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"Home-made. 100%."

I was parked by the Dakota Tex-Mex van. Home-made and 100% it said. I thought about asking the bloke who got out of the van about it; not that it would have got me very far. Which home do you suppose it's being made in? Are there kitchens in houses across Alcudia, Playa de Muro and Puerto Pollensa pumping out burgers and so on? No, I guess not. But were there to be, then they might well all be hooked up to a central database system. On a site operated by a software company called Cuiner is a notice about the migration of Grupo Boulevard's applications to the Cuiner Central Base (Boulevard operates the Dakotas and Café 1919, among other things), to allow for analyses of information from the establishments. Technology and home-made; the two don't really stand together somehow.

I only know about this application because I did a quick google. I wanted to know if maybe there was some substance to the "since 1965" that is also to be seen on the van and at the restaurants. Maybe there was or is some brand going back till then. Not that I found one. Or perhaps I should have gone past page four. Somewhere lurking in the Badlands may well be a Dakota Tex-Mex that is some 40-odd years old. But even were there to be, why I wonder would it be a Dakota Tex-Mex? Dakota is neither Tex nor Mex; indeed, the Dakotas are quite some way north of both Texas and Mexico. Mind you, the name "Dakota" has a certain cowboyish feel to it, but then again so do El Paso and Rio Grande, and they would be more Tex and Mex.

This home-made thing is not a promotional technique reserved to the Dakotas. Many places claim it. The word has, in a sense, acquired a new meaning. Strictly, one should say "made like in the home", but that would never do in terms of the marketing lexicon, rather like "British-style" bar wouldn't do either, even if it would be more accurate in many cases. But actually in the home? No.

It is, though, precisely the sophistication of advanced software that helps to get the goat of the radical Luddite foodist tendency; one that would rather be eating the goat, preferably to the accompaniment of a bunch of old Mallorcans shouting at each other. Not for them the branding of a Dakota or the debatable 100 per-cent-ness of made in the home. Not for them the professionalism of business success. This sits uneasily with a mythical Mallorca of Francoist backwardness. But let it not be forgotten that the Generalisimo's urgent need for foreign currency and for building something resembling an economy was what opened the floodgates to all that has followed, and that includes businesses which offer restaurants that might just chime with a contemporary tourist. That "since 1965"? Maybe it refers to when it all started.


Spud u like in Sa Pobla
Rather more rural in culinary terms, Sa Pobla will this Saturday be putting on its first gastronomy event dedicated to the potato, a staple not only of the local diet but also the local agriculture. Perhaps it was the success of last year's potato-themed autumn fair (21 November: Potato Head) that inspired this gastronomic extravaganza. Whatever. But if you want, there will be 23 restaurants participating in serving up potato dishes from as little as one euro. Could it be, therefore, that you can get a plate of chips? Tell you what, throw in a burger or some tex-mex, and that will do nicely. But that would never do.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "French Kissin' in the USA", Debbie Harry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze4-M9wAqPg. Today's title - and this was? Don't all snigger at once.

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