"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.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Showing posts with label Dakota Tex-Mex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dakota Tex-Mex. Show all posts
Friday, June 05, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Murder On The Dancefloor
One Dakota, two Dakota, three Dakota, four.
Not yet five Dakota, six Dakota, seven Dakota, more, but is it just a malicious rumour going around town that Puerto Pollensa is to get a fourth Dakota Tex-Mex? What huge entertainment if it is. For this would bring forth (or maybe that's fourth) a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, as also would the news that the fish and chip shop was to turn into a Chinese, though, in all likelihood, a reallocation of an existing Chinese. It (The Codfather fish'n'chip shop, that is) has moved, by the way, to where the Ivy Garden was. Of course, fish and chip shops are ok, it would appear. No-one has ever seemed to moan that there is one, but it is hardly authentic, as in not being typically Mallorcan or some such, which is, of course, deemed to be the only sort of restaurant allowable in Puerto Pollensa (by many expats, that is). Tex-mexs's, an abundance of Chinese; these are not right, these ruin Puerto Pollensa, but a chippy on the other hand ... Oh well.
As for the fourth Dakota rumour, I know where it might be going, though of course it might just all be someone's vivid imagination and that the place in question will turn out to be nothing of the sort - or maybe another Burger King. Meantime, I'm not saying.
Two evenings ago, there was, apparently, a programme on some obscure channel about Mallorca. How dumb can TV get, do you suppose? How dumb can the people who watch this drivel get, do you suppose? I have a nightmare that hell is a constant loop of The Jeremy Kyle Show - tribes of Karen Matthews or those with brains the size of hers, faces to match and sitting in bars wearing ill-washed bras. Actually, I have seen a few like that here, wandering gormlessly along The Mile. The thing is we don't need Virgin Channel One, or whatever it was, to tell us that there are stupid and ugly people who come on holiday to Mallorca. If you missed the programme, and I certainly did, it was called "Sun Sea and A&E". My, what a hoot, must have thought the production company. Let's do a docu on some chavs kicking the crap out of each other, getting rat-arsed and ending up in the casualty departments of some Mallorcan hospitals - specifically in Son Dureta and the Muro hospital. The surprise is that they actually got to the A&E department at all. Normally, they skip that bit and go straight to the morgue having taken a quick dive from the hotel balcony. According to the website of the production company, the series - and yes there are seven more like this - ranges "from too much booze to too much sun; from accidents on the dancefloor to kids' catastrophes in the pool". At least there were only accidents on the dancefloor and not murder.
Better news is that the Top Gear laddos are to come for the Classic Car rally in March and do a show. This normally features a stage from Puerto Pollensa, with the starting-point in the nautical club, so this year, one imagines, it will be thronged with expats desperate to try and ingratiate themselves with the Top Gear trio. I would advise caution. Clarkson's vitriol would doubtless extend to mostly all expats. If I were you, I'd avoid the Top Gear-ists like the plague. Not that I don't like Clarkson; quite the opposite. And anyone who has seen fit to punch Piers Morgan is fine by me. One trusts that the programme will show some suitably pleasant landscapes and be a rather more positive representation of Mallorca than some Chardonnay who has vomited over a nurse in Muro hospital A&E. Oh, and if you think Clarkson might go easy on the local expattery, do be warned: remember he once said that anyone who had moved to Spain had held up a post office. And I daresay he's had time to work on that particular theme and to come up with something of equivalent hostility to Alexei Sayle's one-time character assassination of Leapy Lee and rubbishing of the Costa expat. Here's hoping.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Clash (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trolcS3V7dY). Today - this was just so good.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Not yet five Dakota, six Dakota, seven Dakota, more, but is it just a malicious rumour going around town that Puerto Pollensa is to get a fourth Dakota Tex-Mex? What huge entertainment if it is. For this would bring forth (or maybe that's fourth) a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, as also would the news that the fish and chip shop was to turn into a Chinese, though, in all likelihood, a reallocation of an existing Chinese. It (The Codfather fish'n'chip shop, that is) has moved, by the way, to where the Ivy Garden was. Of course, fish and chip shops are ok, it would appear. No-one has ever seemed to moan that there is one, but it is hardly authentic, as in not being typically Mallorcan or some such, which is, of course, deemed to be the only sort of restaurant allowable in Puerto Pollensa (by many expats, that is). Tex-mexs's, an abundance of Chinese; these are not right, these ruin Puerto Pollensa, but a chippy on the other hand ... Oh well.
As for the fourth Dakota rumour, I know where it might be going, though of course it might just all be someone's vivid imagination and that the place in question will turn out to be nothing of the sort - or maybe another Burger King. Meantime, I'm not saying.
Two evenings ago, there was, apparently, a programme on some obscure channel about Mallorca. How dumb can TV get, do you suppose? How dumb can the people who watch this drivel get, do you suppose? I have a nightmare that hell is a constant loop of The Jeremy Kyle Show - tribes of Karen Matthews or those with brains the size of hers, faces to match and sitting in bars wearing ill-washed bras. Actually, I have seen a few like that here, wandering gormlessly along The Mile. The thing is we don't need Virgin Channel One, or whatever it was, to tell us that there are stupid and ugly people who come on holiday to Mallorca. If you missed the programme, and I certainly did, it was called "Sun Sea and A&E". My, what a hoot, must have thought the production company. Let's do a docu on some chavs kicking the crap out of each other, getting rat-arsed and ending up in the casualty departments of some Mallorcan hospitals - specifically in Son Dureta and the Muro hospital. The surprise is that they actually got to the A&E department at all. Normally, they skip that bit and go straight to the morgue having taken a quick dive from the hotel balcony. According to the website of the production company, the series - and yes there are seven more like this - ranges "from too much booze to too much sun; from accidents on the dancefloor to kids' catastrophes in the pool". At least there were only accidents on the dancefloor and not murder.
Better news is that the Top Gear laddos are to come for the Classic Car rally in March and do a show. This normally features a stage from Puerto Pollensa, with the starting-point in the nautical club, so this year, one imagines, it will be thronged with expats desperate to try and ingratiate themselves with the Top Gear trio. I would advise caution. Clarkson's vitriol would doubtless extend to mostly all expats. If I were you, I'd avoid the Top Gear-ists like the plague. Not that I don't like Clarkson; quite the opposite. And anyone who has seen fit to punch Piers Morgan is fine by me. One trusts that the programme will show some suitably pleasant landscapes and be a rather more positive representation of Mallorca than some Chardonnay who has vomited over a nurse in Muro hospital A&E. Oh, and if you think Clarkson might go easy on the local expattery, do be warned: remember he once said that anyone who had moved to Spain had held up a post office. And I daresay he's had time to work on that particular theme and to come up with something of equivalent hostility to Alexei Sayle's one-time character assassination of Leapy Lee and rubbishing of the Costa expat. Here's hoping.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Clash (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trolcS3V7dY). Today - this was just so good.
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Monday, August 25, 2008
Badlands
I was reminded recently that the antagonism towards Grupo Boulevard and specifically the company's Dakota Tex-Mex restaurants rumbles on, especially in Puerto Pollensa.
Let me explain for those who may as yet not be up to speed on this one. Boulevard is one of the most significant players locally; it is HQ-ed in the dark glass-fronted building in Playa de Muro. Its operations cover: in Puerto Pollensa, three Dakota Tex-Mex restaurants, Café L'Algar, Gran Café 1919, a tabacos, O'Hara's pub and the curious Australia Boulevard place; in Puerto Alcúdia, a Dakota and a supermarket/tabacos; in Playa de Muro, the Shopping Centre in Las Gaviotas, another Dakota, a Gran Café-ette, a shop, a tabacos and a supermarket (misleadingly termed a hypermarket). Perhaps there are more. Doubtless you'll tell me if there are.
It is the Dakotas that have caused most of the opprobrium to be levelled at Boulevard, much of it emanating from the expat community. There are, it seems, plenty with an "agenda" against the company. A while back there was an anonymous comment sent for a piece I did ages ago about the Dakotas; it was unflattering to say the least. I ignored it. Someone had to have gone to some trouble to have unearthed an old blog item in order to indulge in some slagging-off.
Quite what is the problem? Much of it, one fancies, stems from the conversion of the old fisherman's cottage at the start of the pinewalk and its reincarnation as a Dakota. The tex-mex "chain" has become, for some, the Devil incarnate. And it is in Puerto Pollensa that the Boulevard and Dakota horns have reached out more obviously than anywhere else, thus generating reactions of takeover and perhaps not even a little envy. One is not sure whether it is the strength of Boulevard that is objected to or its brashness; both probably. Boulevard is a successful business, or at least it would appear to be. Success is not always greeted with acclaim, especially if it seems to in some way undermine a particular image of a place; in this case Puerto Pollensa.
Boulevard probably doesn't help itself. Rather like the hotels, as I spoke about in a previous piece, one doesn't really know a great deal about the company. It doesn't engage in community or public relations, or at least none that I am aware of. That HQ building with its dark glass perhaps says something; it wants awareness but to be unknown and unseen. Boulevard is, one concludes, a hard-nosed business, doing what hard-nosed businesses do, making money, hence the Dakota-isation of Puerto Pollensa where few can understand the sense of three of the same restaurants being in close proximity. But as I pointed out some time before, the model is hardly unique; McDonald's perfected it.
The Dakotas, however, say an awful lot about shifts in local "Spanish" attitudes as well as about matching tourist demand and wants and about some expats. To take the Spanish angle first. Recently, there was an article in "The Bulletin" which highlighted the closure or sale of the more typical Mallorcan restaurant in Palma. It pointed out that the new types of restaurants - pizza joints for instance, to which one could add the likes of tex-mex establishments - were doing well by comparison. There are different reasons for this, of which one is the growth in popularity of fast-food and the newer style of restaurant among the indigenous population. Some while back there was a report that pointed to the decline in the consumption of typical local cuisine in favour of what one might term imported dining experiences. The Mallorcan is, therefore, the beneficiary of greater consumer choice; thus is the nature of free (or free-ish) markets anywhere. Don't think that it is only tourists who frequent the Dakotas, because it isn't, though clearly the restaurants fulfil, if not a tourist requirement, then at least the creation of tourist demand. Not all tourists want the quaint Mallorcan restaurant, especially those tourists with demanding kids' mouths to fill. And don't underestimate the power of the child dining-out lobby; the kids are frequently the fulcrum of the family purchasing process. Someone said to me not so long ago that the Dakotas don't go far enough and that there is scope for more razzamatazz of an Americana style; this could well be right.
There exists among some of the expat community and also visitors a sort of reactionary militant tendency that would have places like Puerto Pollensa stuck in a timewarp of what might be dubbed "Mallorcana". They want it both ways. The influx of expats is a facet of change; they are a facet of change. Yet they wish all around to remain unaltered. The Dakotas reflect a change that does not fit with the romantic image of Puerto Pollensa. But the place has undergone a change in its tourist demographic alongside the change in its physical appearance. Tourism is business, Puerto Pollensa is tourism business, and the Dakotas are business.
PUERTO POLLENSA FRONTLINE CLOSURE
There has been a plan to pedestrianise more of Puerto Pollensa's frontline for some while. How sensible this would be is another matter. But with the new road open, along comes this plan or at least a trial. And trial may well be what it is if one wants access. In the next ten days or so, the road will be closed to non-essential traffic or so I am led to believe. This will be, apparently, from the Galéon down into the port. Which raises the question - what will happen to all that parking by the beach? Chaos beckons.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Man On The Moon", REM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4pTCqhTfY). Today's title - this was a film; what's the connection with today's piece?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
Let me explain for those who may as yet not be up to speed on this one. Boulevard is one of the most significant players locally; it is HQ-ed in the dark glass-fronted building in Playa de Muro. Its operations cover: in Puerto Pollensa, three Dakota Tex-Mex restaurants, Café L'Algar, Gran Café 1919, a tabacos, O'Hara's pub and the curious Australia Boulevard place; in Puerto Alcúdia, a Dakota and a supermarket/tabacos; in Playa de Muro, the Shopping Centre in Las Gaviotas, another Dakota, a Gran Café-ette, a shop, a tabacos and a supermarket (misleadingly termed a hypermarket). Perhaps there are more. Doubtless you'll tell me if there are.
It is the Dakotas that have caused most of the opprobrium to be levelled at Boulevard, much of it emanating from the expat community. There are, it seems, plenty with an "agenda" against the company. A while back there was an anonymous comment sent for a piece I did ages ago about the Dakotas; it was unflattering to say the least. I ignored it. Someone had to have gone to some trouble to have unearthed an old blog item in order to indulge in some slagging-off.
Quite what is the problem? Much of it, one fancies, stems from the conversion of the old fisherman's cottage at the start of the pinewalk and its reincarnation as a Dakota. The tex-mex "chain" has become, for some, the Devil incarnate. And it is in Puerto Pollensa that the Boulevard and Dakota horns have reached out more obviously than anywhere else, thus generating reactions of takeover and perhaps not even a little envy. One is not sure whether it is the strength of Boulevard that is objected to or its brashness; both probably. Boulevard is a successful business, or at least it would appear to be. Success is not always greeted with acclaim, especially if it seems to in some way undermine a particular image of a place; in this case Puerto Pollensa.
Boulevard probably doesn't help itself. Rather like the hotels, as I spoke about in a previous piece, one doesn't really know a great deal about the company. It doesn't engage in community or public relations, or at least none that I am aware of. That HQ building with its dark glass perhaps says something; it wants awareness but to be unknown and unseen. Boulevard is, one concludes, a hard-nosed business, doing what hard-nosed businesses do, making money, hence the Dakota-isation of Puerto Pollensa where few can understand the sense of three of the same restaurants being in close proximity. But as I pointed out some time before, the model is hardly unique; McDonald's perfected it.
The Dakotas, however, say an awful lot about shifts in local "Spanish" attitudes as well as about matching tourist demand and wants and about some expats. To take the Spanish angle first. Recently, there was an article in "The Bulletin" which highlighted the closure or sale of the more typical Mallorcan restaurant in Palma. It pointed out that the new types of restaurants - pizza joints for instance, to which one could add the likes of tex-mex establishments - were doing well by comparison. There are different reasons for this, of which one is the growth in popularity of fast-food and the newer style of restaurant among the indigenous population. Some while back there was a report that pointed to the decline in the consumption of typical local cuisine in favour of what one might term imported dining experiences. The Mallorcan is, therefore, the beneficiary of greater consumer choice; thus is the nature of free (or free-ish) markets anywhere. Don't think that it is only tourists who frequent the Dakotas, because it isn't, though clearly the restaurants fulfil, if not a tourist requirement, then at least the creation of tourist demand. Not all tourists want the quaint Mallorcan restaurant, especially those tourists with demanding kids' mouths to fill. And don't underestimate the power of the child dining-out lobby; the kids are frequently the fulcrum of the family purchasing process. Someone said to me not so long ago that the Dakotas don't go far enough and that there is scope for more razzamatazz of an Americana style; this could well be right.
There exists among some of the expat community and also visitors a sort of reactionary militant tendency that would have places like Puerto Pollensa stuck in a timewarp of what might be dubbed "Mallorcana". They want it both ways. The influx of expats is a facet of change; they are a facet of change. Yet they wish all around to remain unaltered. The Dakotas reflect a change that does not fit with the romantic image of Puerto Pollensa. But the place has undergone a change in its tourist demographic alongside the change in its physical appearance. Tourism is business, Puerto Pollensa is tourism business, and the Dakotas are business.
PUERTO POLLENSA FRONTLINE CLOSURE
There has been a plan to pedestrianise more of Puerto Pollensa's frontline for some while. How sensible this would be is another matter. But with the new road open, along comes this plan or at least a trial. And trial may well be what it is if one wants access. In the next ten days or so, the road will be closed to non-essential traffic or so I am led to believe. This will be, apparently, from the Galéon down into the port. Which raises the question - what will happen to all that parking by the beach? Chaos beckons.
QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Man On The Moon", REM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs4pTCqhTfY). Today's title - this was a film; what's the connection with today's piece?
(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)
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