You lived to tell the tale; so did I. This was a Mexican restaurant and the menu said something like Camarones asados en mantequilla, which sounded to me like Shrimp Scampi. When it came, the shrimp tasted like... well, what I imagine a kitchen sponge would taste like altho I've never chawed on one.

Still, it didn't have the romance of when I lived in Santiago Isquintla. There was a street vendor who came around with a little cart yelling "TAMALES DE CAMARON!!" so loud it would have rattled the windows if they had glass. I was never stupid enough to get one...

We went to a baseball game and he came into the stands yelling his thing. The guy sitting in front of me bought one to go with his Pepsi. A tamale is a thing like a corn dog. This would be one with shrimp in the middle. So this guy bites the end off it, and out pops the head of this single HUGE shrimp, more like a lobster! with little beady eyes, and two antennae about 20 inches long flipping out! I guess the critter hadn't even been gutted or cleaned at all.

But the story doesn't end there. At this night game, being in a tropical climate, there were bugs. They were of course attracted to the field lights, circling around up there like a live fog. Well, in this place, there is a beetle which we would occasionally see dead in the gutter or wherever; grossest thing you ever saw - stark black, about 4-5 inches long, with a pair of pinchers or arms sticking out the front end that looked for all the world like a pair of woman's naked legs, if she was a very black African. And one of these lovely insects tried to ram his way right into the intensely hot bright light, and either dazed or fried, came spiralling down and plopped right in the guy's paper cup of Pepsi.

Guy's name? Suertisimo