Lakesiders have a number of options to celebrate Fiestas Patrias this weekend with special menus, Mexican music and dancing, fireworks and tequila.

Chinese food in the Americas was basically improvised by Chinese immigrants in the late 19th Century. Recipes prepared by immigrants were based on available ingredients and the Westernized tastes of Americans.

Gourmet dining has almost as much to do with how you feel when you walk into a dining establishment as it does the food and service.

Waffles, crepes, omelets, hash browns – pretty standard stuff, right?

Not at Mina La Antigua, a new dining sensation at Lakeside. All these breakfast and brunch favorites are spread across a menu of over a hundred and twenty variations. That’s 70 waffle treatments, 40 crepes, dulce and salado, and 17 variations of omelets. Even the hash-browns come in half-dozen styles, crispy or soft potato weaves with gorgeous toppings from sautéed mushrooms to bacon, cheeses and fried eggs. If that’s not enough, there are superb daily specials that aren’t on the menu. The vast menu also offers lunch plates, sandwiches and baguettes with all manner of cheese and lunchmeat fillings.

Nothing fogs up the windscreen of the critical faculties like having within arm’s reach an eight-foot-tall tree (fake, but made of real wood) jutting up from the center of your table, decorated all over with small plastic bottles of Patron tequila.    

When your first opportunity to eat currywurst is inside a massive, drafty suburban shopping mall in Guadalajara, Mexico, you may find yourself meditating upon the un-predictable ways the strands of our complex human universe are interwoven. Also, reflections on the au courant issue of cultural appropriation may occur, being that this dish (an already-Frankenstein-esque German street food staple created by a Berliner housewife using local sausage, ketchup, and curry powder courtesy of British soldiers) is prepared by Mexicans in the tiny kitchen of a Mexican-owned business.