First meal in the UK

Holy crap. I'm here.

I flew into Liverpool yesterday (well - actually, into Manchester, with a quick drive over to Liverpool after that). I've flown here ahead of my bride and Ella, in order to set up the household, and do various first-few-weeks tasks to get settled in.

My colleague took me out last night to celebrate my arrival - we went, of all places, to a Mexican restaurant - "El Macho". Bear in mind that this is one of two Mexican restaurants in Liverpool. My hopes weren't especially high - I'm pretty sure that Mexican immigration to the UK is fairly low.

My hopes were buoyed when we walked in, however - they had all the right decorations on the wall. Sombreros. Pinatas. A painted cut-out of a cactus. (Though maybe I should have been alarmed that the music playing was - I kid you not - 'la cucaracha'. )

I ordered a margarita, on the rocks, with salt. My colleague ordered the same. Our waitress nodded, noted this down and scurried off.

5 minutes later she comes back to tell us our margaritas weren't quite frozen yet... hmm.. But I ordered mine on the rocks, I said. This seemed to confuse our waitress. "But then it would just taste like lime juice and stuff on ice," she said. "Yes, exactly - only girls drink them frozen." But hey, I can play along to get along - "Just bring them out when they're frozen."

I knew we were in trouble when they arrived - it was the first orange margarita I've ever had.

The food itself was decent, if not exactly Mexican. There were occasional jalepenos in the Pollo Asado, along with a side of refried beans. And each plate came with one tortilla. (When we asked for more, we discovered that each additional tortilla was charged for...)

We rounded out the night right, though - at the Philharmonic Pub with pints of Guinness.

Hey, I didn't come here for the Mexican food, right?