At Los Jarritos, the Reyes Padilla family's sit-down eatery on the corner of South Van Ness and 20th, components of the restaurant's fantastic chilaquiles remo are reminiscent of canonized comfort foods from other cultures.

Like noodles in a day-old lasagne, the quarters of fried corn tortilla are pasta-like, smothered in tomato sauce, congealed, pinioned under an oozing crown of cheese.  Nestled amongst the bits of tortilla, the long-simmered strands of chicken taste as if they have been lifted from a huffing stockpot of soup.  Scrambled eggs are there too, slippery and elusive, binding everything into a velvety mass further enriched and enlivened by a pour of crema.  As the crema melts and disappears, the effect is smooth:  none of the comforting elements stand out unless they're deliberately eaten apart from the others; taken together, the flavors are big and familiar, yet invigorating and, to the uninitiated, new.

Sometimes, the homiest dishes -- foods without pretense or artifice -- are most revealing about the cultures from which they spring, and inspire the most debate amongst their devotees.  However, from countless regional Mexican renditions -- like white sauces in Sinaloa and Guadalajara's polenta-like cazuela cook-downs -- to American adaptations that echo Tex-Mex migas, all chilaquiles aim to soothe -- regardless of a particular variation's provenance and claims to authenticity.

The other weekend, hungover and exhausted from a morning of pick-up basketball, I was looking for comfort in sustenance.  I found it easily, several thousand calories' worth:  two distinct and excellent versions of chilaquiles served up at two very different Mission District establishments.

The chilaquiles at Los Jarritos aren't particularly spicy, merely salty and luxurious.  Cranberry-colored and riddled with ice, a pitcher-sized glass column of agua fresca de jamaica -- a refreshing tea-like infusion of dried hibiscus flowers -- compliments the richness with tart notes as well as sweetness.

Furthermore, you need not make a breakfast of chilaquiles alone.  The "Mexicano" side of the divided desayunos menu -- the one from which you should be ordering -- is rife with other enticing offerings, like machaca, a melange of flank steak, scrambled eggs, onions, tomatoes, and peppers, and huevos divorciados.  The latter boasts tender pork cubes in two sauces -- a red, oily chile colorado and a spicy, slightly sour chile verde -- kept separate and served atop two runny fried egg rounds.  The basket of pillowy, sweating tortillas comes in handy here. Strips of the thick discs are good for sopping sauce and scooping up errant morsels, but, nibbled unadorned, they also offer a welcome respite from the heavy assault of pig and eggs.

Interestingly, there are huevos con amor as well, but they are not as delicious and, surprisingly, no less expensive.

Inside, Los Jarritos looks as bold as its food tastes, like a typically kitschy roadside diner wonderfully lost in translation.  A chalkboard announces specials like birria and menudo.  The tabletops are a lively turquoise; sombreros swing from hooks high up on the walls alongside toy guitars in pastel hues and large black-and-white photographs.  A miniature plastic marlin peers down blankly from a lower perch.  Tiny painted drinking mugs -- the restaurant's namesake -- hang in bunches between the windows.
 
By comparison, the interior of the four-year-old Los Pastores is demure:  a floor tiled in matte brown squares, a beige back counter, and peach walls dotted with a few faded reviews in simple frames.  If the inside of the restaurant is austere, the outside is barely visible at all, even from just across the street -- a narrow storefront at the foot of Bernal Hill, right where Cortland runs into Mission.

Chilaquiles con huevos from Los Pastores. Photo by Bucko W.

Here, the chilaquiles con huevos barely resemble their chicken-laden counterparts at Los Jarritos. Tortilla triangles are fried until they are brittle and brown around the edges, and arranged over a shallow pool of thin green sauce shot through with citrus and chile heat.  Cojita-studded crema tops the chips, darting out in little rivulets from under a trio of overlapping fried eggs that leak yolk at the slightest twist of a fork.  When the big plate arrives, the individual parts are distinct, uncombined, but their sum emerges gradually over the course of eating.  The first few bites contain crisp tortilla, a little sauce, and a sliver or two of egg.  Pour the bowlful of extra sauce over the eggs, and let it soak in.  Once the sauce has done its work, and the broken yolks from the eggs have been swirled in, the tortilla chips will be soft, with just a pleasurable hint of the old crunch remaining.  You can order chilaquiles with steak in lieu of eggs but either way, skip coffee, and instead slurp a pineapple agua fresca -- ultra-sweet, extremely cold, and topped with pale froth like a soda jerk's quaffable confection.

Because chef, owner, and server Irma Calderon does all the work herself, service at Los Pastores is fastest when the room is empty -- early on a weekend morning.  Bustling Los Jarritos is a more polished operation, but a server still sidles up and cracks, "time's up!" five minutes after the menus have been opened -- not that you really care.

Visit either restaurant on a Saturday at any time, order up some chilaquiles, and indulge in a self-satisfied smirk as you contemplate the mornings many neighborhood brunchers are putting themselves through:  forty-five minute waits on crammed sidewalks for mediocore food they'll end up scarfing in a 20-minute frenzy.  

Oh, you might be waiting too, but at least you'll be at a table, comforted by the chilaquiles in your near future, sipping an agua fresca, and enjoying good fellowship -- ingredients of which great morning meals are made.

Are you as tired of hearing about the End-of-Times as I am? If one is to believe all the hullabaloo, we humans have slightly more than 3 years to live until catastrophe strikes.

The ancient Egyptians predicted a great disaster would come in the year 2012, crazy present-day Belgians, Canadians, and Americans are forming survival groups to prepare for total global meltdown in the same year. Even the folks at N.A.S.A. are all predicting a sharp increase in the number of sun flares and sunspots in 2012. Nostradamus, unsurprisingly, got in on the act, too. Of course, if one writes several hundred vague quatrains promising future doom and gloom, some of them are bound to hit on something gruesome.

Perhaps the biggest fuss of all is being made by the Chicken Littles (or Chickens Little, if Little is a family name) who point to the ancient Mayan calendar and claim that the sky is falling. Alarmists of several nations are pointing to the fact that the Mayan long count cycle will come to it's 5,125-year end on or about the 21st of December, 2012.

I am no expert on the Mayan calendar but, having studied their art and pulled out most of my hair spending several months trying to remember Mayan names and the meaning of lord-knows-how-many Mayan glyphs in college, I came to learn that there was no culture more dean-on in their observation of the stars and the passage of time. Their calendar was long the most accurate that anyone had devised, pre-dating our Gregorian calendar by several centuries. It's even believed they came up with the concept of the zero about 400 years before the mathematicians of India (though one must give the Sumerians their due for coming up with the zero first and blame others for promptly losing that knowledge.). In short, apart from the occasional thorn-spiked rope-through-the-tongue bloodletting business, the Mayans knew what the hell they were doing.

It's just that they never said the end of this 5,125-ish-year cycle meant the end of the world. I think they just meant it will be the end of a cycle and the beginning of the next. That's it. One would think desperate Republicans would be latching on to this as they start gearing up for the 2012 presidential race. It wouldn't be any more crazy then what the Doomsday survivalists are doing.

Where am I headed with this, you might ask? Well, all this End-of-Times crazy is driving me to drink, not that I need to be driven far. If I decide to buy into the brewing hysteria, I am liable to drown my sorrows in appropriately-themed Mexican cocktails.

If these kooks are correct and the end of the world is, in fact, nigh, I say drink up. Why worry about liver damage if the world is coming to an end? If they are wrong and the end isn't so nigh and I wake up to a clear sky and the sweet warbling of Franklin Street traffic on the 22nd of December, 2012, I am going to have one hell of a bad hangover. I'm going to need something to soak up three years-worth of margaritas.

I'm going to need chilaquiles-- the sure-fire, Mexican breakfast of hung-over champions. And I'm going to need a lot of it. I will be prepared. I will stock up like the survivalists on corn tortillas and red chili sauce. I will hoard cojita cheese.

If, for some reason, the Mayans were off by a day and the 22nd of December winds up being even more of a hell-on-earth than the Holiday season has already made that particular time of year, as long as I've had a heaping plate of chilaquiles, some fried eggs, and a few bites of beans, I'll feel fine. Really, I will.

And then, if my pen has not yet vaporized or been covered in volcanic ash, I will write a rather contrite letter of apology to those not-so-crazy Doomsdayers.

Chilaquiles

According to Chow.com, the word "chilaquiles" refers to a "broken-up old sombrero." This is, in my opinion, a direct and charming way of telling the reader that this dish is--though quite delicious in a functional, comforting sort of way-- not going to be very pretty. According to Urban Dictionary, "chilaquile" can be used as a substitute for nearly any noun, verb, or adjective. An extreme example of usage would be "Those chilaquiles were so chilaquilin' good that I nearly chilaquiled myself right there in the chilequile-ing restaurant." In other words, a less direct and even less charming way of telling the reader that something is-- though quite delicious in a functional, comforting sort of way-- not going to be very pretty.

This dish is very easy to make and very difficult to screw up. In other words, it's the perfect thing to make when one is hung over. Combined with eggs (scramble or, better yet, fried), and a dollop of Mexican crema, this dish will soothe and soak up anything the past 5,125 years or so has thrown at you.

Serves 2 to 4, depending upon the size of the hangover.

Ingredients:

For the Chilaquiles:

12 corn tortillas. Stale ones are ideal, but if there is no such thing as a stale corn tortilla in your household or you would never admit to it, buy some fresh and leave them to sit out overnight.

Vegetable oil (preferably corn oil, which you can call maize oil, if that helps you in any way)

About 2 cups of some sort of Mexican cuisine-derived sauce. Elise Bauer over at Simply Recipes offers an excellent and, of course, simple salsa verde recipe for this particular dish; The Food Network, if you are into them at all, can provide you with a great red chili sauce. There is no one, correct sauce to use here. Experiment to find your favorite version*.

Toppings:

Popular toppings include:

Cojita cheese, or queso fresco

Crema Mexicana, or crème fraîche, if you want to re-visit the short-lived, ill-fated, French-backed Mexican Empire.

Finely diced red onion

A squeeze of lime

torn up bits of roasted chicken

Avocado

Cilantro

Tiny Mexican flags

Unpopular toppings include:

Spanish, Austrian, French, or U.S. flags of any size

Preparation:

1. Cover the bottom a good-sized (read: large, preferably cast iron) skillet with about 1/8 inch of oil. When the oil is hot and a test piece of tortilla sizzles, add its brother and sister pieces to the pan-- making sure to coat all of them-- and fry until golden brown. Remove tortillas from the pan and drain on paper towels. Salt them generously. Wipe pan to remove any stray, brown pieces of tortilla.

2. Add about 2 tablespoons of oil to the same pan and heat through. Pour in salsa and cook for a few minutes to thicken slightly, then add tortilla pieces. Make certain all the pieces are well-coated by turning them gently in the sauce. If you break a few, I dare say it shouldn't matter much, given the dish's likening to a broken-up old sombrero. Let the mixture cook until most of the sauce has been absorbed, which is not more than five minutes, but not less than two. Remove from heat.

4. Heap the now-ready chilaquiles onto a platter and garnish with any of the above garnishes you wish. Serve warm.

*In the true spirit of hangover food, I think it's perfectly acceptable to purchase pre-made sauce. There are several good, reputable brands. Seriously. Call me Sandra Lee if you want to, but unless you are the type (A) kind of personality who plans ahead for his/her hangovers, the fewer steps to breakfast, the better.