And I make my chile con queso proudly with American cheese.
Bad timing dude. Just my opinion.
Still, a "tater tot burrito?"
Say it isn't so ~ please!
“Mexican” and “Chinese” food in the USA is completely Americanized.
Sort of like Cinqo de Mayo is really an American (advertising) holiday that isn’t really celebrated in Mexico.
Talking about Mexican food is like talking about French or Italian or Spanish food. Which part? Brittany isn't the French Med food, Northern Italian is very different than southern, it's all regional.
Vive la difference!
/johnny
I have nothing against Mexican food. I have enjoyed it on occasion. No more. I don’t like what’s happening to our country, and the militant invasion of our Southern border, so I will not patronize anything Mexican. Sorry, but that’s just me. When the illegals return to their country, and Mexico becomes a good neighbor, then I’ll reconsider. Not before.
Two nightmares I have experienced:
1. A pizza in Paris (” Did they just plop an egg on that?”)
2. A lasagna in Landstuhl (Germany)
I will boldly state from experience that the average Mexican food in America is better here than there. Ditto for Chinese food. Better ingredients and bigger portions. I don’t care about “authentic”, I care about what tastes good.
From the right has come the canard that the cuisine is unhealthy and alien, a stereotype dating to the days of the Mexican-American War, when urban legend had it that animals wouldn’t eat the corpses of fallen Mexican soldiers due to the high chile content in the decaying flesh. Noah Smithwick, an observer of the aftermath of the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, claimed “the cattle got to chewing the bones [of Mexican soldiers], which so affected the milk that residents in the vicinity had to dig trenches and bury them.”
Uhm, Bull Shiite. Mexican Food is actually delicious and nutritious so I don’t know what you are talking about here. In regards to keeping the chile they make for themselves so as not to torch a gringo’s toungue, I actually ask for their stuff. You can’t make it hot enough for me. Hell, I eat Habaneros raw. Think I’ll do that now.
Similar knocks against Mexican food can be heard to this day in the lurid tourist tales of “Montezuma’s Revenge” and in the many food-based ethnic slurs still in circulation: beaner, greaser, pepper belly, taco bender, roach coach, and so many more. “Aside from diet,” the acclaimed borderlands scholar Américo Paredes wrote in 1978, “no other aspect of Mexican culture seems to have caught the fancy of the Anglo coiner of derogatory terms for Mexicans.”
Well, the terms are of endearment, then again, I am in California.
On Friday I am going to have usual bowl of Menudo from my favorite “Mexican Restaurant”.
I may even stop on the way home here in a bit and pick up some Sangre’.
And I had Tamales I bought from the gal(a loncheras) who shows up in our local Safeway the other night. They are so good!
As for Quesadillas, when I was growing up we made them all the time. I never knew they had a name until I went to a restaurant in my 20’s and friends ordered them.
“But when culinary anthropologists like Bayless and Diana Kennedy make a big show out of protecting “authentic’ Mexican food from the onslaught of commercialized glop, they are being both paternalistic and ahistorical. “
Baloney, Bayless explains ingredients and where they came from. Like Pineapple. It’s not a Hawaiian fruit but a Mexican fruit. Same with Tomatoes and several other foods that a friend who teaches Mexican and Mayan history at the University of Washington informed me of.
And Del Taco....BLOWS!
The other night I went and saw Millionaire Quartet, a story a famed evening when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins sang together for the one and only time. Terrific show.
Afterwards we went to Mexcal, a restaurant known for its Oaxcan cuisine. I had some chipoline(grasshoppers). They are sauteed in lemon and garlic. So Good!
For dinner I had the Grilled Sea Bass over a Spinach, grilled corn, bits of bacon and cherry tomatoes. You would find something like this in a few restaurants in Puerto Aventura or even a Lobster burrito with whatever type of mole’ they made. Yummm!
But the best places for Mexican food are holes in the wall and the place where I will eat the menudo must have a name I just don’t know it and I have been going there for about 10 years.
bookmarkito
Arellano is a Lefty whose column runs in the local free weekly. Having said that, I’ve had “real” Mexican food and I prefer our Tex-Mex or what I cook myself.
The writer pens for the OC Metro, in Orange County CA, where Santa Ana is one of the most “hispanic” American towns. Another is San Antonio, TX.
I call a lot of the food “American Southwest” because it originates in both Mexico, as well as the old West whereby cattle drives brought along a cook, his supplies, and the cook was often Mexican.
He brought bags of dried beans, to soak and cook.
And they took beef from the cattle they drove.
Finally came the flavorings, etc.
Today the Chipotle chain reflects this American Southwest style, for me. Started in Denver.
A smaller chain called Freebirds is like Chipotle. Started in Santa Barbara CA, and Austin TX.
El Pollo Loco started in Mexico, then to the US. This Mexican style fast food restaurant is notable, because the Mexicans go there. For good reason, excellent eats.
Finally as a lifelong SoCal person, I remember working near East LA and going for some “authentic” mexican lunches.
Still do that, with a lawyer friend, and we go to downtown Tustin, near Santa Ana....talk about a busy little place, full of Anglos gobbling up “authentic” style.
And I have seen authentic potato burritos, in “authentic” places.
I say mix them all up. Just ate chicken cooked with California red chilies, cumin, garlic and lime juice over Indian Korma rice with a side of filet.
Every “real” mexican I knew growing up at hotdogs, bologna, and potato chips. They did make their own sauces and dips though...and they were good.
He’s absoiutely right that Taco Bell is terrible. He’s also right that Del Taco is surprisingly good.
That was a fun read.
There is a guy who comes around Koons Toyota on Leesburg Pike in Tyson’s Corner, VA most days around 11 a.m. with a cooler of delicacies such as tamales and empanadas. The empanadas are delicious. People waiting for their cars to be serviced buy him out.