FAJITA NIGHT IS THE BEST IN TOWN

Fajita night round here tonight. My favourite. Sammy put extra fajita spice on too, which made it eye-wateringly good.

The joke is apparently, that I don’t like messy food but I love fajita night. Fair. I can’t bear it when a tall burger falls apart or a custard slice splats sideways under a fork. Those things are irritating. But somehow when it’s the gooey splodge of dripping guacamole and salsa from a sopping tortilla wrap, all is forgiven.

The trick of course, is not to overfill them. That way you can still fold over the bottom like an envelope and not get cheesy dip running down your sleeve. I forgot tonight. I just stuffed mine full - lettuce, sour cream, grated cheese, guac, peppers, and of course el pollo picante, the ol’ spicy chicken poking out of the top. Mmhm.

I was quickly a mess. Fingers covered in sticky sauce, lips tingling, bits of pepper and lettuce tumbling out of the poorly constructed wrap, flakes of cheese flying across the table. It is messy, fajita night, but I really love it. In the end I grabbed a knife and fork and ate it like a calzone. It was like being a mafia don, sitting happily at the back of the diner, surrounded by crumbs and entitlement.

“Context is everything though,” said Sammy, sagely, when we were thinking about it later. “You eat messy food in your own home, but in someone else’s…”

She’s quite right. I care less about the inevitable splashes and spillages at home. Anywhere else and a personal slop would be mortifying. And fajitas make that likely. Imagine your face covered in sour cream and cheese, like a baby, at somebody else’s house!

“You break up Jaffa Cakes with your fingers too,” said Sammy. True. Habit. I can’t seem to do ‘half-moon’ or ‘total eclipse’ so I just absent-mindedly treat them like communion wafers.

I don’t want to be disrespectful by the way, but Jaffa Cakes would make excellent communion wafers. It takes a lot of courage and self-sacrifice to share a Jaffa Cake with your fellow believers. And there’s theological symbolism too; though I won’t go into it.

She meant of course that I seem to enjoy making my food more messy than it needs to be. And it’s never truer than with a gloriously packed tortilla on fajita night!

My cutlery scraped the plate as the last of the chicken scooped up the excess salsa, and was suddenly gulped down from the end of the fork. I grabbed a bit of kitchen roll and scrubbed my lips and cheeks with it, satisfaction glistening in my contented face.

“Eh Rocco,” I felt like saying, “It’s the best joint in town, boys, the best - in - the - town.”

Sammy just looked at me and smiled. I really like fajita night.