Resistance is Futile, We are Pollo Campero Borg

Soon everyone will be familiar with this logotype. Resistance is futile, all of you will be assimilated, we are the borg-campero. Juan José Gutiérrez and Dionisio Gutiérrez remind me of Pinky and The Brain because of their new weekly plans to take over the world. The first plan began over 35 years ago, 1971 to be precise, in tiny joint in Guatemala City. Their plan was very simple: let’s make a clone of Kentucky Fried Chicken and let’s sell it the world over. So far their plan has taken as far many U.S. cities, Madrid and Jakarta and in ten days to Shanghai. In China, Pinky and The Brain Gutiérrez plan to open up 500 new restaurants in the next five years; that is little over 8 restaurants per month. The Gutiérrez plan is to convince-convert the world over to their recipe of fried chicken which is tender, juicy and crunchy by way of plain logic: after all, how can 1.7 billion Chinese be wrong, right?

Coffee, Bagels and WIFI in La Antigua Guatemala

The Bagel Barn is one of those rare places that offer magnificent coffee, light and tasteful bagel sandwiches and free WIFI so you can update your blog or site if you bring a laptop with wireless connection. I showed the Bagel Barn blackboard menu before to talk about WIFI access points throughout Antigua Guatemala. Free WIFI access points —wireless internet access for those who don’t know what wifi is— are actually available in many restaurants and cafes around Antigua. You can check you email, look at some photos on Flickr or watch videos on Youtube, on Pollo Campero, McDonald’s, Burger King and other small bistros. Boy! how I wish I had a new laptop.

Consecutive Day 3645 — Fresh-fruit Drive-thru

We do not have any fast food drive thrus in Antigua Guatemala, except for perhaps Pollo Campero on Alameda Santa Lucía. Another option might be the Cafe Condesa Express on the exit street that leads to Guatemala City. That is about it. We do have lots of fresh fruit drive-throughs as the one picture here … Read more

Restaurant & Food Overview

RWOrange put together a very comprehensive list of the restaurants and food I have covered in AntiguaDailyPhoto in Chowhound. Here’s the list of options to dine in La Antigua Guatemala. Antigua Daily Photo has become my food bible as well as a wonderful resource for all things about Antigua. It is updated daily and well … Read more

Guatemalan Weekend Fashion

The people from Guatemala City are known as capitalinos; residents of the Capital city. Women from Guatemala City would be capitalinas. La Antigua Guatemala is a popular weekend destination for capitalinos (as) since it’s only an hour separates the Old Guatemala City from the New Guatemala City. So, it is on the weekends that we … Read more

Resistance is Futile

Pollo Campero is Guatemala’s most successful transnational company. With its tender, juicy and crunchy fried chicken, Campero has done what other Central American companies can only dream of, take their brand the world over. There are now many business schools and consultants doing Pollo Campero case studies. Pollo Campero: Conquering the World of Fried Chicken … Read more

Hugo’s Ceviches: Concha Seviche

You can tell Ceviche is my favorite Guatemalan Cuisine dish if you search for the word ceviche or just browse the five photos of ceviches posted thus far. But I am not the only one, Guy from Inner Diablog, has as many entries dedicated to ceviche as I do. Both of us have even describe … Read more

Arch-framed Women in Jocotenango

This is very simple image will allow us to play a creative game. Taking the two women as our characters we will write up one of many conceivable dialogues as the interaction between them. This would be similar to what we did in Opposite Ends of Life #2, which you should look at and read to get an idea. The apparent age difference could be used to set the pair as mother and daughter or sisters or simply co-workers of the newly opened Subway; it is up to you. I will submit the first plausible dialogue.

Antigüeño Breakfast at Rainbow Cafe

The Guatemalan Writers Side Note:
For being such a tiny banana/coffee writers republic, Guatemala does produce and export quite a few good writers. I have mentioned some of them in this site like Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Pepe Milla, Ronald Flores. But, I have not done enough to talk about the great Guatemalan Literature written by its many excellent writers. Thanks to a comment by Coltrane_Lives about the possibility of his adopted Guatemalan daughter becoming a writer, I can point out a great Guatemalan novel written in English by Francisco Goldman, a respected journalist whose work appears often in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books and Harper’s (source: literaturaguatemalteca.org [ES]). “Francisco Goldman won accolades and international recognition with his extraordinary first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts… ” (source: amazon.com). Another great contemporary novel is Ruido de fondo (background noise) by my dear friend Javier Payeras. Javier Payeras is one of the clearest and loudest voices of this generation and his poetry and prose has won the recognition in and outside Guatemala. Ruido de fondo has been reissued by the Guatemala’s Government Editorial Cultura to be required reading for High School students in Guatemala. For those who are fluent in Spanish, I leave the link to one of my favorites poems by Payeras: Soledadbrother.

Theme Day: Typical Breakfast

Basically, the Guatemalan breakfast includes black beans, eggs, coffee and maize tortillas or bread; it may also include fried plantain, cream, creese and chirmol sauce. The black beans can be served parados or whole, revueltos or refried and licuados or liquified. The eggs can be served sunny side up like the picture above, boiled or scrambled.