Patzcuaro: Not a Food Fright; an Adventure.

In the city center of Patzcuaro, Mexico, women in the evening sell chicken that they fry in free-standing pans. The pieces of chicken for sale, partly pre-cooked, sit on the edge of the frying pan, and potatoes cook in the center of the pan.

I asked a woman how much the meal cost. She told me that the chicken came with potatoes and five tortillas, and it cost 55 pesos. I said that was fine.

The vendor was a handsome elderly woman with her white hair pulled back in a pony tail. She wore a full white apron over her beige knit shirt and black skirt.

She asked me if I wanted breast meat or leg meat. When she asked, she put her ungloved finger directly on the piece that she was talking about. To my American eye, this looked wrong. But I was not in America; this was Mexico. I chose the breast. And after all, I thought, the chicken was going into the middle of the pan before I ate it.

The concave frying pan sits on a brazier that sits on a skeleton of thin, black, metal bars. The brazier has an open vent next to the fuel. While the chicken cooked, the vendor constantly and vigorously fanned the fuel with a woven fan.

Like the chicken and the potatoes, the tortillas went into the middle of the pan. She counted out five of them and, in two batches - four and one - she hand dipped them in a red sauce. As she pulled the tortillas from the sauce, her fingers were red with it. They remained so as she finished cooking the meal.

When the chicken was fully cooked, she pulled it off the pan with her fingers.

I hope I do not sound condescending. American government sometimes is hyperactive, and maybe our food regulations reflect that. I have heard that Peking duck is not served in Chinatown in Los Angeles. Apparently, its method of preparation does not meet local health standards. That is a shame. I have eaten and enjoyed that dish in China, and I never was sick from it.

A nice finish to this piece would be a rave report of the deliciousness of the meal.

Well, the potatoes and the tortillas were very good. Parts of the chicken were somewhat dry. But it was late, and maybe the meat had waited too long on the edge of the pan before I chose it. But the flavor was fine.

Everywhere I have traveled, I have tried to eat the street food. Eating like a local adds to the adventure of travel. And often, people who make their homes where I travel seem to like my effort to eat as they do.