So I’m on the red-eye flight back to Atlanta now, and I’m telling myself to write something, before I go into zombie mode and watch Castlevania or the Mandalorian on my iPad, because once I start, I’ll probably until we touch down.
So Adobe MAX is now in the past, and I can say that it was a pretty good trip, overall. Adobe really put on a flashy and fairly informative conference, and from what I could hear from those who have been to prior years, it was run smoother and had fixed a lot of issues.
Traveling with some work colleagues was enjoyable and I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit of opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better. The hotel was nice, and I was the tryhard who brought some gym gear and managed to get in two maintenance workouts while out there.
Best of all, it was all covered by work, so all of my food and the airport transport are expensed, and they naturally picked up the tab on the show admission and the hotel.
Despite being there for some work purposes, I still made a point of carving out some me-time, in the form of wandering around the city and eating some abominations of Mexican food that the internet has been teasing me of their existence for the last year. Of course, they fell into the parameters of my daily food per diem amount, which only sweetened the pot that I could expense things that I would’ve gladly paid for out of pocket to begin with.
First, I tracked down the quesarito-burrito that I first saw on some rando-Instagram reel that was fed to me for some reason despite being all the fuck away in DTLA. The best part was going in there and explaining that I wanted something that wasn’t on the menu and that it was something I saw on the internet; and I had to show them their own reel to jog their memory, but it was good enough for them to get me the burrito I had been covering for months.
And it was basically everything I hoped it would be, a California-style burrito, but wrapped in a quesarito instead of an ordinary tortilla. I could’ve finished it, but in doing so, I could’ve really derailed a large part of my trip, plus I was getting the meat sweats something fierce from just how rich it was, or maybe it was the Reaper sauce that added to it or maybe both, so I tapped when I was like 75% finished.
Next, came the trash can nachos that I had heard about, and became enamored with. Ordinarily, I’d have tried to go there for dinner, but upon learning that being in DTLA, they operated at downtown hours, so I kind of had to pivot and hit them up for lunch instead.
They were located in what google called the fashion district, but seemed like a giant shopping district for quinceñeras or something. Regardless, it took a little bit of walking around but I found the place in this quirky small food court loaded with nothing but Mexican and Asian foods. Again, I had to ask for the trash can nachos as they’re not on the menu, and once again I felt like some secret agent or something asking for some illicit.
Ten minutes later, it was brought out to me in what looked like a coffee can. Just like I had seen on the internet, the can was pulled up, and pouring out onto the plate was a mountain of chips, guacamole, beans, jalapeños, sauces, more chips, more cheese, and carne asada. Naturally, it was as good as it looked, and much like with the quesarito-burrito, I opted to throw in the towel instead of forcing myself to finish it.
Between the two internet-found foods, I’m hard pressed to decide on what was better. The quesarito-burrito is a true novelty item, but the nachos had some insane presentation value. Frankly, nachos really should only be made and served trashcan style, and if I had to really pick one of the two, I think I’m going with the nachos.
But I suppose I should say something about the conference seeing as how it was what brought me out to the left coast in the first place; again, it was a fun show in the sense of production value, and shine and presentation that went into it.