Andando ociosamente -como el pájaro de Acámbaro- entre las páginas editoriales de The New York Times, en encontré sorpresivamente con esta intervención acerca del mole oaxaqueño. Descartando leer otras notas “in” como Schiavo e Iraq, tomé atención de esta y decidí compartirla en Los Dardanelos Inc. Me pareció una curiosa aproximación al mole de parte de un paladar gringo, por lo que a continuación reproduzco un interesante fragmento:

I thought of those analogies the other night at a popular Oaxacan restaurant called Guelaguetza on the edge of Korea Town in Los Angeles. We had ordered several of the moles – thick, complex sauces – on the menu, including a dense red coloradito, a brick-colored rojo and one called, simply, black. A three-piece band in white suits played near the entrance. Near the back, where we sat, a large-screen TV broadcast a Spanish-language version of “American Idol.” The roar of the crowd in the restaurant was nearly opaque.

Then I took a bite of the black mole, stolen on the end of a tortilla from my wife’s plate. It was a sudden infusion of silence. I tried to understand what I was tasting, but I had no language for it. I had never tasted so many things at once, so perfectly blended, all of them floating on what felt like a charred residue, a mouthful of mourning.

I took another bite and suddenly could not help thinking of a time when I was little and the town oiled the gravel road in front of our house. Nothing in life should ever taste like that scene, and nothing that tastes like that scene should be worth eating. But so that mole tasted to me at that moment in Guelaguetza: wonderful, tragic, impossible, and burdened by a profound grasp of reality.