Nov 12, 2003 - The Super Wait

HeavyDuty (93110) won yesterday’s contest by coming the closest to guessing the lunchtime wait a La Super-Rica.  Duty’s guess was 10 people, 10 minutes.  We were actually waiting in line behind 9 people for 10 minutes.

It was Veteran’s Day on Tuesday. The schools were closed and so was the post office.  But most regular people, like the dedicated staff at Edhat were hard at work.  This day we had to measure the line at La Super-Rica on Milpas.  We showed up at 12:20.  Long ago proclaimed Julia Child’s favorite Mexican restaurant, La Super-Rica has ever since been a popular restaurant with the “in” crowd.  The wait is legendary.

Upon arrival, we found a relatively short line (by historical standards).  There were 9 people ahead of us.  About one minute into our wait, things got significantly better when 3 people ran-from-the-order and left.  The line went quickly, but when we got to the front, a phone-order took precedence resulting in a final wait time of 10 minutes.

Hawk-like vision and sharp elbows helped us quickly to secure a table (2 minutes). We were number 76 and the first number we heard was 67.  The high sixties went by quickly, but then after a long delay we heard 78, 80...  The people behind us (a group of four led by a Super-Rica regular who coached the others on the fine points of Chorrizo and Sopas), had gotten their food before we did. Then, the people behind them got theirs!

As any committed Edhatian, we went into complain mode ...  standing at the counter and pestering the cook as to the fate of our order.  It was kind of an ugly gringo thing to do, but in light of the fact that 90% (27 of the 30) people in the dining area were of non-Hispanic descent, we did not stand out too much.

After 3 “yours is up next” pledges we finally got our food.  It had taken a total of 25 minutes since we had ordered ... 35 minutes since we arrived, all to get our little plates of tacos.  The food was good, but hardly worth the wait.  And for the 26 people who were in line at 1:15 when we were walking out ... we can only guess what happened to them.