Certainly one of my biggest pet peeves. If I had a nickel for everybody that got in my ear about "authentic" Mexican food and of course was talking about one particular regional cuisine: Tex-Mex, Southwest American, Californian Mexican, Mexico City, . . .
The search for authenticity in food is a weird obsession anyway since cuisine changes on contact with new ingredients.
People are always taken back about how much classic staples didn't exist prior to the discovery of America. On top of that realization is that the food wasn't adopted immediately. Meaning a lot of common dishes didn't exist until after 1700/1800s.
Things like tomato sauce and pasta in italian cuisine wasn't until almost 1800. Yet we talk about 'authentic' cuisine we usually use it in context way before 'America'. Yet most cuisine we eat didn't come into existence until AFTER America.
Another example is chilis in thai cuisine. Capsicum didn't make it over the ocean until america was discovered. So all the spicy peppers in so many dishes from Thai to Vietnamese food didn't exist in their cooking until it was brought over and eventually incorporated.
Potatoes is another one. Originated in Peru. Russian potato vodka? Irish Potatoes? Germans bangers and mash?
Nope, nada until America was discovered.
Chocolate, Vanilla. Staples of desserts of european cooking...except not until America was discovered.
These above ingredients alone are associated with so many traditional recipes but they didn't exist until recently. It really shows how quickly food and traditions change and the idea of 'authenticity' is over blown.
> People are always taken back about how much classic staples didn't exist prior to the discovery of America.
> Yet we talk about 'authentic' cuisine we usually use it in context way before 'America'.
I can pretty much guarantee that's not true of discussion of authentic cuisine of the Mexican or Tex-Mex varieties, since “Mexico” and “Texas” are both post-Millenial identities, and both identities of the Americas. Sure, it might apply to some views of authenticity of European, Asian, or African cuisines (and if by “America” you actually mean the “European colonization of America”, which some parts of your comment suggest, it might apply to similar views of authenticity of Native American, including Inuit, Aztec, Inca, etc. cuisine.
But, even where it might apply, I don't think that is what people usually mean by authenticity; they mostly mean before changes made to support mass commercial distribution or production, and without adaptation to ingredients they are locally cheaper or more popular in places outside of the place where the cuisine originates. (In America, that concern might often be phrased as “before Americanization”, but that's not “before any impacts of the discovery of America”.)
As someone from Texas I can definitely say from first hand the attitude I experience from people snubbing 'authenticity' in other cuisine is the same I hear towards 'Tex-Mex'.
I have gone to many local restaurants where local ingredients are used and not mass-produced and seen the same attitude from friends, colleague or acquaintances in my life.
I also extensively worked in the kitchen, in fact it was my first career, and i can say the attitude was prevlevant there too.
I've worked with plenty of people from mexico itself that had less of that attitude since they could actually see the influence of different dishes and spices in both foods.
So I can pretty much guarantee from actual experience this attitude stems from the same attitude that other people have that leads them to say things like 'italy doesn't have pepperoni pizza' or 'french wine will always be better than nappa' etc. It stems from the same place.
I will concede there are probably people like you describe, but the issue the article describes and the issue I am talking about is seen quite a bit against 'tex-mex'.
I would posit that mostly, what these people mean is that “French wine will always be more French than Napa.” And they have an aesthetic preference for the terroir of French wine.
To put that another way: a lot of culinary aesthetics—and aesthetics generally—is just a rationalization of nostalgia. People want food that tastes like food they remember enjoying (even if that memory has more to do with their mood at the time, or the ambiance, or any other thing that can colour a memory), rather than particularly caring about food being good in the same way as food they remember enjoying. People would prefer a food that recaptures their youth, to a food that’s an optimized, culinarily “better” version of that food, every time. (Unless they’re chefs, or professional food critics.)
> As someone from Texas I can definitely say from first hand the attitude I experience from people snubbing 'authenticity' in other cuisine is the same I hear towards 'Tex-Mex'.
I never said that people in general have a different attitude about authenticity toward Tex-Mex food than most other food, I said that it is impossible for the source of that attitude to be a desire to get to what the cuisine was like before the discovery of America.
> I said that it is impossible for the source of that attitude to be a desire to get to what the cuisine was like before the discovery of America.
I didn't gather that from your reply. I apologise for misunderstanding.
I agree with that point. But I also don't think people are 'wanting' what it was like before in either attitude.
I think it something else, maybe a way to seem more 'culture' or a way to seperate themselves from common 'americans'? I mean i don't really know where it stems from.
Example is we have quite a few people that complains how all these 'chemicals' and stuff in our food is killing us and how they only buy organic and they won't eat this or that cause of the 'processing' and then they light a cigarette and crack open a can of PBR.
A lot of times we identify with something on a different level then is logical, I believe the same is happening with a lot of these people and 'authenticity'. I could be wrong though, but I believe we are all susceptible to this kind of behavior.
> A lot of times we identify with something on a different level then is logical, I believe the same is happening with a lot of these people and 'authenticity'.
I'm reading The Elephant in the Brain. Its shocking how much we do as humans that we delude ourselves into believing.
There is substantial evidence suggesting highly processed foods are bad for your health. Sure, people might have other vices but I don't see the harm in realizing that the products that make food cheap and shelf stable may not be the most compatible with a healthful diet.
I just made "viking" bread with my son as part of his homework, and I have no illusion that the recipe I found is authentic either, but the first recipe I found had potato flour in it...
"Authentic" viking bread would have been made with hand-milled oat and rye, with some wheat; to date you can see much more oat and rye harvest in most parts of Scandinavia; but just as you point out, potatoes are today also seen as an essential part of an "authentic" Norwegian diet and is a part of most dishes considered traditionally Norwegian.
Even more amusing to me is that while porridge is authentic in that respect, the most common modern types are not: rice porridge is certainly quite modern, yet it's pretty much considered as authentically Norwegian as you can get to have rice porridge served with butter, sugar and cinnamon, with both sugar and cinnamon being "modern" introductions.
And it was first a few years ago I learned that most of the Christmas cookie traditions we have are less than a century old, with ironic ones like "fattigmann" (literally "poor man") being introduced in the 1930's in a cook book where the recipe including more eggs than the average 1930's family consumed in a year, and so not actually spreading until much later.
Christmas traditions in particular, now that I have a kid of my own, has driven how that "authentic" and "tradition" usually really for the most part stays consistent only a generation or two. What my son is growing up with certainly has some parts in common with the Christmas celebrations of my childhood, but it has already morphed drastically, both in terms of traditions and even the food we insist is very authentic.
Being discovered in the New World by European explorers (and then taken back to Europe and cultivated there); vs. being a cultural invention of people living in the Americas and having to deal with its local climate and growing conditions; vs. being discovered by European explorers but found to only grow in the local climate and so farmed there, are all pretty different things, and it’s weird to conflate them like this.
Tomatoes and potatoes, and the vanilla bean, were cultivated in Europe, by Europeans.
Chilies were cultivated in the Americas (over 6000 years ago), and then traded to European explorers who took them back home and grew them there, too.
The cocoa bean was cultivated in the Americas, by the Olmec; and then traded to European explorers who tried to grow it, failed, and ended up invading the area to farm it.
Of these, the first is European cuisine, through-and-through. The second is aboriginal Mesoamerican cuisine. And the third is what you might call “American” cuisine, insofar as—like most of the historical cuisines in America itself—it was a cuisine invented by farmers from Europe (and the slaves they brought from everywhere else) learning to live in the Americas.
Er, none of those are cuisine, just ingredients. They all feature in post-contact cuisine in both the Americas and elsewhere, and pre-contact cuisine in the Americas. (And, contrary to your description, potatoes and tomatoes were cultivated in the Americas before contact; the former for 6000+ years, the latter for 2000+.)
I think the claim was that the cuisine in question that uses them is European, not that no one used them in South America but rather that the use of them in Europe is specifically European.
Saying America was discovered is correct terminology from the colonial perspective hundreds of years ago, but I think today the proper term would be when America was colonized. It had been discovered a long time before then, and it might strike native Americans and others as a eurocentric way of speaking about history.
Saying it is because of the discovery of America (apart from the unfortunate choice of words wrt "discovery"; it was already discovered) completely discredits and discounts all the importing of e.g. spice from Asia.
Example: Dutch speculaas cookies [1].
"Speculaas dough does not rise much. Dutch and Belgian versions are baked with light brown (sometimes beet) sugar and baking powder. German Spekulatius uses baker's ammonia as leavening agent. Indian, Indonesian, and Mediterranean spices used in speculaas are cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cardamom and white pepper; these were common in the 1600-1700s due to the Dutch East Indies spice trade. Family recipes may also include other small amounts of spices like anise, etc." [emphasis mine]
I don't know what's been more important for which cuisine, but not mentioning say VOC's imports and only WIC (which was smaller and came a good ~20 years later) is inaccurate. The WIC was more into slave trade, especially after conquering of Angola and Brasil from the Portuguese.
I'd love to read an article about what people actually ate before those staples arrived.
An amusing side note: I read about an analysis showing that Stradivarius used a red pigment from America in some of his violins. I doubt it had an effect on the tone, but it's just interesting to see what kind of trade was occurring.
The Americas were never "discovered" -- the myriad people living across the Americas certainly knew it existed. The land, and the people inhabiting them, were conquered.
There are plenty of examples of the word 'discover' being used to describe finding out things someone else already knows. eg the cops discovering who a murderer is, or the legal process of 'discovery' etc etc.
It isn't wrong to describe Europeans discovering America as long as you aren't claiming they were the first to discover it.
As a previously commentator mentioned, "colonized" is a much more fitting word than "discovery." The deeper problem, I think, with "discovery" is that it obscures the violence of the European settlement process -- the meta-genocides of the North American peoples and the transatlantic Slave Trade.
The discovery of America by Europeans is not the same as the colonization and settlement, although the discovery led to colonization. They are not synonyms.
Coming from NorCal, everyone seems to think they are an expert on what 'authentic' Mexican food is, even if they've never been there or only to a resort. There's also a strong tendency toward fetishism of truly crappy food, which people cutely term 'simple' or 'rustic' but which often is in fact poorly prepared and overly salted and made from the cheapest of ingredients.
It's a shame, because these people seem to be unaware of how large a country Mexico is, with myriad cultural influences and traditions, regional variations, and a vibrant modern food culture, especially in regards to Mexico City.
The taco truck under the BART tracks in Oakland with the $6 heart-attack (and heart-burn) burritos doesn't serve traditional/authentic Mexican food, it serves traditional Cali/NorCal Taco Truck food. If you love it, that's great, but honor it by celebrating what it really is, which is a separate food tradition that is wonderful in it's own way.
> which often is in fact poorly prepared and overly salted and made from the cheapest of ingredients.
Like Chico's Tacos!
> It's a shame, because these people seem to be unaware of how large a country Mexico is, with myriad cultural influences and traditions, regional variations, and a vibrant modern food culture, especially in regards to Mexico City.
Fact! I prefer the style of cuisine that comes from the Chihuahuan desert.
There are tons of examples of this in Japanese food. A friend who spent most of a year in Japan said that they love sauerkraut over there because it has the sour, fermented taste that's emblematic of some of their fine cuisine. Corn (native to North America) is a common topper for ramen. Many Japanese broths and sauces now integrate peanuts (also native to North America).
I am from Brazil, we have largest amount of Japanese when not counting Japan itself. One of the most popular "Japanese" dishes is Tempura that is actually a Portuguese dish seemly introduced in Japan in 1600s or so...
Theory is that Tempura is just corruption of word "Tempero"
Another likely theory is that it's from "tempora", a Latin reference to Lent (Tempo da Quaresma) because that was a time when Catholics ate more vegetables and fish.
According to that Wikipedia article, the word originates from Tamil, and:
"Archaeological evidence dating to 2600 BCE from Mohenjo-daro suggests the use of mortar and pestle to pound spices including mustard, fennel, cumin, and tamarind pods with which they flavoured food."
Super easy to make - look for "Golden Curry" in most Asian groceries. You will likely see more kinds in a Japanese grocery. Get some good rice while you are at it.
My daughter remarked that you can apparently put any random vegetables in Japanese curry and it still tastes awesome.
Second the recommendation for Golden Curry, it's a staple of my cabinet. And it's not just Asian food stores, I've found it in the "International" sections of small-name grocers, chain grocers, and even in the Wal-Mart of the podunk Appalachian town where I went to college. I also buy it in bulk from Amazon when I need to pad out my order to get the free shipping. Highly recommend.
The Japanese "golden curry" being talked about here is also based on a roux and more closely resembles an English gravy that has been juiced up with some warm spices, e.g. flavors like cinnamon, allspice, and cloves. The Japanese preparation includes chunks of meat and vegetables and is usually served over rice, but you could include root vegetables and skip the rice if you prefer...
Because of the warm spices, my first taste of it actually gave me a nostalgic memory of my long gone grandfather who liked to cook "old world" German food. Germany was also influenced by the spice roads and incorporated a lot of these same spices into its cuisine.
Puebla had a large influx of Lebanese, so recipes there are influenced by those who settled there, like skirt steak on a rotisserie was inspired by schwarma.
It's also an emoji. Not just that, but it's a version 1.0 emoji and is set with the more Japanese dishes, i.e., between Bento Box and Steaming Bowl, and not the more Americanized ones.
Just to echo on the search for authenticity, many places in the US will serve food at a higher level of quality than many places in the country of origin. Abroad, the food comes under the same economic pressure as anything else, and most of what is available cheaply will be mass-produced somewhere and sold out to people who are eking out a living reselling it to consumers. The difference in the country of the origin is that the local industrialized production of the ingredients will make the product cheaper compared to US restaurant prices, and it will be available more widely than the one or two restaurants in the US city who make the food, but it's definitely not as high quality as the US restauranteurs who need to make more of the ingredients from scratch.
It's one thing to object to food being sold as a certain style when that style would never include some of the ingredients that are being included, but it's well more important to just make delicious food.
> Just to echo on the search for authenticity, many places in the US will serve food at a higher level of quality than many places in the country of origin.
Pretty sure it applies neither for French or Italian cuisine.
In his biography, Jacque Pepin (famous French chef) talked about how much better the food quality was in the US compared to his native France. He found American supermarket had amazing produce quality compared to the markets in France, where most of the good produce was reserved for elite chefs, leaving the rest of the people to settle for the scraps.
> In his biography, Jacque Pepin (famous French chef) talked about how much better the food quality was in the US compared to his native France. He found American supermarket had amazing produce quality compared to the markets in France, where most of the good produce was reserved for elite chefs, leaving the rest of the people to settle for the scraps.
You mean the food quality at Walmart is superior to the the quality of the food you can find in a french organic market? the quality of milks? cheeses? wheat and meats is automatically superior in US? I know Jacque Pepin. I also know the food you can find in US markets is disgusting and low quality when compared to foods for the same price in France. There is a reason why US has an obesity crisis as sever as it is.
Growing up Italian-American, with relatives who came off the boat cooking things for me, then having a 'merican who did a semester abroad in a single city in Italy tell me the way I cook isn't "authentic."
Ha! I've had the same experience many times as a Mexican American. Usually with Texans and Californians who visit NYC, try say, some actually authentic mexican tacos, and pronounce them lame and "inauthentic" because they do not resemble americanized texmex they grew up on.
Like, what? I'd understand the complaint if we'd gone to a place advertised as texmex.
I guess the annoying thing is they misleadingly refer to texmex food as "mexican" which it is not. It is a separate (and also tasty) cuisine that relies on different traditions and ingredients, eg flour instead of corn tortillas. Food is all great, but lets not use confusing terms
Most people who speak of “authenticity” don’t really want “authentic” Mexican food”; what they’re really after is food with a clear regional provenance. They want food with a cultural narrative behind it, where that narrative doesn’t feature their own culture as one of the characters.
Having grown up in Costa Rica, and having worked as a tour guide in Mexico - this is extremely true. People love the idea of authentic Costa Rican food, but for me growing up that meant beans and rice 5 dinners a week. It sounds fun and authentic - for meal one...
No one wants "real" food, that is for sure. We always try to stay and shop in residential neighborhoods when we travel, and if you look at what people have in their baskets, it is pretty boring. I would have gone insane in Puerto Rico eating mofongo (fried plantains, but very starchy) every day of the week, or beans and rice with plain tortillas in Mexico. Or dal (lentils) in India. But a lot of that is relative income, so I think it's more what people would eat if they could afford it. I just heard from a southern Indian colleague of mine that basmati rice is considered "too heavy" for daily consumption and is saved for special occasions. Most of the real highlight dishes in any cuisine are for feast meals, it seems.
> The search for authenticity in food is a weird obsession anyway since cuisine changes on contact with new ingredients.
I strongly disagree; it can be pretty useful in certain contexts. Namely, on contact with US/Western market demand, a lot of cuisines get blander, sweeter, less complex, and sometimes heavier. (The history behind this is pretty interesting, and if you'd like i can pull up a source on this). For those whose palate is used to more flavor and complexity than the Western palate, the difference between the Americanized form of a cuisine and the "authentic" version can be pretty substantial. The latter can be preferred for either reasons of taste or reasons of variety (the difference between American Chinese and American Thai is far tinier than the difference between a given regional Chinese cuisine and a given regional Thai cuisine). Note that this is probably the case in every country: I was born and raised in the US, and I remember finding McDonald's to be pretty bizarre when I'd visit India, because the flavors had been modified to fit the local palate so heavily (this was about 20yrs ago; I gather that the menu has changed a lot since).
This isn't a search for authenticity per se, which as you say, is pretty much meaningless. It's just an attempt to avoid the flattening of every cuisine into a similar spectrum of flavors. Unfortunately, restaurants only exist if there's enough demand for them, so food with flavors outside of the country's palate are hard to sustain unless there's an ethnic enclave nearby that can support an "authentic" place.
I get what you're saying but the same is true of any transplanted cuisine. Thai food in Australia is different than in the US is different from wherever but in most cases it's a lot closer than you're giving credit for—which is neither here nor there since a cuisine being a "lot closer" is arbitrary, closer to where? Isan? The south? And of course you get some places like Uncle Boon's in NY that do a tremendous job of recreating Thai street food but wrap it up in a lot of cuisine. I can promise that Uncle Boon's is not frequented by FOB Thai immigrants, but I doubt the menu will lose its flavor profile.
As an aside, the "more flavor and complexity than the western palate" stuff is another of those things I have a bit of a problem with. Yeah, American food in some (most) parts of the country is bland but Mexican food (for example) is American, at least if California, Texas, New Mexico are still part of the country. Add BBQ, Cajun, and other regional cuisines and American food has its own complexity. Standard diner fare is pretty bleak but so is street cart pad thai after the thousandth time you've had it.
Besides if we're talking about the western palate we're including all of Europe in that, with an incredible diversity of cuisines and tastes.
> which is neither here nor there since a cuisine being a "lot closer" is arbitrary, closer to where? Isan? The south?
This isn't remotely relevant. Picking a given regional cuisine and just calling it "Thai food" when transplanted is a completely separate axis from how closely the transplanted cuisine adheres to the dishes from its original country.
> As an aside, the "more flavor and complexity than the western palate" stuff is another of those things I have a bit of a problem with. Yeah, American food in some (most) parts of the country is bland but Mexican food (for example) is American, at least if California, Texas, New Mexico are still part of the country. Add BBQ, Cajun, and other regional cuisines and American food has its own complexity. Standard diner fare is pretty bleak but so is street cart pad thai after the thousandth time you've had it.
I'm not going off of some random intuition of my own: food chemistry is literally an entire field of science that focuses (in part) on the molecules that produce flavor, and how they interact with each other. They've built taxonomies of these flavors, and Western cuisine tends to use the same flavors in the different components of a dish or meal. By contrast, cuisines like Indian food do the opposite: using multiple flavors which contrast with each other. I'm not using complexity as a value judgment, but as an objective, measurable fact. (The history behind this divergence is really interesting; I can go into it if you'd like).
I was using Western in the generally-accepted sense: of European (cultural) ancestry. Obviously American cuisine is less European than Europe, and the parts that are heavily influenced by (e.g.) Mexican cuisine are less subject to the uncontroversially lower level of flavor/complexity in European cuisines overall. The sum of these things still shifts the Western palate towards the direction I'm talking about relative to many other cuisines. Also, I'm talking about the food preferences of the people, and how that shapes cuisine. The obvious example is spicy heat: the fact that "American spicy" and "Thai spicy" is a thing indicates a recognition on the part of the proprietors that the average American palate is calibrated for a different level of heat than the Thai palate. As I said, moving every cuisine towards the American palate to suit it better has the effect of flattening them out a little. A dish from some part of Mexico tweaked to cater to the American palate will be closer to a Thai dish tweaked to cater to the American palate than the original dishes are to each other. Which brings me back to my original point: if you find places with dishes closer to their cuisines of origin than their Americanized version, you'll enjoy a greater variety of flavor, since the flattening process is somewhat mitigated.
It might just be a slightly mislabeled desire for new/good food. People probably say "authentic" when what they mean is "something different from what I've been getting in my hometown for the last 20 years". And they probably say "authentic" when they really just want quality preparation and ingredients. Quick, cheap American interpretations of ethnic food has become synonymous with inauthenticity, but obviously that's not always the case.
idk, I get what you are saying, it's a bit of an empty cliche, but at the same time, I think there are interesting things people are trying to ask for, just using the wrong words
It depends on your definition but FWIW Flour tortillas, which burritos require, were only invented very recently, after Europeans brought wheat to the americas. Wheat tortillas have caught on in some parts of mezixo, primarily near the UsA border but are barely seen in other parts. Corn tortillas are the older more universal staple and have a revered place in mexican history and culture that wheat products do not.
Time marches on and maybe burritos are a regional cuisine but they are surely not a general national cuisine.
As a comparison, pizza is a USA national dish. Scrapple on the other hand is more of a Philadelphia area regional dish, even if Philadelphia is indeed inside the USA.
What makes you think people from a country know everything about every part of their own country, especially one as large and culturally diverse as Mexico? Sometimes outsiders can know something they don't.
Many Americans might not have heard of "crawfish étouffé" and therefore assume it's not American food. A foreign tourist who has visited New Orleans could (quite authoritatively) correct them.
Btw, I'd be willing to bet that I have more contact with people from Sonora than the typical person from Puebla has.
The foreign tourist might happen to be correct this one time, but "I'm a tourist who has been there" is not anything I have ever heard gives one power to be quite authoritative. Visiting one or more times is not remotely on par with "I have a PhD in the subject."
I'm not sure I'd say "one or more times" really sums up going dozens of times, as umanwizard said they have. While I'll give you that we don't know if they have a PhD (which, sure, would be more definite authority), evidently they have the means to travel extensively, which could well put them in more diverse areas than someone from Mexico would go.
I already acknowledged they may be correct. I will further formally acknowledge they may even be highly knowledgeable.
The problem is that citing "I'm a habitual tourist" is not really a credential anyone can verify. Maybe "I'm a travel blogger as well and here is a link to my 10 year long blog and here are the posts about the many times I went to this place, so you can check the depth of my knowledge if you desire." would work.
The phrase quite authoritative suggests credentialing. I am extremely knowledgeable about a number of subjects. I even have 6 years of college. But I have a serious problem with trying to get taken seriously in part because a lot of my credentials are akin to "I'm a habitual tourist."
Maybe you really are a habitual tourist. Maybe you are more knowledgeable on the subject than the world's foremost expert with two PhDs. The problem is that "I'm a habitual tourist" simply fails as a verifiable credential as a stand alone thing without something to back up your claim of depth of accurate knowledge.
I get the feeling that you misunderstood what they were trying to communicate and prioritized literal word usage over context. They should not have said "quite authoritatively". Using "quite correctly" would have been better. "Authoritatively" was a sloppy substitute for emphatic correctness.
I acknowledged upfront that the tourist could well be correct. That addresses the possibility that it was merely sloppy wording with that intended meaning.
Looking again at what you'd put earlier, your acknowledgement very much seems to have the not-total-impossibility of them being correct as a throwaway caveat, not as a real consideration of the situation in any sense. I suspect that it being used now to address that they were using sloppy wording is a retroactive understanding after I pointed it out, and by luck is a plausible explanation.
Agreed. Whenever I hear people use authenticity as a litmus test for good food, it always comes across as being snobby for the sake of being snobby. Not only is authenticity in food a very fuzzy concept, but it really has nothing to do with quality (it may even suggest lower quality).
It's like saying that something that's popular must be bad, or that something that's expensive must be good. I mean, if you're a connoisseur of something, then you inevitably end up learning about the more authentic, less well-known, more exclusive versions of that thing. But saying that those are defining qualities of anything is BS, and only reveals the degree to which someone is a connoisseur because they actually appreciate something, vs. it's just part of the personal image they want to project to other people.
I had a nickel for everybody that got in my ear about "authentic" Mexican food
I liken this obsession with simulacra[0]. People looking for an original of something that never existed. “Greek” or “Mediterranean” food in the US is like this too.
Seriously, when is the last time you ate at a good restaurant serving Canadian food. :-)
On a more serious note, one of the interesting things about the IBM Watson Cookbook was looking at food not by region but by k-means clustering around a set of spice vectors. It really drove home for me the notion that 'regional' food really was more about the reliable availability of certain flavors and spices than it was around culture or people.
I moved to northern Minnesota and found that the Mexican food was generally low quality. Not only the recipes and style, but especially preparation, ingredients, presentation, quality standards and just about everything. However when I mentioned this to people there they would immediately say something like “I know it’s not -authentic-, but...”. However my point was that average sit-down family restaurants served food that more resembled a TV dinner or fast food place’s meals, which is not really related to authenticity.
Agreed. Moved to Phoenix from Portland, Oregon and I love Mexican and Tex-Mex. But all the Mexican I've tried here is just good, not great, family style mexican.
The closest place to great food is the TeePee, which is about as unassuming as a restaurant can get. The fancier places just crank up the spiciness to uncomfortable levels.
The best mexican?/tex-mex? I've ever had is still Chez Jose in Portland, Oregon. I'm really not sure how it's classified, other than awesome. Every trip back we eat there almost every day.
Or could it be that you just prefer what you got at home?
I grew up in Phoenix and love going back for the amazing Mexican food. From more established places like Los Dos Molinos to the little out of the way dives, there is no way you can convince me that Phoenix doesn't have good Mexican food. Tex-Mex I don't care about but I've spent plenty of time in Mexico too and Phoenix has great Mexican.
Also note that Los Dos bills itself as New Mexican cuisine (meaning from New Mexico, not Neo-Mexican). At least they used to. I haven't been there in years, though I love it.
> The closest place to great food is the TeePee, which is about as unassuming as a restaurant can get.
This is a principle that I've often found applicable to Mexican/Mexican-American food: the more impressive the decor, the less impressive the food. The Chicago area has lots of unassuming taquerias that knock the socks off of fancy, nationally-advertised chains.
Also, chains seldom can keep their good quality, there is always someone that starts optimizing profit before quality. The small places lives by their quality and wants to be proud about their food.
Completely agreed on the weird obsession that this is. I get wanting to have something you know, but I don't get dismissing the things you don't. Especially on some pseudo ranking based on "authenticity".
Not always. I'd wager it's more often elite signaling.
Sometimes, though, is is just comfort. As an example, the donuts from New Orleans are easy to make at home. Ish. I have yet to have them elsewhere be the same. I'll probably call the ones I do authentic, but I confess it is just to my tastes.
i think it's the crap-ton of processed cheese and beans in many tex-mex dishes that tarnishes it's authenticity. (the long and rambling article mentions this, but i didn't have the patience to figure out what they really thought it was.)
i like a good breakfast taco but i'm not generally a fan of most tex-mex. it hits you over the head with lard, carbs and over-cooked meats with no balance to it at all.
Beans tarnish the authenticity? It's all about beans. My father was a migrant worker, they came from Mexico to Texas and then whatever state they could find work in. All they ate was beans and tortillas, that's all they could afford.
Shortened version of processed cheese and processed beans.
The adjective processed applies to both of the nouns, though it is easy to interpret it otherwise. It's like saying "The problem is the junk food versions of these foods."
Hey! Don't knock canned refried beans. They are low in saturated fats, have good quality protein. And tasty! Its too easy to use the word 'processed' when it just means 'cooked'.
There was a good John Steinbeck novel in which beans were often mentioned, probably tortillas too. It might have been Cannery Row or another title. Enjoyed reading it.
Yes, I read somewhere (Wikipedia probably) that they are called the Three Sisters. They are symbiotic to some extent. The beans, being legumes, do nitrogen fixation in the soil, which benefits the other plants, and the beans grow up and twine around the maize stalks (at least for the creeper kinds of beans).
I was born and raised in San Antonio. My grandmother wrote a locally-famous cookbook back in the 1960s, "The World of Mexican Cooking". [1] It's actually almost purely Tex-Mex, although she does have a chapter for "Mex-Mex" recipes. The recipes are fantastic, authentic, and most are easy enough fo r the average home cook to prepare. I asked my aunt, who now owns the copyright, if I could typeset the book in LaTeX and distribute it under an open-source license. She was cool with it and I started the transcription but never got beyond the second chapter--it's hard, tedious work! If anybody knows of some software that I can feed scanned pages into and get a PDF of OCR'ed text plus the artwork (it had wonderful art doodled in between the pages and paragraphs), please let me know.
By the way, Tex-Mex is the quintessential melting pot cuisine and one of the things that ties us San Antonians together. Tex-Mex has been embraced by many different ethnicities. My great aunt and uncle were children of Syrian-Lebanese immigrants who came to the US via Mexico. They opened up a restaurant, Karam's, that was one of the most famous and popular Tex-Mex restaurants in San Antonio for decades until it closed in the early 2000's.
If you're ever in San Antonio, skip all of the crappy tourist restaurants on the Riverwalk and head straight for the original location of the Blanco Cafe [2]. In my opinion, it's the most authentic and delicious Tex-Mex joint in town.
* EDIT: I just remembered that I did scan the book to PDF already. I have it here on my phone but I'm on a plane at the moment. Once I'm on the ground, I'll see about uploading it to Github for everyone to check out. The scanned version is sub-optimal and I think my grandmother would have appreciated my efforts to typeset this. If you're interested in helping out, we can figure out some way to divvy up the chapters and you can help me with OCR+proofing or doing the image->text manually. Thanks for your nice comments! I hope to get something for Show HN soon.
Nice to hear you feel that Tex-Mex as a melting pot cuisine. I would concur. The article itself is so focused on the race, sex, nationality, and class of the cookers of the food I find it unreadable. The author is definitely not interested on how food can tie us together.
But if those “conversations” are predicated on racial gatekeeping, then they are indeed dividing us, and the parent poster is quite right to avoid them.
Life long Texan and agree San Antonio has the best Tex Mex. Houston & Austin are close enough to be very good (and where my expectations come from, first 25 years living there). I live in Dallas now, the Tex Mex here is just horrible (comparatively). It's more of a Cali/modern inspired style. I've only found a couple places that are close to what I consider authentic, but they're in odd locations that are difficult to patron. This, well the Dallas food culture in general (it sucks), is my biggest complaint about living in this city.
That said, I still eat Tex Mex 2-3 times a week, but always look forward to my visits back to Houston/Austin. Unfortunately don't make it to SA too often but will give that place a try next time I do.
> I live in Dallas now, the Tex Mex here is just horrible (comparatively). It's more of a Cali/modern inspired style.
California would like a word with you...
To call Cal/Mex cuisine 'horrible' is patently ridiculous. If you can say that, haven't had a gordita from an L.A. roach coach, or a green corn tamale from El Cholo, or a Mission style burrito, etc etc.
Oh, and lest we not forget San Diego - a legit fish taco is sublime.
LOL. I've actually never been to El Paso. I think it's a matter of Latitude so I'm sure it's great there too.
> great tex-mex in East Dallas and Oak Cliff
This is what is weird to me in Dallas. I have to go to certain parts of town to find decent tex mex. These are both 20-30 minutes away from where I live! I never had this problem in Houston or Austin. There was always some little cinder block building in/near the neighborhood run by owner pumping out great stuff.
I've tried a few of these places in East Plano or Harry Hines area that look authentic from the outside. All occasions they were actually Guatemalan or El Salvadorian which was a surprise to me.
So the problem isn't dallas food culture. its that you dont want to drive 20-30 minutes (which is a common thing here)
Dallas has AMAZING tex mex. Dallas popularized tex mex to the world with el chico and el fenix. you are being insanely reductive. We have a great food scene.
And Dallas doesn't have very many Guatemalan spots (I wish we had more) so I sense you are being intentionally obtuse in your post.
Well yes, I do consider being widely accessible as a measure of culture. Without arguing over exact establishments, I will say IMO El Chico and El Fenix do not represent good tex mex. They represent the chained version of tex mex (which isn't good in my book). This is what Dallas loves to do and a reason I don't think the food culture is very good here. It's always corporate, with an eye toward expansion. Good food cultures tend to be locally owned, chef driven. There are a few bright spots (Lucia comes to mind).
Are you from Dallas? If so, I think your bias is likely too strong to sense how good this food culture is. Everyone I meet that grew up here thinks it's a great food culture just because there are a ton of restaurants and they are mostly pretty good. But, coming from Houston/Austin, I see;
1) too many chains (not a problem alone, but generally correlates to poor execution/quality)
2) restaurants rarely change their menus (good chefs change their menus!)
3) lacking depth of cuisine (we're not as international of a city as we think we are: the ethnic food options are lacking, there are some and I've seen improvements but generally people just want more burgers and more steaks)
4) we are copy cats; if you travel to other cities with good food culture it's easy to see food trends a year before they reach Dallas - I think this is related to not being chef driven, our restaurants have executive chefs that design a menu once a year, they are not driving new trends)
> doesn't have very many Guatemalan spots
I know several in Irving and along Harry Hines/Denton Drive between Love & 635
El Chico and el fenix aren't good, but I didn't say they are, I said they introduced it to the world.
The term "authentic" tex mex is silly in the first place because it is regional (otherwise known as.. "authentic") food with replacement ingredients based on what was available here.
People that grew up here know its a good food city because... we know the spots. You'd only think Dallas has only chains if you only knew about chains.
Assuming you're not cracking wise, that would be a reference to the American "Melting Pot," that is the mixing of cultures, as opposed to a culinary term.
My wife and I made a cookbook for our wedding. We had people submit (hopefully "old family") recipes electronically, and collected them into a slim volume.
Recipes we got in text form we typeset directly with almost no editing, recipes we got in image form, we included in image form. I did the layout with Scribus, and then we got copies printed and handed them out as our wedding favors.
It was exhausting work.
I don't think I've ever underestimated the scope of a project quite as badly as that one. If it weren't for a substantial volume of bourbon, and the fact that I was between jobs at the time and could work on it full-time, we'd have never gotten it done in time for the wedding.
As it was, we were way too close to deadline to get the printing and binding done inexpensively from an internet vendor. We ended up using a local printer and binder, and while it was a lot more expensive than going with an internet vendor, they really pulled the project out of the fire for us[0].
All this to say: What you're doing sounds amazing. And as you've discovered, is an astonishing amount of work. If you keep it up, I promise that the results will be worth it, but it's a long way to go to get there.
I would caution you that even if you manage to OCR the text with relatively few errors, a lot of the work in doing a cookbook is in the layout. You may have discovered this already, and if so I apologize, but getting the text into electronic form is, at most, half the battle.
Good luck, and if you get through this project, please submit it to Show HN so we can all see it!
[0] Red Sun Press deserves a shout-out for their work and their willingness to deal with a print run of <100 copies a <100 page book. If you're in the Boston area, I highly recommend them: http://www.redsunpress.com/
Blanco Cafe is pretty good - I've been there many times, drive by it several times a week. Chuy's is a good Texas chain for Tex-Mex as well. Taco Cabana... meh, but it does it. Pappasitos too.
San Antonio also opened my mind to true Mexican, like Jalisco style food heavy on lard, onion and fried stuff like Carnitas.
That's just the thing about Tex-Mex: it's a dumpy-looking plate. A truly authentic plate of chile con carne enchiladas consists of corn tortillas softened in hot oil, then filled with greasy cheddar cheese (never that white-and-yellow mix crap), then topped with enchilada gravy (a roux), and greasy all-beef chili (no beans!!!!) and more greasy cheese. It's assembled and then put under a broiler to melt the cheese. The result is a melted mess on the plate. Not fancy, but oh, does it taste good... Blanco Cafe is a dingy little hole in the wall with chipped tables and dirty fluorescent lighting on the ceiling but it's the best plate of enchiladas you've ever had. Order the Mexican Dinner plate.
Well, I don't know where the guy you replied to is from, but I have lived in Chicago my entire life and I found tex-mex pretty disappointing when I went to Texas since I've spent my entire life eating actual Mexican food.
I think it's just fundamentally different cuisine. I was pretty baffled when I went in to a breakfast place and they had breakfast tacos with eggs, sausage and potatoes. I literally thought that was something McDonald's invented to seem "Mexican." The Mexican breakfasts I get have smoked beef tongue and stuff like that. There isn't really that much cheese either.
Another thing, and I'm not sure it makes a huge difference, but, the Mexicans I know up here tend to be from southern Mexico. The few Mexicans I know from further north say that the food in Chicago is mostly from Southern Mexico.
Tex-mex is pretty good, but if you are expecting Mexican food it's not really the same. It needs to be appreciated on it's own merits.
> Tex-mex is pretty good, but if you are expecting Mexican food it's not really the same.
It's most related to northern Mexican cuisine, but pretty distant from that of, say, the Valley of Mexico or the Yucatan or Mexico's Pacific Coast, among others. Mexico has diverse regional cuisines, often influenced by the cuisines of the different pre-colonization local cultures (but also influenced by different post-colonization immigration patterns and other factors.)
Look at Gino's East and Giordano's. Now look at Imo's and Cecil Whittaker's. Now look at California Pizza Kitchen.
Now, look at a Chicago Italian beef. Look at Pat's, Geno's, or Ray's in Philly. Look at a New Orleans Po' Boy and an East Coast grinder.
You think there's no regional variety within a country? Are you going to tell a Philly guy his cheesesteak isn't authentic because it's different from what you're used to?
Texas, California, Baja California, the Yucatan, central Mexico, southern Mexico, the northern end of the Gulf coast in Mexico, and north central Mexico are all very different places.
I never said there wasn't regional variety. I said I'm probably expecting something from Southern Mexico when I eat Mexican. Either way, Tex-Mex isn't really "Mexican", it's definitely a fusion, so if you are expecting Mexican food you'd be surprised.
Texas was one of those regions. So was California. The borders moved. The Tejanos are still here. All border areas have mixed styles and ingredients. "Fusion" implies someone intentionally looked at two disparate cuisines and mixed them on purpose.
Food photography is insanely difficult: just like they say, "the camera adds 10 pounds", lighting and color differences between direct vision and photos make food look slightly off. Our brains are attuned from millions of years of evolution to see anything slightly off with our food to be gross. As a result, even food that looks delicious in person looks disgusting in photographs unless you're extremely careful to get the lighting just right. Professional photographs like this[1] are carefully lighted and highly edited, and even slight variations can make the lettuce look a bit off and the bun a bit burnt[2] or the pickles seem old and the cheese fake[3].
Long story short: people's low-res cell phone photos of half-eaten food taken under fluorescent lights basically indicate nothing about the food.
I have no experience with LaTeX, but if you setup a GH repo for the open-source chapters and privately send me a scan of the book, I and/or others could submit PR requests on a chapter-by-chapter basis with some plaintext transcriptions. Someone could mark up the recipe sections to LaTeX from there.
Ditto on this! LaTex also isn't too terribly difficult, so it might be possible to get 90% the way there just by copying what's been done for the first chapters already, and then @chrissnell can do the fine formatting how he'd like it to look.
Fiverr.com, mechanical turk or something similar should get these typed in for less than $5 per page. Throwing money at the problem might be easier than sacrificing time.
Hey there fellow Texan. If you're planning on releasing it on a permissive license I'll help with what I can. Do you already have high quality scans of the pages you could upload to GitHub?
I can't be the only one who would donate to a Kickstarter (or similar) to fund this. :) If you've already got it scanned, it would be easy to outsource some of that work.
> By the way, Tex-Mex is the quintessential melting pot cuisine
Not really; it's not any more of a melting pot than south-of-the-border Mexican cuisine is, or than California cuisine is (among many others.) It's just a melting pot with different sources and biases.
> Quintessential means "perfect example", not "most".
Yes, but the definite article “the” is exclusive and indicates a unique status, as opposed to the indefinite article “a” which is inclusive and admits a potentially shared status.
Tex-Mex is perhaps a quintessential melting pot cuisine, but it's not the quintessential one.
You've changed from “perfect” to “representative"; while quintessence can mean either, the latter makes little sense with “the” [0] only “a”, the former makes perfect sense with “the” to refer to the concrete example best approximating an abstract ideal, and this is exactly how the construction “the quintessential X” is generally used.
[0] except in the context of some feature where the example perfectly represents the aggregate in a way no other single example does.
The best part of the "great American melting pot" for me is the fusion of cuisines. Trying to knock a restaurant or food because it isn't "authentic" is completely missing the beauty of the different combinations of flavors and styles that arise. Texans know the difference between Mexican and Tex Mex, and can enjoy both without having to act like one is superior.
By the way if you've never had brisket chili I highly recommend it.
Was just talking with my wife about this yesterday when we went to an Asian fusion place for lunch. Sometimes you just want to eat gyoza, sushi, and mapo tofu in the same meal. Doesn't mean you don't appreciate that they're foods from different cultures. It's quintessentially American to gather up the best bits of multiple cultures and offer them all in one convenient package.
Aren't all modern cultures (with exception of "lost" tribes perhaps) amalgams of multiple historic influences.
It's the quintessence of culture to be a composite of prior cultural aspects.
It doesn't appear to be distinctly American in that it seems to be present in the other continental areas too?
For example traditional British chip shop food includes battered pineapple, and curry sauce and may just as well be cooked for you by a person born in China, say.
Indeed, food gets remixed worldwide. The gyros I get in Chicago are almost identical to the kebabs I found in Britain, except that the British variety has a wide variety of sauce options, including ones more commonly associated with curry, such as tikka.
Tikka masala, on the other hand, was invented in the UK and has made its way back to India.
Food would be boring indeed if ingredients and techniques strictly stayed in one place.
This is why Houston food is so great. I actually grew up in the Rio Grande Valley (mentioned in the article), then moved to Houston after graduating from college. Most of the Mexican food in the RGV is really good, but I think Houston has it beat overall, maybe just because of the increased competition. People from the RGV will never agree though, because the RGV is the "authentic" style to them. Most of the time, "authentic" actually means "familiar".
You can find great TexMex and MexMex all around Houston. Not every place is great though. There's always places that serve cheap, bland or stale food.
But the best thing about Houston is the variety. There are large populations of people from all over the world. Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, and Mediterranean food in particular are pretty popular. Then add the traditional american food, BBQ, seafood, and the Louisiana dishes, and it's hard to find a city with more diversity in food.
Ex-Houstonian here (born and raised, moved to California) and I gotta say this episode actually disappointed me. I know there's no possible way to fit all the different fusion and great breadth of variety available in the city, this focused pretty much only on Viet-Louisiana fusion and similarities. There is SO MUCH MORE to Houston than that.
*edit- I'd like to also say that this show is great though, especially his view on the topic of authenticity and how he thinks it hurts more than it helps. :)
It's interesting to think what the transition point was when people just made do with whatever plants and animals were available nearby, and that was "food," to when things became "<country/culture/region/etc> food." If tortilla wraps, beans, etc. were imported to Japan 300 years ago, that would just be Japanese food, but now if a Japanese restaurant started mixing those in, it would never escape the label "Japanese/Mexican fusion" or a variation on that.
The death of traditional tex mex is hinted at in the article. I think it's because the vast majority of transplants and modern youth simply do not want cheap mounds of food from dingy establishments. Yet true tex-mex can only operate this way. They cannot raise prices and modernize their establishments because then they are completing on a separate, higher-priced plane. I'm not going to a tex-mex restaurant that wants > $8 for lunch because it's unlikely to be tex-mex. But others are not going to any dingy restaurant serving mounds of unhealthy, greasy food regardless of prices, and so we have the impasse.
It's no different than saying froyo is killing the ice cream truck.
Having said that, there are still a ton of tex mex establishments just barely raising their prices. Some are locally chaining up (e.g. Matitos, Cristinas, etc in the Metroplex), some are not really traditional (or in the process of losing it) and already chained up (Chuys, Pappasitos, Uncle Julios, etc). The rest are operating on small margins, but they're not completely dead and some are even opening anew or revamping. They are no longer dirt cheap, but still not expensive.
>The death of traditional tex mex is hinted at in the article. I think it's because the vast majority of transplants and modern youth simply do not want cheap mounds of food from dingy establishments.
This is the fate of local business in general when cities gentrify, not just Tex Mex or restaurants. You either make yourself suitability upscale and worthy of the newcomeer's dollars or get priced out because everyone else will. The city trades culture for dollars. Hole in the wall establishments don't survive that.
In Dallas area, I find you have to go south to find anything close to authentic. Like Herrera's in Oak Cliff (which is now even getting chained up). Dallas is very economically segregated and south is where the these rent issues are less present and dense mexican communities have formed.
While mostly true, we have to be careful with words like "authentic". Tex-mex has variations in every area, even among metropolitan areas (same deal w/ Fort Worth, except many "authentic" ones are in North Fort Worth). For example, I consider a chimichanga to be quintessential tex-mex even though it's probably not Texan or Mexican and not "traditional" or "authentic". Some tex-mex places may laugh at you for asking while others will serve it proudly.
Good point. Authentic to me - but I do think the greasy food of cinder block buildings are a good sign of authenticity (in Texas). And you just don't see that at all in most of the north of I30 Dallas. I'm not too familiar with Ft Worth, except Joe T's (IMO: authentic but poor execution on the food, great patio & margaritas). I'm not a purist, I agree with you on the chimichanga.
There's also plenty of places in east Dallas. I'm finding you have a lot of criticisms about Dallas that are more about you not knowing your way around here than the actual food scene.
It's not that. I wasn't trying to list every pocket of the city that does have good tex mex. The problem is, it doesn't permeate through the city or into the burbs which is my criticism. The fact you counter my isolated example, with another isolated example, proves this point. Most people of middle-upper+ class in Dallas do not seek out this tex mex in those neighborhoods, which means their view of tex mex is shaped mostly by a few large chains.
The article doesn't seem to talk about it, but why do people crave authenticity anyway, as if they were afraid that they were getting scammed by their food? Nobody cares that spaghetti bolognese isn't from Bologna or that Haägen Dazs isn't a remotely Scandinavian word, and nobody had cared for a long time. Why are they caring now? More internet? More migration?
What's changed that's making everyone realise, in abject horror, my god, we have seen this food's ethnicity, and it is ours!
People like things that seem exotic because it's novel.
They care more now because life is generally easy(or, rather, straight-forward) so people need amusement and ways to feel special. It's unique experience they crave, even if it's the merely perception. Oddly, flavor comes second. [ which I believe is the case with the recent popularity of phở, but that's my subjective belief. ;) ]
My pet theory is that our culture is becoming increasingly atomiticized, like everyone experiencing their lives as entirely disconnected from anyone else or to history or some bigger sense of meaning.
There are upsides to it, but I think people are craving some "grounding" in a world where things/groups exist for deep reasons--where there's a continuity of identity that lasts many generations instead of the blink it lasts in most peoples' current experience.
Tex-Mex was really popular in Europe in the early 90s (along with the color orange). I ate at a restaurant in Paris that served decent enchiladas and chalupas, but the guacamole old, brown, and inedible. Today, I suspect you could get much fresher avocados... and of course margaritas are everywhere.
Now Tex-Mex is moving up-scale even in Texas. It's weird, but there's so much competition at the food trucks, fast casual, etc that it's hard for the old grease ladlers to pay the rent (and rent has really gone up).
The joke, “Tex-Mex is it’s invented in the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio makes it popular, and Austin takes all the credit.” really only sounds right in Austin where self-deprecatory hipsterism is a thing. The valley and SA don't care.
I'm not American, so have no patriotic love of US food, and was fully prepared for 'authentic' Yucatan to completely eclipse Austin (where I'd eaten a bunch of Tex Mex food before).
I was actually disappointed - the quality of the produce, and the sharpness of flavour in even the cheapest food in Austin eclipsed anywhere on the mid/low range in Yucatan. Queso aside (I do not like American cheese) I'd prefer Austin any day.
I lived in Austin. Now I live in Mexico, various parts, and I'd say that Austin has a very short supply of Mexican food.
But there are people who will always prefer Torchy's bizarre tacos over a legit taqueria you'd find in E Riverside or wherever. And they didn't enjoy some of the best tacos I could take them to in Guadalajara. But I would never conclude that Austin's food is better from that sort of experience.
Hopefully you realize that your comment perfectly embodies the point of the article?
You're complaining about the "authenticity" of Austin Tex-Mex in a reply to someone who said they loved the Austin food more than "authentic" food they had in Mexico.
The myth of authenticity isn't killing Tex-Mex. Economics are. The increasing advantage of corporate chains over mom-and-pop restaurants, the increasing cost ratio of mass-market factory ingredients over local meats and vegetables... it's just plain cheaper and more profitable to build another Taco Bell or Chi-Chis than to keep Grandma's restaurant going into a third generation.
When I worked for a Fortune 200 insurance company, I sometimes had to call healthcare providers to verify information. Healthcare providers were sometimes major hospitals, but they were often small offices providing medical or dental care.
Although doctors are highly educated professionals, their education specifically covers medical stuff, not business stuff. Small offices routinely had piss poor knowledge of regulations like HIPAA and lousy business practices. Small shops often simply lack robust practices in important areas outside their main area if expertise. This is a serious problem in business.
Similarly, I imagine that in many cases, Grandma's restaurant was started because Grandma was an excellent cook and she decided to make money off of it in an era where her lack of business acumen was less of a hindrance. The grandkids may not cook as well as Grandma and may have no idea they need to up their game in non cooking areas as well.
So Taco Bell comes in and Taco Bell has better business practices and a robust system in place to standardize the quality of its so so food. The fact that no gourmet chefs work there won't hurt the business the way it kills Grandma's restaurant when the grandkids just can't turn out a dish like Grandma could.
I would really like to see a world that does a better job helping small shops perform well as business entities. But that isn't the world I live in currently. Currently, small shops often die because they simply lack business acumen that franchises have well sorted.
And entrepreneurship becomes harder, so it becomes rarer, and of course people by far tend to go into business only if they know other people who do, and so inequality continues to grow.
This theory goes against the grain of the "fast casual" movement where people are willing to pay more than bottom dollar for food... if they're convinced they're getting something a little better than Taco Bell. Chipotle, Qdoba, etc.
Chipotle is dirt cheap. A chicken burrito bowl (my go-to) is $6.50. It's pretty much the cheapest food around my work. The only other contender is the Chinese place where I can get a lunch for $6.75.
Maybe it's just keto/Atkins trends that are making BBQ so popular?
Tex-Mex might be plenty authentic, but I haven't found carnitas in the states that match my memories of Mexico. Not even BBQ pulled pork that compares either. It could be entirely a perception that is influenced by being in Mexico rather than the quality of the food itself, but it doesn't really matter, the Mexican food in Mexico seems better.
Best meal I ever had in Mexico was a hole in the wall joint in Guanajuato where a woman would bring a new dish of her choosing to all 4 tables in her restaurant room, about once every 15-20 minutes. You could walk in and sit down, and just eat what you get, for as many courses as you wanted, then on your way out, pay for however many courses you ate. It was soups and meats and vegatables, not much of the fare you'd consider "Mexican food", but one of my best memories of eating in Mexico.
I spent most of my life in Texas and went to college in Austin. The first thing out of my mouth when I get home: "let's go grab some Mexican." I can't think of anyone (friends and family living outside of Texas) that doesn't do the same -- Tex-Mex will never be killed :)
Growing up in NC, I was never really exposed to the idea that there were different types of Mexican cuisines in the US. Everything was just "Mexican" food there. Now that I've experienced west coast varieties, I'd definitely say it's Tex-mex dominant in the southeast. Queso is such a staple there. I just couldn't believe it when I arrived in Seattle and couldn't find it anywhere!
I don't think tex-mex will die any time soon though. It definitely is a comfort food that people will always crave. I haven't noticed a downturn in tex-mex style mexican in NC, but it's not competing with Brisket there either. Still, even small towns in NC usually have some sort of mexican restaurant, often staffed by immigrants from Mexico with soccer games playing on the TV, so maybe that makes it feel more authentic. Ultimately it's the portions, the approachable tastes and textures, and the price that will keep Tex-Mex restaurants chugging along. It's not a hip food, and probably wont ever be again.
I'm from El Paso and lived in New Mexico for six years. Personally, I've never had really good TexMex or Authentic Mexican food anywhere outside of the southwest. I've always thought of TexMex as a variation of Mexican food involving high quality beef with a peppery seasoning, like you can get at Taco Cabana or Rosa's. It's sad to me that some people might think places like Taco Bell/Chilis/Applebees are an accurate representation of TexMex or Traditional Mexican. It's also strange that queso is so overused everywhere outside of the southwest. Side note: Navajo Tacos are superbly delicious.
Here in north Alabama, El Palacio (of Mexican Food) on the parkway in Huntsville closed a few months ago. Another part of my childhood is dead.
(I grew up in Texas, frequently eating in dimly-lit Tex-Mex restaurants with pictures of toreadors and dying bulls, sometimes on actual felt. This was before even fajitas became popular---burritos, enchiladas, tacos, and chile rellanos were the popular fare. Walking into El Palacio made me feel like I was 6 again.)
Guadalajara Jalisco on Madison Blvd., next to the Wal-Mart. It's the best one in Madison, in my opinion, but I can't speak for Huntsville proper. Chapala, the one that has "authentic mexican restaurant" right in the name, next to Publix on County Line, is certainly genuine enough, but the service responsiveness ranges from sluggish to glacial.
Places like Casa Blanca, Rosie's, and Phil Sandoval's are all like Olive Garden for Mexican. They're what I think of when I imagine an "inauthentic tex-mex" restaurant.
Speaking of which, there are zero good Italian restaurants in the area, according to my spouse. There's a decent one in Chattanooga, within a mile of the 24/75 junction. But that's at least 2 hours away.
Chuck Wagon BBQ on Madison Blvd. sells Texas barbecue, if you didn't already know. Most of the other barbecue joints in the area are essentially Memphis barbecue, plus white sauce. The owner has also been referred to as the "barbecue Nazi", in reference to the "soup Nazi" Seinfeld episode, so you'd best know what you want before reaching the counter.
It's been a while since I worked out that way and ate at Guadalajara and the Chuck Wagon (it's the only Texas barbecue around, it's good, you take what he gives you when he's open and you eat it and like it). Guadalajara is good, but it's just not the same. (Do they even serve fried ice cream?)
You are correct. There may actually be a decent Italian restaurant closer, but Chattanooga is on the way to a lot of potential long weekend destinations.
It's partly how we view the cultures. Popular 'chinese' food is also supposed to be cheap, but we have a similar view of their manufactured goods. Japanese food is expensive, we consider their manufactured goods as high quality.
Meanwhile, Chinese food is some of the most highly regarded food in the world.
Mexican food... probably gonna expect it to be cheap.
When I think of "authentic" Tex-Mex, I think of El Fenix in Dallas. They certainly have a long (in American terms) and interesting history[1] with that cuisine. My favorite comfort food, especially during cold weather, is their Mexican Dinner with tamales, chili con carne, and a cheese enchilada.
I don't think that, personally, at least its modern incarnation. But this just goes to show that opinions differ on this. Also we shouldn't necessarily attribute history to "authenticity" as many times the history is held up for marketing purposes and does not represent their modern approach.
Whats killing tex mex --and frankly quite a number of other american fusion cuisines-- is what I like to term lard-as-a-service. Elites didnt kill tex-mex, Texas did.
Things like Tacos al Carbon and fajita dishes take time, patience, and effort to achieve not only a reproducible but flavorful and healthy results. Huitlacoche, corn, and other fresh produce have the duality of problems for restaurants and cooks: discounts offered only at scale and the potential to spoil.
Finally, places like McDonalds have ruined food. Everything has to be delivered in 6 minutes or less, or your yelp review will shutter your business. this combination of 'fast/cheap/good' drives restaurants to eschew creative dishes and involved recipes in favor of simple durable ingredients. Sure, the fajitas came frozen, but most customers wont care if you fry them in margarine and drown them in an ocean of inexpensive cheese that has an amicable shelf life. Refried beans can either be made in house, or if you dont like the idea of hiring a chef for a fair wage, purchased from a sysco truck on 70lb batches of flavourless grey box shaped paste.
Or, skip it altogether and sell something that was cheaper than sourcing 6 vegetables like Brisket and canned beans. So long as someone else cooked it, its not on your ledger.
Do that many people look at yelp? The most anyone I know sees are the reviews that pop up on Google Maps, and I've never noticed those reviews to be unfair about small wait times or the like.
Everyone I know looks to Yelp first, I'm guessing in part because Google Maps' UI for reading reviews is somewhat obtuse in contrast. I live in the LA area, so it's possibly a regional thing.
The search for authenticity in food is a weird obsession anyway since cuisine changes on contact with new ingredients.