Hundreds of residents of Los Cabos and La Paz in Baja California Sur traveled to a truck stop cafe outside the capital city on Saturday to witness what the restaurant’s owner billed as the largest talega, or coffee bag, in the state, if not the world.   

A talega is a cloth sack with a wire frame typically used on ranches in northern Mexico to filter coffee, although it also has a vulgar meaning and is used to refer to a part of the male anatomy. 

The one on display at La Garita de Chilpa restaurant is 2.4 meters across and five meters high and was hung outside the restaurant’s entrance at kilometer 29 of the La Paz – Los Cabos highway. 

La Garita invited customers to attend the talega’s unveiling via social media. The restaurant provided coffee and bread free of charge to those who came to see the large sack, but specified that it would not actually be used to brew coffee. Masks and social distancing were mandatory.

Many families took photos of themselves standing beside the giant bag and popped in to sample La Garita’s machaca, burritos and empanadas.

A search of the Guinness World Records website turned up no previous talega records, but it did reveal Mexico’s fondness for breaking sundry world records.

In Mazatlán, Sinaloa, in 2011, 80 chefs filled a specially made Plexiglas cocktail glass with 538.5 kilos of shrimp cocktail, breaking the previous world record held by the Netherlands. 

Residents of Mexico City set the world record for the most number of people playing foosball at the same time with 1,080 players set up in the capital city’s zócalo in June 2018.

Mexico was home to the longest line of hot dogs at 1,464.03 meters, created in Jalisco in 2018 when 10,000 hot dogs were positioned to spell out the word “hot dog.”

In March 2020, 70 chefs in Irapuato, Guanajuato, made the world’s largest jar of strawberry jam, which weighed 1,005 kilos, nearly double that of the previous world record which was set in Michoacán.

Mexico has also broken world records for the largest serving of octopus, the largest caesar salad, and the largest enchilada, among hundreds of others.

Source: El Sudcaliforniano (sp)