Victory Food by Andy Quintana

Once everything closed down, and the fear of COVID-19 spread rampantly around the world, there was only one place I could turn for consistent comfort: home.

I had just finished working in LA when I returned back to Moreno Valley. My dad was still working from his office, my mom started working from home and she welcomed my company. “I’m so happy you’re here, Andy. I would’ve been here by myself, just having Laci, Garfield, and Eddie to talk with, but they’re asleep most of the time. Be honest with me: did you just come back to see us, or for food?” she asked. I slyly responded with my cheshire cat smile, “neither. Laundry.” Picture the expressionless face emoji on her face, as I playfully revived an old hobby of giving her a hard time.

It didn’t take long for me to revisit my old spots to eat throughout the city. My favorite Mexican food place Armando’s remained open with newly reconfigured safety protocols. I found this place during my college years when I was invited out with classmates. It didn’t take long for me to introduce the place to my family, to which very quickly we settled down to order our usual carne asada nachos with guacamole, sour cream, cheese and beans: Yum! This was the ultimate place we personally considered as Victory Food. Imagine having a rough day (i.e. school, work, idiots driving on the road, etc), or imagine you just aced a test you studied all night for, you received that job offer you desperately wanted, you get the gist. Whenever we would get Victory Food, we knew we had just accomplished something valuable, or knew that we just made it through another week and were ready to celebrate the weekend. We do however take into account the prices since the past ten years have accelerated the place as a luxury. As expensive as the place can be, you can definitely count on getting what you pay for, and we wanted to support small businesses during the shutdown by coming back at least once a week; so far it’s been going on one month.

If we wanted to cook Victory Food from home, my dad would cook his homemade pozole and menudo. Warning: the following sentences may not be veggie friendly, reader discretion is advised. Pozole is like a Mexican stew, garnished with red chili pepper, onions, garlic, hominy corn, and meat, either pork or beef depending on the cook. Menudo is a bit more traditional, a Mexican soup filled with red chili pepper, hominy corn and small pieces of cow stomach stirred to sheer perfection; I can just smell the heavenly aroma from our kitchen right now. Me, my mom, and my brother consider these two cuisines whenever my dad decides to make them the Halley’s Comet of food, a unicorn seen in public, an actual decently made Michael Bay film, you know they exist but hardly ever see it. He usually made enough to last two days, which is a lot of food between us four. As we would sit and enjoy, I would make it a habit to inquire to my brother when the last time we indulged upon this paradise. “Damn, I can’t really remember. I think the last time was like Christmastime,” Rob would variedly answer. He was right, as this is considered such a luxury above-luxury. This is the Victory Food you can ponder on everything you have done and accomplished to that point, and figure ‘wow, time really flew by so fast. I wonder what I’ll be doing after this, and what will be finished with by the time I have this food again.’

Moving to LA, I realized that no matter how much I research, no matter which places are recommended for me to eat, no matter how many times I can try and replicate the recipes, nothing can compare to the comfort from back home. I can always count on my family, my city and the food to be waiting whenever necessary. However, lately it hasn’t felt like any victories have occurred; moreso, negative thoughts on the uncertainty of the future have ramped my anxiety. This is why I had to retreat back home; to recover in the familiar. If the future is going to be sometimes hard to stomach through, I might as well fill it with something yummy.