The morning after the New Year’s Eve debauchery
| Start 2010 with a bowl of steaming tripe! |
It’s not particularly known as a hangover cure, but someone, somewhere is going to wake up on New Year’s Day with his or her skull just pounding — and craving a pig foot and a bottle of beer. You know what I mean? Some people eat before they fall asleep from a night of liquor-fueled hoopla, but trust me, that can have potentially dangerous consequences; there’s nothing quite as distasteful as vomiting up a bucket o’ spicy chicken wings and a box of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes — on your brand new comforter, no less — at 5 a.m. After that kind of gut-churning ordeal, 2010 has no where to go but down.
The right way to start the New Year is to wake up early enough to eat a hearty breakfast loaded with foods legendary for their curative powers. Like menudo, the spicy Mexican tripe soup with chili peppers and hominy (there’s often a calf’s foot in there too, but not a handful of cute singing teenage boys). Poco’s on the Boulevard, which re-opened as a Mexican buffet in September (although owner Lorenza “Poco” Guiterrrez continues to serve from the menu too, including those good old Waids-style malted waffles) will be open on New Year’s Day, offering a big vat of fiery menudo on the breakfast buffet.
Waffles may not be the ultimate hangover-relief breakfast unless they’re blanketed with butter. The secret, you see, is the grease. A breakfast rich in butter and bacon fat is a sure-fire way to stabilize the head-clanging dizziness of the morning after. If you’re thinking of the venerable Village Inn, you can follow up a cholesterol-laden cheese omelette, buttered toast, bacon and sausage with a hefty slab of Caramel Pecan Silk Supreme Pie. It’s open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. — so go ahead, sleep in, eat later!
