Wait at Los Arroyos

May 6, 2004 - The Cinco de Mayo Wait at Los Arroyos

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, one of Mexico's most important national holidays. It celebrates a battle on May 5, 1862 where 4,000 Mexican soldiers whupped 8,000 French soldiers near the city of Puebla, 100 miles east of Mexico City. Here is a picture of the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Inmaculada Concepcion in Puebla. And, below is a picture from on an Internet news site that accompanied a story titled, “Bush has Cinco de Mayo celebration.” Party on, George!

The dedicated staff of edhat.com (or should we say Eduardo Sombrero dot com) celebrated Cinco de Mayo in 2 ways. First, we spent the wee hours of the morning playing with PhotoShop to replace the hat on our top banner with a sombrero. We hope you noticed. Second, we ate lunch at Los Arroyos, our favorite Mexican Restaurant (W. Figueroa – ½ block from State). Ed figured that everybody who was anybody in Santa Barbara would be there on May 5th. So, there was bound to be a long line and a long wait - things to count. Hooray! Or should we say, Ole'!

We arrived at the restaurant at 12:20, the exact same time we arrived at La Super-Rica when we measured their wait oh-so-long-ago. As expected, the place was full. Even though they had both cash registers manned and operating, the line went through the passageway in the middle of the building and down a step into the dining area.

And how many people were in line? Well, we counted … in Spanish - uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce. That’s right, there were twelve. The dedicated staff has learned lots of things from many different places, but we must admit, that our ability to count in Spanish was learned from a song on Sesame Street.

It took us seis minutos y veinte siete segundos (6 minutes, 27 seconds) to reach the cashier. There, it took us only cuarenta tres segundos (43 seconds) to order and pay. We knew what we wanted.

After ordering, we felt quite fortunate to find a table by the front window. And, while we waited for our food, we were happy that we ran into some “friends of Ed”. The food, however, was nowhere in site. Other people without friends and tables were starting to look a bit anxious. Finally, 14 minutes and 52 seconds after placing our order, we received our food. The total wait time from walking in the door to having food on our plates was 22 minutes and 2 seconds. Last night we were at opening night of Nite Moves. There were a lot of people who ran a 5K in less than 22 minutes!

And of course, we must compare our results yesterday to the ones we got at La Super-Rica. There, at Julia Childs favorite Mexican restaurant, we waited behind 9 people for 10 minutes. But, it took 25 minutes after ordering for us to get our food.

Subscriber EdVal was a Cinco de Mayo savant. EdVal guessed 12 people in line and a 6 minute wait. Felicitaciones, EdVal!

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