The Best Tamale I've Ever Had

The best tamale I’ve ever had was on the island of Caye Caulker, Belize, bought for $1US from a young man on a bicycle who had loaded the basket on his handlebars with tamales his wife had made that morning, a bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh, wrapped in masa, wrapped again in a banana leaf, and then steamed. I stopped at a convenience store on my way back to my hotel for a bottle of Belikin beer, and then sat on the balcony, looking out at the Caribbean, and savoring the greasy, delicious tamale with my fingers. I say without doubt it was “the best tamale I’ve ever had,” but I can’t say it was because the tamale. There are certain places and moments when you can’t separate the experience of food from the experience of place or moment. Would that same tamale have been “the best I’ve ever had” if I had it in my kitchen at home with a PBR while watching TV? Probably not. The experience of buying it spontaneously from the basket on the handlebars of a bike on a sand street on a Caribbean island, eating it with my fingers while drinking a local beer, the wind blowing in from the sea – all of this went into the eating of the meal. And all of it is in the memory.