Growing up with Atlantic coast seafood restaurants (specifically NC), I assumed hush puppies were an essential side dish for seafood. Turns out that is strictly regional.
Ha! I grew up in North Carolina and moved to California when I was in my mid-20s. I grew up thinking fried shrimp meant Calabash-style shrimp, since that’s what was served at most seafood restaurants there. I was greatly disappointed whenever I ordered shrimp at a seafood restaurant here until I realized the style I grew up with is strictly a regional thing. I did eventually broaden my horizons and discovered seafood dishes unique to the West Coast that I like.
In LA, there was always one person on campus that made Christmas tamales and sold them. In Colorado that is apparently not a thing.
Mods, isn’t that an instaban?
I lived in California the first 34 years of my life, and I don’t recall cheese sauce being a thing in Mexican restaurants.
My broken assumption, after living in Southern NM from 6-18, and trying to find “Mexican” food in the early 90s outside of the state was the utter lack of any perceptible heat, and, worst of all, the whole “rolled” enchilada.
Yes, I know the stacked variant is largely unknown outside New Mexico, but I always found it superior. And of course, it allows a perfectly over-easy egg on top in a stable platform.
You guys have On the Border. I promise you they have queso.
Methinks you are just bitter about the lack of green chiles in every damn thing.
On The Border is to ‘Mexican food’ of any variety as Wild Irish Rose is to a well-aged Tempranillo.
Stranger
I should have realized everyone here at the Straight Dope has rarified taste when compared to the hoi polloi and would never eat at a chain. All of us eat at an authentic, pardon me, auténtico restaurante Mexicano, where the tortillas are made by someone’s abuelita using the same recipe and method passed down to her from her Aztec ancestors.
I get it. I’m the same way with BBQ.
I don’t mean to suggest that an On The Border might have reasonably cromulent food product; I mean, I don’t personally know because I’ve only considered it in desperation during a layover, and it is one of those restaurants which seems ubiquitous in airport terminals, but people seem to patronize it, and I’m sure it has its devotees. But if you have multiple options of truly good Mexican food (of a variety of styles) within a mile radius, why would I chose a mediocre chain?
Stranger
A traditional restaurant in Italy has cuisine from only the region it’s in. Locally-sourced ingredients and all that. The vast majority of Italian immigrants came from il Mezzogiorno. Red sauce cuisine became the norm in America because it’s shared by Sicily, Calabria, and Campania. The only regional cuisine most Americans have ever seen represented is Campanian i.e. Neapolitan. If your restaurateur is from Tuscany, for sure you’re getting white sauce. Lombardy or Piedmont, brown sauce. Liguria, green sauce, etc.
Growing up Sicilian-American in Ohio, nobody ever called it gravy. I never heard of that until many years later. To us it was pasta sauce.
Mexico has several regional cuisines and many delicious salsas. If you are eating nachos at all, then it is highly likely you are in a tourist place. If you are eating them with cheese salsa, then you are probably not in Mexico at all.
From cheesesteaks to delicious antojitos, Velveeta disgraces everything it touches and is never a good substitute for proper cheese. I’m sure there are great Tex-Mex places or private parties where they have a tasty cheese sauce. But I’m guessing few native Mexicans would consider that “authentic”.
When even Burger King and MacDonalds have green chile burgers where I grew up? Less than an hour from Hatch NM? That’s probably part of it, yes…
Thank god in recent years that 505 brand chile options are available in even the local megamart! And I can live with roasted Pueblo chiles, even if they aren’t quite what the heart craves.
No we don’t. I just checked and the nearest On The Border to my location in California is 400 miles.
They used to have one in Sacramento. I don’t know if they used to have others.
Queso was definitely not a thing at the Berto’s-type Mexican restaurants I ate at in San Diego from the late '80s to early 2000s (and which I eat at again today now that they’ve finally made it to the Pacific Northwest). Cheese was almost always shredded sharp cheddar and/or jack cheese, possibly with a sprinkling of cotija. Never in sauce form. Taco trucks don’t do queso either, but they usually use more authentically Mexican white cheeses like Oaxaca or queso fresco.
I’ve been eating Mexican food for over 50 years, the more authentic, the better. I’ve never seen queso dip on any menu other than Taco Bell, which is about as authentic as On the Border. They are the Olive Garden of Mexican food.
When I was living in California, they always promised 100 pies at every polling booth but I guess I always got there too late because there was never a sign of any pies at the polling booths I went to :(.
Ha ha. I was going to say that would not be allowed because of electioneering laws and then saw the photo. Love it.
Actually, two of the restaurants I go to regularly do have abuelas making tortillas on the big round plancha. Nothing better! But, yes, it’s not terribly common.
Thanks, I’d never heard of or seen one of these places, so I was confused. Not here. Not surprised.