BY WYATT WILLIAMS

Every once in a while, I find myself at a restaurant where I’m the only person who speaks English. It usually isn’t much trouble, because I can point at things on the menu, cross my fingers and hope they’re the dishes I want.

On the other hand, I sometimes find myself at counter-service restaurants that have no menu. This isn’t much trouble, either, because I can usually chat with the guy running the register and figure out what’s best.

On rare occasions, though, I find myself at the intersection of the two: a cafe with no menu where very little English is spoken. If you’re a monolingual English speaker like me, you might be tempted at this moment to give up.

If that restaurant happens to be Xelapan Cafeteria , though, I beg you, do not give up. Try your best to remember the dozen or so words that kept you from failing that high school Spanish class and the nice woman behind the counter will do her best with the dozen or so English words she's picked up, too.

Read more about this mouth-watering restaurant here.

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Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

Credit: NYT