Universal Tamal

225 S Main St
Goshen, IN 46526

Much to my relief, Google Maps severely overestimated how long it would take to get from my house to the Goshen library, so instead of being half an hour late, I arrived twenty minutes early. Just enough time for a quick snack at the Electric Brew, I thought, continuing north past the meeting place. It’s been a while since I had a good bagel and fair trade espresso with…BUT WAIT! I’ve never seen that place before! I saw through the window that it was almost full, with a group of four Spanish-speaking men standing just outside the door, talking away their Saturday afternoon.

The interior was very Goshen: Wood floor, stamped tin ceiling, a bay window—the richly crafted guts of a Main Street building in a city that built itself without realizing that a hundred years later it would be the kind of place the young or successful would want to leave. The original contractor was hired to make a glorious commercial structure. Subsequent contractors were hired to update in the cheapest way possible. So the tin roof is pierced by Menards light fixtures, the wood floor abuts vinyl. A 6-socket box triples the utility of an outlet.

An 8x4 mural of a celestial hand sowing a Mexican field precedes menu banners possibly printed in the USA but obviously designed in Mexico: The menu subheadings arch across photos of the offerings, font rounded, gleaming. Big ears of corn with flirtatious husks pose in such a way that makes it impossible to NOT order a tamale. Brutally superimposed suns shine into the logos for Coca-cola, Sprite, Fanta, and Jarritos.

They aren’t on the menu, but you can also purchase the following medicinal products on display below the cash register: OML PLUS, Starbien, KENYAN, and cumbia albums.

I had only 15 minutes until my meeting, so my first two questions were: (1) can I get carryout? and (2) How long will it take to get a wet burrito? The teenager behind the counter turned to her coworker for guidance on answering my second question, and within my earshot was told, cinco o diez minutos. I later came to learn that meant five or ten minutes.

No, that’s a lie. As time went on I came to learn that it actually meant twenty minutes, you shouldn’t have come to a real restaurant and still expected food in five minutes when the joint is full, silly guero. But I wasn’t too on edge; Viva la Familia on Univision numbed me down with its daytime normalizing propaganda.

The good news was that I ended up being ALMOST on time. The bad news is that the burrito wasn’t very tasty. I think my $5.99 could have been broken down as follows: $0.45 lettuce, $0.46 cheese, $1.03 crema, $1.96 steak, $2.09 tortilla. See? Too much tortilla. A little undercooked still, even after 20 minutes. Also, hard to eat a wet burrito in the car on the way to the library, but that’s not Universal Tamal’s fault, that’s that gueroness shining through.

So I came back after my meeting. That’s right. I couldn’t stop thinking about those cartoon ears of corn. Tamales awaited.
I ordered one of pork and one of cheese ($1.25 each), and asked about the natural juices against the wall: they had, for $2.00, tamarind and horchata (milk and rice). Washing a cheese tamale down with a big glass of horchata seemed like overkill so I ordered the tamarind and took a seat.

During lunch there had been only one other non-latino party, and one of those gringas spoke wicked castilian. The clientele at Universal Tamal is 95% Latino and Latina; about 95% of that subgroup is Mexican. If you are surprised that there are that many Latinos in Goshen, don’t be. Look up the statistics, or just consider the fact that Chelsea Clinton visited the discoteca just behind Universal Tamal while campaigning for her mom.

The tamarind juice—they actually say “fresh water” instead of “juice”—was uber refreshing. No sugar added. No colors added. Just brown brown quenching crispness on an unreasonably hot September day.

Wanna hear about the tamales? Okay, although I’ve never done it, I think you make them by taking the corn husk, rubbing flour on the inside so it doesn’t stick together then laying the corn meal mix, filling with the variable ingredient, and rolling. Then you steam it. Now keep in mind that this is a consumer-end deduction, but I’m pretty sure that the liquid factor is the hardest to get right. I’ve had a lot of too dry or too runny tamales. But Universal Tamal had it down. The pork was phenomenal, but the cheese one will stick in my memory much much longer. Probably forever. As my eyes scanned the menu I came to regret not ordering the birria (steamed goat) and made a mental note that my next breakfast in Goshen would consist of menudo.

I stopped at the Electric Brew on the way out of town, just so it would know that I still loved it. (But shhhh, there’s better eats down the street!)

Leroy's Hot Stuff, Porter

333 W. US Hwy 20,
Porter, IN 46304

It seems like up north there’s always wireless. In southern Indiana you can drive down back roads without ever finding a signal (but if you do, you can bank on it being unsecured). But along US 20 in Porter, Indiana, even in the middle of industrial expanses, the modems at the Blue Beacon Truckwash and Travel America pierce through railroad cars and patches of forest to bring civilization to that which is not tame.

Multi-million dollar operations line the grungy highway. The roadway is there to serve giants: it doesn’t convey families turning off every 50 meters into neighborhoods where every inch of ground is touched by a lawn mower wheel or child’s bare foot. It conducts semis bearing rolls of steel, making their way from Lake County mills to processing plants. The local operations pickle the steel, cut it to length, stamp it or reroll it, and send it to other enterprises who form it into another shape that the end user will still never see. The environment is wooded and wild not of its own will, but because we chose to lace power lines and smatter factories throughout, and while these structures require area they don’t actually touch every inch of it.Along this stretch of road is Leroy’s Hot Stuff. I approached on a damp September night, the way lit only by my headlights, a single sodium vapor light, and the yellow marquee advertising Karaoke night on Thursdays (My friend Lindsey: “Yes! What luck!”). We had wondered what “hot stuff” Leroy had to offer us—hoping that we didn’t need to tip it. But the “Mexican Restaurant” sign on the door explained it; the hottest thing Leroy could possibly put before us would be salsa picante. The place wasn’t packed, but it certainly was full—it took a little while for song requesters around the DJ to make enough room for us to weave through the crate paper streaming from the front door lintel. Inside we saw two areas: the first full of tables, a spore of a dining space that, on Thursdays, consists of DJ, stage, and participants of varying passivity. On the other side of a half wall stood a pool table and the bar.

On this particular night Leroy’s was just a Karaoke bar, but it refuses to be pigeonholed as such. Earlier in the day it was full of eager customers looking for Mexican takeout. Before that, tired 3^rd shifters and drowsy 1^st shifters lined the place, trying to decline Lou Dog’s offers to buy rounds of 151 and wondering why a Mexican restaurant serves the “all-American breakfast”. Call it the NAFTA scramble.

Barack Obama, on a recent visit to the area, snubbed Leroy’s and chose to hold his campaign event at Schoops. But come on, Barack, it’s not that bad. Yeah, Leroy’s is known to be a biker bar, but mostly just because they sponsor all the poker runs! They’re just connected to the community, they just want to help people, is that such a crime? Leroy’s is the sort of place to exchange fight stories rather than make them. You could bring your kids and everyone would have a good time, but, well, I suppose the discretion neurons of the head(s) of household might start firing as the night went on…

They had Dos Equis Ambar on tap, a pitcher cost me $6, and I don’t think it was on special. “$6?!?! I’ve paid Ticketmaster service charges that cost more than $6,” Lindsey rejoiced/mourned.

The people doing the Karaoke had mad skill. It wasn’t so much raw talent as obvious training. Why did everybody, rednecks and all, know how to count off a song in 6:8, or how to exaggerate a triplet? This is the apparent dissonance of Northwest Indiana, a zone where Chicago local news reaches deep into farmland, where you spend Friday night at DC’s Country Junction and check out the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturday morning. Porter County has the highest per-capita income in Indiana aside from those which house the northside Indianapolis suburbs, thanks largely to years of boom economy factory wages. Money from big industry and Chicago bedroom community residents have meant tax revenues to build and promote successful schools with killer music programs. I’m betting that we had a number of former Drifters and Sandpipers, Chesterton High School showchoir kids, in the house that night. Music is big, and not just “Before He Cheats” (although one patron put Carrie Underwood to shame). And for some reason I can’t figure out, in Northwest Indiana it’s cool to be smart in school and maybe carrying a flute on Friday nights is just as cool as carrying a pigskin.

We spied refuge with a perfect view of the karaoke mic at the half-wall partition. Lindsey and I zigzagged over to put down the pitcher, never suspecting that we would have wandered into a danger zone. A living cowboy bobble head in front turned around to glare at us. His angry eyes peered out from the slit between an oversized brim and his brick of a mustache. We could see like no skin on this guy. Flannel shirt and Wrangler jeans conspired to leave just his hands and the aforementioned slit exposed to the elements. I had begun to get nervous when the thin middle-aged woman in high-waisted jeans and a leopard-print shirt next to us leaned in for the save. “He bought the pool table for the night, and you’re blocking his view of the game. Wanna take my spot so he can see?” We figured the right answer was yes. He had hardly turned back toward the stage when another unsuspecting victim wandered into the territory. “Hey, buddy, is that your girlfriend?” the cowboy gestured toward Lindsey. “Um,” the victim quivered, “naw, but she sure is pretty!” “Well you better snuggle up anyway! You’re blocking my view of the table!” My friend looked to me for intervention, only to find me cowardly staring straight ahead as to not make eye contact with her. The cowboy leaned in close to me. “You shoot pool?” “Uh, not well.” “We’ve got the table for the whole night, so after these guys are done, come on over…but we don’t play for nothin’.” I coolly responded by mumbling until he turned back around.

So yeah, Leroy’s is backwoods, unrefined, boorish, redneck. It’s a little wild. But no matter how far skilled wages fall and urban gentrification depresses suburbs, this part of the state will always have a legacy of grandness at its core. It’s hot stuff.