We’ve had a couple discussions on these boards about “authentic” Mexican food. There’s a new book out titled “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America”. I read a brief article from the author which took material from the book. Here are a few quotes I enjoyed:
The author was in South Dakota in a college town and decided to try some “Mexican” food. He tried Taco John’s, the third largest taco chain in the US which began in Wyoming. He got a breakfast burrito filled with tater tots relabeled “potato oles”. Here’s what he writes:
"There is nothing remotely Mexican about Potato Oles – not even the quasi-Spanish name, which has a distinctly Castilian accent. The burrito was more insulting to me and my heritage than casting Charlton Heston as the swarthy Mexican hero in Touch of Evil. But it was intriguing enough to take back to my hotel room for a taste. There, as I experienced all of the conconction’s gooey, filling glory while chilly rain fell outside, it struck me: Mexican food has become a better culinary metaphor for America than the melting pot."
About modern, commercial Mexican food he writes:
“And that’s where the leftist critics of Mexican food come in. For them, there’s something inherently suspicious about a cuisine responsive to both the market and the Mercado. Oh, academics and foodies may love the grub, but they harbor an atavistic view that the only “true” Mexican food is the just-off-the-grill carne asada found in the side lot of your local abuelita (never mind that it was the Spaniards who introduced beef to the New World)."
Of people who protect “authentic” Mexican food he writes:
“culinary anthropologists like Bayless and Diana Kennedy make a big show out of protecting ‘authentic’ Mexican food from the onslaught of commercialized glob, they are being both paternalistic and ahistorical.”
I appreciate Bayless and Kennedy’s efforts. I own their cookbooks. But the author is right. It is paternalistic (I have no problem with that, some things are worth saving) and it is ahistorical. Mexican food is a food that’s evolved.
The author talks about the war on food trucks in LA which were largely Mexican until the recent food truck craze.
Finally, the author quotes two scholars about Latino culture. Those authors write about Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s success as arising from “neocolonial appropriations of world cuisine by reviving a gendered variant of the Hispanic fantasy discourse.” The author comments “um, yeah…”
My comment would be “huh?”
I may get and read the entire book at some time.
The author was in South Dakota in a college town and decided to try some “Mexican” food. He tried Taco John’s, the third largest taco chain in the US which began in Wyoming. He got a breakfast burrito filled with tater tots relabeled “potato oles”. Here’s what he writes:
"There is nothing remotely Mexican about Potato Oles – not even the quasi-Spanish name, which has a distinctly Castilian accent. The burrito was more insulting to me and my heritage than casting Charlton Heston as the swarthy Mexican hero in Touch of Evil. But it was intriguing enough to take back to my hotel room for a taste. There, as I experienced all of the conconction’s gooey, filling glory while chilly rain fell outside, it struck me: Mexican food has become a better culinary metaphor for America than the melting pot."
About modern, commercial Mexican food he writes:
“And that’s where the leftist critics of Mexican food come in. For them, there’s something inherently suspicious about a cuisine responsive to both the market and the Mercado. Oh, academics and foodies may love the grub, but they harbor an atavistic view that the only “true” Mexican food is the just-off-the-grill carne asada found in the side lot of your local abuelita (never mind that it was the Spaniards who introduced beef to the New World)."
Of people who protect “authentic” Mexican food he writes:
“culinary anthropologists like Bayless and Diana Kennedy make a big show out of protecting ‘authentic’ Mexican food from the onslaught of commercialized glob, they are being both paternalistic and ahistorical.”
I appreciate Bayless and Kennedy’s efforts. I own their cookbooks. But the author is right. It is paternalistic (I have no problem with that, some things are worth saving) and it is ahistorical. Mexican food is a food that’s evolved.
The author talks about the war on food trucks in LA which were largely Mexican until the recent food truck craze.
Finally, the author quotes two scholars about Latino culture. Those authors write about Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger’s success as arising from “neocolonial appropriations of world cuisine by reviving a gendered variant of the Hispanic fantasy discourse.” The author comments “um, yeah…”
My comment would be “huh?”
I may get and read the entire book at some time.
