cashier the quesadilla was perfect, and he said, “We try,” which is the most honest

sentence of the moral universe.

Outside, the city had remembered its better posture. The air was a fraction warmer; maybe

that was the Pepsi talking. The sidewalk felt less like obligation and more like invitation. People

looked like themselves again, which is rarer than you’d think. I walked a block with the little

clarity that follows a meal cooked by someone who wasn’t trying to impress you, only to feed

you correctly. There’s a holiness in that.

I could write the whole piece in facts—quesadilla de flor de calabaza, house-made chips,

refrieds with queso fresco, Mexican Pepsi in the glass bottle—and you would get the shape if

not the glow. But the glow matters. The glow is the part that follows you out and makes the

errand after lunch feel redeemed. The glow says, You are, for at least the next few hours,

capable of being as kind to others as someone was to you. The glow says, que chula, how

lovely, your life when you let it feed you.

I walked home carrying the aftertaste of the squash flowers and corn, that little fizz still reciting

its catechism on my tongue, and I thought: I will try to deserve this. Not by earning it—hunger is

not a meritocracy—but by noticing enough to turn back and tell you. That’s the contract

between appetite and language. You take the bite; later you learn its grammar. You become the

paragraph that thanks the hand you didn’t see.

And if tomorrow is heavy again, no miracle required. There’s a door up the street that opens

with a bright hello. There’s a counter where mercy is plated without ceremony. There’s a glass

bottle waiting in a cooler, exactly as cold as it needs to be, to remind you that sweetness, when

well-made, behaves. You lift it. You sip. You let the tidal wave of fizzy delight carry the day a

few feet closer to shore. You keep walking. You look for the next good door. You remember

what the man at the register said when you praised the food: We try. You decide to, too.