A Google search for “Speedy Gonzalez lunch special” reveals that it is, at the least, a regional trend. As a Californian, I’ve never seen this, but it does seem fairly common elsewhere.
I’d imagine, however, that what you are seeing is a mix of very normal family Mexican restaurant practices (combo meals, large “special meal”), normal restaurant practice (a busser bringing out the bread/chips, birthday song), and what’s probably a regional meme (Speedy Gonzalez.)
Could you give us some names of these restaurants?
All of the things you mention are more or less sort of kind of typical of mediocre Mexican restaurants in the U.S. There are a lot of them. They generally don’t serve very good food. There are also a lot of very good, very authentic Mexican restaurants in the U.S. They are much more common in some places than others (mostly places with many people of Mexican ancestry), but you will be surprised sometimes to find a good Mexican restaurant in some places where there aren’t very many Mexican-Americans. In any case, the resemblance between such mediocre places is no more interesting than the resemblance between mediocre Chinese restaurants.
This right here. Chicago has the largest Mexican consulate in the US, and the second-largest Mexican population in the US after LA, last I read up on it. And no, I’ve never seen a “Speedy Gonzales” platter, not even in Madison or Milwaukee, WI, or Traverse City, MI (the other Midwestern cities I’ve had Mexican food in).
To be clear, there are many good Mexican restaurants in the Des Moines and Omaha areas. There are also many of these “Cookie Cutter” restaurants. I was just hoping that a Doper out there might corroborate my assertions.
According to the Monterrey website, Mazatlan is a sister restaurant. So that solves one part of the mystery.
I’ve pulled up various menus, but am not coming up with any obvious commonalities. They tend to have fairly different entrees.
One day, when they go through my files, the powers that be are going to wonder why I had the sudden need to do in-depth research on Mexican restaurants in Iowa.
Yeah, I’m in Chicago/from Chicago, and can’t say I’ve had the OP’s experience. There are lots of small, walk-in take-out places with just a couple tables that you can expect similar food from all over this city. Then there are the sit-down server places and they do not lend such similar experiences. If I were to head to more rural areas, though, I really don’t think I would be surprised to find even the mom and pop places to be fairly similar. I don’t think there’s much of a market among less dense populations for much variety.
I took a business trip with three coworkers a couple years ago, we had to drive to Springfield for a couple day stay. We’re all crunchy granola spoiled city people, two vegans and two vegetarians. We were happy to find even one health food store nearby, and we ate at the only Indian restaurant nearby both nights. While we would have been perfectly happy at any kind or Indian place, we certainly weren’t surprised to find a fairly basic place with all the same stuff you’d expect - and I’m not convinced it would survive if it was fare from a specific region or specializing in more exotic dishes than the “usual” - it’s exotic enough serving the bland basics. I think any ethnic place suffers the same homogenization if it’s in a region that wouldn’t really support multiple ethnocentric restaurants. After all, I don’t hear the OP complaining about how similar all the Ethiopian restaurants are.
I was just about to post pretty much this, except I can’t remember even bothering to eat Mexican food anywhere else in the Midwest outside the Chicago area. Or in any other U.S. state that doesn’t border Mexico, for that matter - even NY or Florida. But there is no shortage of fabulous authentic Mexican food, including regional dishes, in Chicago. For that matter, a lot of the non-Mexican restaurant food in Chicago is cooked by Mexicans.
All the Mexican clients and co-workers I have asked have very strong opinions about which places are the best to go to for which dishes.
Tonight, in honor of this thread (not really. We just felt like margaritas tonight) we ate at our favorite local joint. Chile Colorado, Chile Verde, a relleno, two Grande Margaritas (one with salt, one without, both on the rocks) and a couple of Victorias.
There are a lot of Mexican/TexMex restaurants in my area. I try to avoid chains and eat at the little mom-and-pop places.
Usually, the servers are women, but occasionally they are men. I’ve never ever seen any server put a sombrero on a patron. The lunch specials are called the lunch specials, and there’s usually more than one of them, and a note that substitutions will cost extra. Sometimes the combo plates will have names, like Daisy or Pablo’s, but other times they will just be referred to as a taco or enchilada plate. One restaurant, called Fiesta, does have both the Fiesta combo and the Fiesta Grande combo (everything on the Fiesta plus another enchilada and a tamale). Most of the restaurants I go to do have a lot of menu listings, but this is because they serve a lot of different items, like beef, chicken, fish, vegetarian, whatever. They’ll usually have a combo platter that’s Pick Two or Three from a listing of dishes, and the choices are tacos (beef or chicken, hard or soft), tamales, enchiladas (a dizzying array of choices), and chalupas. This platter comes with rice and beans. There usually is one person whose job seems to be to deliver the chips and salsa. In most places, a host seats the diners and floats around the place looking for anything that needs attention. The host might very well be the owner. The server takes the order, brings it out, keeps the drinks filled, and brings the check. Sometimes you pay at the register up front, sometimes the server is the cashier.
I’ve never seen any dish called the Speedy Gonzalez. And I’ve never seen a restaurant worker singing a birthday song to a customer, either.
Has anyone else seen a trend in Mexican restaurants where you can order entrees by number, and #1 is usually the same? A taco, burrito, and I think an enchilada.
Not sure about #1 and #2, don’t remember the menus well enough. I agree on the first #3, a large number of combinations. Of the 2 local Mexican places, one has a sombrero, one does not.
At the place nearest my house the owner is often the one that brings out the food. Other than that all the waitstaff seem to be at-large.
Meh. I’ve lived in the midwest all my life and have eaten at several restaurants that served quality mexican-ish food. About the only thing on the OP’s list that I’ll agree with is that they always bring you chips and salsa (But why would I think that’s a bad thing?). I dunno about where the OP hangs out but, frex, my hometown in MN has an extremely large mexican population for being so tiny and there’s a whole host of mexican restaurants run by and patronized by real-life mexicans! Oooo!
Well, if you’re counting Chicago as “Midwest,” then you’re severely mistaken. I’d put it up there with SoCal Mexican (and I personally think there’s a bit more variety here and prefer it, although I’ve also had a lot more time here to discover all the great different regional varieties of Mexican.) Hell, I’ve even had decent Mexican in the Iowa City environs.
Anyhow, I’ve never seen a restaurant with a “Speedy Gonzales” or anything like that.
I will attest that Des Moines area Mexican restaurants seem 95% of the time to basically be carbon copies of the others. There are a few exceptions, and they tend to be better – El Patio and Dos Rios come to mind. And there are a few taquerias here and there, too, or straight up burrito places (e.g. El Ray) that are different. When you get over to areas of town that are catering more to actual Mexican immigrants than to Midwestern natives, you don’t see as many of the cookie-cutter places.
It’s the same with Chinese food. You’ll go into different places and not only do they have the same classics, but it seems like the food and the menus are absolutely identical.
I wonder if it’s something you can order from their food suppliers, some kind of a new restaurant kit or what. Or it could just be that this is what people around here expect from Mexican food. I know quite a few people that go to any one of these places and order the exact same dish every single time.