Mexican. By far. I am Californian, and Mexican food is pure comfort for me. My life in exile in DC has been pretty miserable, food wise. I miss the taste of home.
I think a lot of people here don’t appreciate the variety and complexity of Mexican food. It’s just as nuanced and complex as any other cuisine, with wide regional variations and it’s own haute cuisine.
Really good Italian food is good, but most of it is kind of meh to me.
I would probably have a similar list, although Thai would also be up there, and probably French, so Italian would fall to at at least sixth (though I probably would put Turkish ahead of it or tied with it.)
As for mole, there’s like a gazillion kinds of mole, some relatively straight forward, others very complex. I’m guessing you probably don’t like the chocolatey moles like poblano, negro, and rojo. However, check out some of the others. Mole amarillo (my favorite to make at home, fairly simple. Here’s a good Rick Bayless recipe. I do a version with chicken and chayote that comes from his Mexican Everyday cookbook. I suspect you’d like it, since you like Indian food.) Mole verde is also quite nice and light, with focus on fresh herbs and clean flavors and often (but not always) pumpkin seeds. And that article is just the seven moles of Oaxaca (a place culinarily famous for its moles). There’s even more moles beyond (for example, the famous mole poblano, which is the default mole in the US, is not one of those seven.)
This.
I just thought of something that reinforces my decision: Calamari. I don’t think Mexico has any tradition of squid dishes, and properly-made calamari is the most amazing food on the planet.
Sure they do. In ceviche, in stews (sometimes cooked in its own ink), fried (chicharron de calamar), etc. And besides the usual shrimp and fish dishes, you’ll also find octopus and conch represented in Mexican cuisine. Conch ceviche is my favorite.
It surely would be neat if there were a way to construct a poll with multiple choices and a way to rank those choices from #1 to #whatever so the binary choice between just two of them could be a bit more in keeping with the way things like ethnic cuisines work.
I mean, if you could have the tally power of a poll and the variety of more than two, that could make for some real breakdown of people’s tastes and preferences.
For instance, if you could rank your preferences for these things, and the OP not have to collect and sort the data, it would be much more educational, I think:
– Italian
– Mexican
– Greek (Mediterranean not mentioned)
– Indian
– Chinese
– Japanese
– Polynesian
– French
– English
– Irish
– Papua New Guinese
– some cannibal culture
Noticed you left off “American”, but it begs the question of what is “American cuisine” in the first place.
I love Mexican and Italian, but if you told me that I could have no more T-bone steaks, peanut butter, or fried chicken, my life would be a vast wasteland. 
… And I would lose about 20 pounds.
True, but if we’re being so broad as to lop all regional cuisines under categories like “Chinese,” “Indian,” “Mexican,” “Italian,” and the such, might as well include all of America’s indigenous cuisines: Southern food, Cajun/Creole food, New England, Tex-Mex, Midwestern (which apparently is supposed to be the new food trend for this year), etc.
The only “American” I can think of would be Native American and I know little about it except for pemmican and frybread. For that matter, can anybody identify a Native American restaurant or even a chain of fast foods with that distinction?
I could expand the list to include Soul Food, Creole, Cajun and other regional styles, but I am at a loss for what “American” even means.
Well, exactly. We Americans eat a lot, but nobody bothers to call what we eat “American.” Then again, they don’t have “Italian restaurants” in Italy, do they?
Italian, no contest. We were stationed in Naples, Italy for three years. There was a place down the street we went to frequently. My favorite was Buccatini ala chef. Fresh tomato sauce with eggplant and cubed, REAL mozzerella over buccatini. They also made an awesome margherita pizza.
The pizza in Rome was different, square and tended to have meat on it, Naples pizza not as much meat.
A place I wish I could remember the name of off Campo de Fiori. We broke our rule of only eating at a place once there. The saltimbocca was so tasty (and other dishes) that we took several friends and family members there for dinner over the short time in Italy.
In Florence the food was more meat oriented, less pasta. Still tasty.
Southern Italy was my favorite though.
Mexican I can take or leave. If you broaden the category and add Central and South American, I may have to think a little more on the choice.
Well, one of the basic categories for restaurant searches I see (like, check Yelp! for instance, or the Chicago Reader’s own restaurant search), is “American,” so I’d say that, yes, it’s a classification used here.
Here’s a game challenging people to name the Zagat classifications of NYC restaurants. It has over a hundred answers.
That alone would guarantee Mexico supremacy on my list. Squid isn’t food; it’s bait. 
But I can forgive Italy for calamari because they make up for it in so many other culinary ways.
If pizza counts as Italian, I’d have to go with that. I’ve lived for years in an area with a huge Latino population, and taquerias are plentiful and great, but there’s a certain sameness to the food after awhile.
Actually, when it comes to both Mexican and Italian, the food is so regionally varied, that my idea of either is actually pretty narrow. So while I’ll still choose, my choice is nowhere near as informed as it could be.
My Italian ancestors would raise from the dead and cuss me in three languages if I didn’t pick Italian, plus its influence in Spanish cuisine is enormous.
My contact with Mexican has been a lot lower and most of it was either too hot (despite being from chains) or Americanized (which simply doesn’t count; I’m not talking about Tex-Mex but about bland); worse, some of it was Europeized (bland squared). And it’s not as if it’s the only country where you can get huevos rancheros 
In Spanish that would be redundant, and in Italian it would be a version of arrabiata.
Well, fair enough, but
If the only Italian food I’d ever had were Papa John’s Pizza, I’d think Italian food was pretty nasty. Good Mexican food–say, some huevos rancheros made with Mexican chorizo with its chiliful, cinnamony awesomeness–is quite a bit removed from Taco Bell.
Mexican has more stuff I can eat now, but, even before I think I would have chosen that one. Most of what I know of as Italian is pasta, and I’ve never been the biggest pasta fan. I do love pizza, but it’s the convenience food version, which I think of as more American than anything else.