Photograph by Katherine Bish

If you keep heading south on Gravois, you'll eventually drive right off the face of the Earth. Did you know that? Someday it will be scientifically proven that Gravois is so punishingly long, boring, ugly, detached and soulless that it wrongs rights, that it somehow sours the physical properties of things, things like the very roundness of the planet.

So if you ever need to drive down your demons, I recommend an open-ended car date with this disturbing road to nowhere. But you'll need fuel. The gas stations along Gravois are plentiful, but fuel for yourself might be much harder to come by. Gravois ain't exactly Restaurant Row, even if all you want is something hot, fast and cheap.

What you'll want is Mamacita's and its quesadilla made with chunky cuts of meat. (The menu calls it a beef quesadilla, but it's a steak quesadilla.) You'll also want a burrito wrapped up tight with fluffy rice and whole pinto beans or a simple tostada, a perfect rendition of Mexican street food.

At first, you'll stop at Mamacita's because, let's face it, where else are you gonna go? It's pretty much nothing but fast-food drive-throughs from here to Armageddon, and at least at Mamacita's, you can have a nice, comfy seat at the bar and watch the Cards game with the handful of silent regulars swilling $1 Bud Select draughts. Or you can adjourn to the fiesta-decorated, square-walled dining room, where you can do all the self-tortured contemplation you may need.

The menu at Mamacita's is straight-up Mexican, with a nod or two toward Tex- Mex: tacos, burritos, tostadas, quesadillas (all available in beef, chicken or pork varieties), a "Mex Burger," a taco salad, chicken wings (huh?) and daily specials like chiles rellenos or a Friday fish dinner. With the state you're in, you don't need to be sifting your way through a text-heavy, high-concept menu, anyway. Here, you can practically point and order.

The way most good Mexican does, each item comes to the table looking like a great heap of deliciousness: the gooey temptations of melted cheese (at Mamacita's, that means good-enough supermarket cheeses, not authentically Mexican white cheeses) and cooked-just-right beans (here never refried, but instead those aforementioned whole pintos, which are just scrumptious); the softness of a perfect pork tamale; the delicate, textural look of a homemade corn tortilla; the piles of shredded this or chopped that.

With the exception of the specials, nothing costs more than seven bucks—or takes more than seven minutes to appear before you. These things will, like the food itself, start to reaffirm your belief in humanity.

But let me cut to the chase here and tell you what's going to save you, what's going to show you the silver lining of life in one bite and give you the strength to go back happy and sated into the harshness of this land at the end of the world. One is the sopapilla, a traditional dessert of crispy fried dough and a drizzle of honey that you simply must order with the scoop of vanilla for a buck extra. It will be, in total, the most delectable three bucks you have ever spent in your life.

Two is the free salsa bar. Oh my: mango salsa and peach salsa and strawberry salsa (try those on the sopapilla) and a black bean–and–corn salsa and tomatillo salsa and chipotle salsa. They are all amazing, and that is not a word I use often. Neither is the word "salvation." But you can find it at Mamacita's, for those times when you really need it.