A Taste of Home

Following Taste, Finding More

El Gato Negro | Vilnius, Lithuania x Taquería Chingón | Chicago, USA

While I’m back in a place I love, and I do really love it here again, I find myself wading and wallowing through heavy, unfamiliar territory. I’m desperately homesick. I’ve tried to change my flight several times since I arrived in Vilnius for no reason that I can discern other than I just want to go home.

I can’t sleep. I lay awake for hours playing out the time I have left. I’ve cancelled and remade dinner reservations. I’m plagued by a morose and lazy anxiety, a mind that can’t or won’t slow down, a heightened sense of dread about my increasingly uncertain, un-budding future. First-world problems, I know. That only agitates me all the more. Give it up, I think. Get a job. Get a life. Get a grip.

Worse yet, I feel rejected by a place I thought I had been called back to – back to for what? This?

In some ways, I’m relieved; in others, I’m humbled. Not every trip or bite and sip can unlock purpose and passion. Sometimes they are what they are. And I am starting to appreciate that even the most magical of places can only mirror back to us who we arrive as.

At some point, this past weekend, however, I finally got over the “I have to change my flight” hurdle. I recognized this was the shape of this trip. Vilnius wasn’t a grand, poetic aha. It was a challenge. I knew the story I was after would be inside of that challenge, too. I knew deep down the confidence and conviction I was suddenly after was inside of that challenge if I had the guts to brave it out.

It didn’t ease my frayed nerves that my first meal of connection and consequence took four days to find. That was at least two meals too late. And yet, I had a hunch as Saturday approached that El Gato Negro in Vilnius’ new town could be the culinary linchpin I was hungry for.

I first want to address the elephant in the room. In the last couple of years, I have noticed that Mexican cuisine is finally getting some real love and investment in Europe. So, Mexican in Lithuania? Hell yes.

A Michelin Bib sign hung outside the cute storefront. Inside the space was richly and tastefully decorated. I was pleased to see the owners opted to forgo the cliché symbols of Mexican culture, layering instead the dining rooms with artful restraint. Thoughtful touches of texture and color would set the stage for what was already shaping up to be a meal I’d long remember.

After sitting down, I struggled in the best kind of agony, with what to order for my main entrée – the fish with yellow mole and plantains, the grilled octopus or the spicy roasted cauliflower. The starter was never up for discussion. I would take the duck carnitas tacos alongside the cauliflower. A killer combo.

I can still remember the way I felt when I took my first bite of those tacos. Lighter. Nourished. Comforted.

While nothing could ever replace the taste of my favorite tacos at Chicago’s Taqueria Chignon in Fulton Market, these duck carnitas took me back home for just long enough that I could recognize Taste’s reassuring nudge and providence.

In that first bite and every one thereafter, I felt a genuine connection to home.

All at once, I was eating something remarkable from a cozy eatery in Vilnius and a table back home surrounded by whatever it was I had been so desperate to feel.

The next day, I thought about those tacos as I walked up and down the city. This time, a different recognition washed over me. A settling.

I can do this. And I knew – this – was so much more than just sticking it out a few more days in a beautiful place. This was continuing to let go and trust what I had become so accustomed to following. Taste, My Compass.