Come up to Chicago. It has one of the best selections of authentic regional Mexican in the states. Only Southern California is in the same league, in my opinion.
They definitely get points for good tortillas!
I don’t have as much of a problem with tilapia as with the concept of “Panhandle” as some place exotic. The Panhandle is the top section of Texas–or the Southern end of the great flatness that stretches down from the Prairie Provinces, relieved only by grain elevators. Here’s a historic shot of Amarillo–Metropolis of the Panhandle.
There’s considerable overlap between Tex-Mex & Mexican cuisine. Or you could say the Border between them is somewhat nebulous.
IIRC, Sizzlers Steak House at least has a Tex-Mex aspect to the menu.
Heh, I don’t know about Boston but I’ve had trouble finding on in New York. My friend from Albuquerque who lives in Brooklyn supposedly knows of a little place. Though I just got back from New Mexico so I’m not jonesing just yet. Mmm Christmas style beef enchilada with a egg on the top. 
My daughter has lived in Virginia for a couple of years, and says that there’s no decent Mexican food to be had around there. When she visits us, she always wants to make the rounds of the various Mexican restaurants. She likes Antonio’s tortilla soup and fajitas, Fiesta’s Fiesta Dinner and corn tortillas (served instead of flour tortillas), and Posado’s queso.
The problem I see is that people are assuming that, just because a restaurant features food that is not native to Mexico or is prepared in a different way gives them a different culinary distinction. We don’t tend to do that Chinese resaraunts that serve fortune cookies, do we?
I usually reserve Tex-Mex for restaurants that use pre-bought ingredients. And you can’t call yourself authentic Mexican if you don’t make your own chips, for example.
As for “queso”, authentic Mexican restaurants have become aware of the Tex-Mex slang, and often know that when an American says “queso”, they usually want the dip. The real question is what it’s referred to on the menu or by the staff. Also, does it come out tasting like Velveeta? Does it have tomatoes in it? One of my favorite restaurants was created and is run by real Mexicans who assure me the food is authentic. Yet they still serve “cheese dip,” which is just a melted version of their regular cheese mixed with milk.
This all reminds me of something that’s been bugging me for years now- why’s it so hard to find good fajitas?
We make fajitas every now and then. It’s not a difficult thing to make- we get some skirt or flank steak, spice it with red pepper, black pepper, and salt (usually in the form of the Dry Rub from The Salt Lick), and then smoke the meat for about thirty minutes. It doesn’t take long because the meat’s so thin.
Most places, however, cook theirs up in a skillet. But even if a place smokes or grills them, the meat is generally bland and tasteless. On the plus side, it usually comes with a metric ton of onions.
Granted, tortillas go a long way towards defining great fajitas… but the meat is just as important. I’m really surprised that so many restaurants manage to screw up such a simple dish.
Sure we do. If someone suggests Chinese for dinner, the next question is always, “Chinese-Chinese or American-Chinese?” Totally different things, and good restaurants abound with both.
In Chicago, and other large metro areas, sure. Chinese-Chinese is not even an option to most Americans.
I dunno, “Tex-Mex” to me implies a type of cuisine, not the quality thereof. The aforementioned Lone Star restaurants make their own chips AND their own tortillas, always on site, and served fresh, but the restaurant is distinctively Tex-Mex, not true Mexican.
On the other hand, a place that served genuinely Mexican food but pre-bought some of the ingredients would not be Tex-Mex, it’d just be crappy Mexican food.
I used to go to Border Cafe on Church Street in Cambridge… and would spend the entire time bitching about how inauthentic it was. But it might be the best option around…
Once again, I’ll refer you to Robb Walsh of the Houston Press–a Tex-Mex/Mexican guru, although he apparently eats everything.
A recent article*** **raised a question of just what restaurants were serving as fajitas:
Those cuts are often tenderized, but not like you’d do it at home:
Yum, delicious! He also points out that this commercially tenderized meat can be turned to mush by overcooking or holding too long on a steam table.
*Note: *Per Walsh’s Gospel, borne out by personal experience: Tex-Mex can range from dreadful to excellent; so can “Authentic” Mexican food. Distance from the Southwest increases the diner’s risk–but good stuff might be found anywhere. Especially since it’s become more probable that you have Real Live Mexicans in the kitchen, even up in Yankeeland.
*** Warning:** The article sprang from a class Walsh took at Texas A&M’s Beef Center. There are not-too-graphic pictures & graphic prose explaining where meat comes from, in case you didn’t know.
Sopapillas, green chile*? You sir are definately in New Mexico territorry! Those two items help to explain what Tex-Mex is not. Another example of New Mexican is black beans, not pinto. You’re looking at more Native American influence, not Mexican.
The one chain of Mexican restaurants who serve sopapillas locally admit that they came from Native Americans in the Southwest U.S. In Utah they’re referred to as Utah Scones.
*Official State Question: Red or Green?
That’s ridiculous. Pre-bought ingredients just makes for bad Tex-Mex. Great Tex-Mex is made with fresh ingedients. The term “Tex-Mex” is just Diane Kennedy’s attempt at drawing the distinction b/t authentic Mexican food and what most Americans think of as Mexican food.
Also, using the words “Authentic Mexican restaurant” and “chips” in the same sentence is pretty hilarious.
There are several Mexican restaurants in Thailand, and they all seem to advertise “Tex Mex.” But really, having grown up in Texas and lived for a while as an adult in Albuquerque, I have always found Tex Mex, in Texas and abroad, to be hopelessly bland and tasteless and the Mexican cuisine of New Mexico, especially northern New Mexico, to be straight from heaven.
In your opinion, “Authentic Mexican” places don’t serve tortilla chips?
Hugo’s is perhaps Houston’s finest Mexican restaurant. Chips & salsa are not brought out before the meal–officially, that’s not done in Mexico. Instead, you get spiced peanuts with your drinks.
Every other Mexican/Tex-Mex restaurant I’ve visited here has the chips. Including the other upscale “Interior Mexico” places and the ones where less English is spoken & the patrons are >75% recent immigrants. Some of those places are really more “Authentic”–just not as fancy.
Taco Milagro is a casual restaurant run by Robert Del Grande, who pioneered Southwestern Cuisine some years back at the very fancy Cafe Annie. It opened with a salsa bar–but you had to pay for chips. His patrons explained Law #1 of Texas Cuisine to him: There will be free chips & salsa. (Law #2 involves free refills of Iced Tea.) Chips are now free.
Again: If you don’t know that Tex-Mex can be excellent, you haven’t been eating at the right places; there is a bunch of crap Tex-Mex out there.
According to Robb Walsh “In his first cookbook, Authentic Mexican, (Rick) Bayless intended to include Tex-Mex as well as New Mexican and California Mexican as regional styles of Mexican cooking.” But his editors talked him out of it.
Not necessarily. Plenty of 100% authentic places have adapted to American expectations and offer complimentary chips and salsa-type appetizers with their meals. Even in my Mexican neighborhood, chips and salsa are pretty common even in places you’ll rarely find gringos. My favorite local Mexican restaurant is a Yucatecan family establishment where the owner/head chef comes from Cazumel, from a family of restaurateurs, and who serves recipes from his home town, mostly ones that have been passed down in his family. His grandmother comes over twice a year to check on the food, the quality, and adherence to their traditions. And, yes, they serve chips and xni-pec, a type of Yucatecan pico de gallo made with habaneros and sour orange. So the presence of chips and salsa are not a particularly good barometer of whether a Mexican restaurant is “authentic” or not.
To me, Tex-Mex is cultural kin to the Provancal cooking of southern France. That is, food for poor folks. Menus should have items like barbacoa, menudo, fajitas, tamales (which are traditional for Christmas around here, BTW), enchiladas, tacos, carne guisada, guacamole, rice and refried beans. Another item which is exceedingly popular is breakfast tacos. I don’t believe these are traditional, but all the roach coaches make them (these are the mobile kitchens which do business at construction sites.)
I’m from Texas (currently in Indiana) and I find it pretty hard to find the Tex-Mex I’m used to, so I usually end up eating at On the Border or Don Pablo’s. Both produce some decent Tex-Mex and neither claims to be authentic Mexican (which isn’t what I want anyway when I want a plate of cheese enchiladas and chili gravy).