Go to Mexicali at the intersection of Northwest Highway and Jupiter – it’s just west of the Lowe’s – and see where I’ve been keeping clean for the last 18 years, two years less than it’s been in business. I remember when it used to be over by the Casa Linda library and how my heart sank when it wasn’t there one day… and when my heart leapt as I discovered it had moved closer to me.

Whenever I go away for a while, I come home to Mexicali. I don’t eat there because it’s the best food in the world. I eat there because it is home, and therefore the world to which I return. No matter what fantastic things I taste abroad, I come home to lunch combo #6 and then I know I’m home. Nobody else makes the Tex-Mex like they do at Mexicali. There are plenty of great ones, sure. But nobody makes it like they do and they make it great. They’re part of the treasures around my house, part of the world I call home.