Sunday was basically a wash. I had a great run along the Mill Valley bike path. The sun was out. I felt strong. Stopped by Peet’s for a mid-morning latte on the way home, took a hot shower, watered the lawn and got ready to head over to the East Bay with my girls. Then… the plumbing disaster that ended up consuming the rest of the day. Suffice it to say there was lots of water, numerous soaking towels, a $1000 plumber (who happened to be an expert on black widows), and an afternoon down the drain–literally. So after napping a bit and ruminating about the Sunday I’d never get back, my curly-haired traveling companion and I hopped in the car and started driving with no clear sense of where we would go. Driving through Albany, it hit us: Fonda! Don’t they have an all-day happy hour? Weren’t they on the 100 Best List from the SF Chronicle?

Yes and yes. Fonda is an interesting marriage of rustic and industrial. Dark woods, dewey yellow paint, dim lighting, and a hatched big-beam ceiling. All this joined with funky metal tables, an upstairs loft for diners wanting to be set back away from the bustle a bit, and large warp-around windows. It’s almost two concepts, but it works. Everything but the booths. You sit down and immediately reminsice about last week’s Iyengar class and how much your grandma told you not to slouch. Stiff, firm, and unforgiving.

We began where all good things begin: drinks. It’s always amusing when people describe the strong drinks at a restaurant and I end up having to order an extra shot so I can actually taste the alcohol. Not at Fonda. I ordered the Cachaca Drop, reminscient of a Lemon Drop without the cloyingly sweet aftertaste. Cachaca is a Brazilian liquor like Rum except that it’s made from a distillation of sugar cane, whereas Rum’s made Molasses. Enough about the particulars. It was a refreshing summery drink with a good strong kick that helped me to ease into that stiff booth, just a little. My partner in crime tried the Nahuatl’s Punch: a blend of rum, lime and pineapple juices, and 7-up. It reminded me a little bit of what we’d mix up in high school using cheap ingredients to mask the taste of alcohol. Good then (what wasn’t?), a little too perky now.

There were so many things we wanted to try on the menu, but we stuck with the chicken flautas with salsa molcajete, the Oaxacan black beans, the fresh housemade corn tamale with Early Girl Salsa, and the cucumber & cherry tomato salad. The chicken flautas were, unfortunately, forgettable. The salsa accompanying them had a fresh fire-roasted flavor, but the actual dish was a bit luke-warm and the chicken was sparse and fatty. The black beans and the cucumber salad are both simple dishes, but were spectacular. When traveling in Ecuador, almost all meals come with black refried beans that have this smoky, almost creamy taste and Fonda has emulated that precisely here. I could eat these every day. The cucumber salad was perfect: grilled onions and queso fresca livened up the crisp cucumbers and summer tomatoes perched amongst a light oregano vinaigrette. Then there was the tamale: sunny, lively, bursting with fresh corn kernels. For dessert, we tried the warm molten chocolate cake. I generally try to avoid the ubiquitous dessert for more interesting options (passion fruit creme brulee or Colombian chocolate ice cream sandwich), but I was reminded that when it comes down to it, who doesn’t love a bit of warm oozing chocolate with big dollops of homemade whipped cream? Sweet, small portion; complex dark flavor.

If I lived in this ‘hood, I’d be here often. It’s open until 12:30 every night and after imbibing a few of those creative cocktails, you could just stumble on home. So although the plumber will be back tomorrow to finish hydro-scrubbing the pipe (huh?!), I’ll rest easy tonight knowing that there’s a place out there that makes you feel like you did something with your day, sampled some fresh and lovingly prepared Nuevo Latin food, and didn’t sacrifice your pay-check to do so. I’ll drink to that.