While the rest of the country was mowing down poultry and buttered starch last Thanksgiving, Mara Castillo was feasting on poisonous blowfish with friends in Japan.
"There's that brief moment where you think, 'I might die,'" says the Minneapolis resident over a Newcastle at one of her favorite hangouts, Azia. "We made it."
With potentially lethal fish on the menu, what's a typical breakfast for the 24-year-old Minneapolis College of Art and Design senior? Ground-up men? Not exactly. Castillo is a self-described non-dater who's looking to shed her old ways after being crowned Vita.mn's Most Eligible Bachelorette.
So take note, boys: Show up at the door with a bouquet of tulips, her ultimate fantasy. Take her out for breakfast. No movies on the first date, please. Don't pull the scruffy I-try-hard-to-look-like-I'm-not-trying-hard look. Pa-thetic. The gainfully employed who have something worthwhile to say while looking good (hint: classic Nikes) move to the front of the line.
The 5-foot-9 St. Paul native of Cuban, German and Norwegian descent sports a cascade of cafe au lait-colored bangs and an easy smile. For a sushi dinner of Philadelphia rolls, she shows up in a long-sleeve black tee under a knit gray top and skinny black jeans, along with dangling silver earrings and black wedge boots.
Saddled in a high stool, Castillo grasps her chopsticks with gusto and relishes trying out her new, admittedly shaky skills with the utensils. She laughs while recalling her feeble attempts in Japan, and valiantly works her way through dinner without dropping a single roll.
When the conversation turns to the local dating scene, she gazes off into the distance and sways gently as she is apt to when in thought. "I feel that there are a lot of douchebags," she says, adding that the scene is somewhat stunted by cliques born of bygone high-school years.
Her definition of douchebaggery includes, but is not limited to, a lack of personality, drunkenness and flicking water at cute girls to snag their attention. Mara attests to experiencing all of the above, once walking out on a would-be paramour after he slammed four shots of tequila 30 minutes into the date.
