Ya no fuma la vaca

The photo in this post was taken the winter before last. It's a restaurant that I pass at least a few times a month, more when I was teaching English because it was on the way to the English school.

The other day I was taking the bus to Chinatown and I went by the restaurant.

The cow . . . she does not smoke any longer! The "que fuma" part and the iconic smoking cow have been covered up and replaced with a "¿_______?" No one knows what the cow does anymore.

I suspect this has to do with the anti-smoking law that went into effect a few months ago. Smoking is now forbidden in most indoor spaces, including the vast majority of restaurants and cafes (in a few cases, restaurants can have separate smoking sections).

While it is unlikely that the legislation specifically addressed smoking cows, the owners probably decided to change the name to reflect a new restaurant reality.

The name that suggests itself to me is "La vaca que toma" with xx in place of the cow's eyes and a jug of cheap wine spilled off to the side, but perhaps I'm putting too much of myself into this.

[Parrilla al carbón is a charcoal grill. You could also, for example, have a parrilla a leña, which would be a wood grill. There are natural gas grills, too, but no one's bragging about those on a sign.]