Comments (0) Best Orange Juice - 2000

El Charro Taqueria No. 1

Well, hell. The alarm failed you again; the sun's already long up, importing sweat through the panes and overpowering the asthmatic window unit, and somehow -- hard to remember exactly -- you're hungover. Again. You can tell even before you rise from the pillows that actual food retention is not going to be an option for several hours at least, and even at that, not unless something substantially restorative happens between now and then. You need to put something good in your body and start crawling back to life, or there's a better-than-even chance you'll be dead or wishing you were by four o'clock. You need orange juice. And if anyone serves up a better glass of juice than El Charro, we'd like to hear how they do it. You order. The waitress unloads a pile of oranges from the storage rack, halves them with a knife and feeds them into a whirring electric juicer, which spits the pure, pulpy nectar out into your choice of a tall parfait glass (small, $1.25) or a monstrous heavy-glass fishbowl (large, $3). You sip, slowly at first, merging onto recovery road, thankful that the Tejano jukebox's skull-crushing bass doesn't crank up till evening, eyeing the plastic "Homey" figurines for sale in the modified gumball machine (Collect All Four!), and grateful for the continued existence of such cheap mercy.