Mexican food is pretty complex. I grew up in New Mexico and the Mexican food there is way different that Mexico’s Mexican food, vs Texas (TexMex) vs. California (cheese).
I lived back east and was never able to find a decent New Mexican Mexican restaurant. New Mexican Mexican food is pretty much red and green chile. Getting decent green or red chile outside of New Mexico is quite hard, though Arizona has some ok places. California not so much, every time I eat at a Mexican joint out there I fear for my heart, they use a lot of cheese. In Texas, the food is ok for the most part but it seems to be more Tex-Mex than Mexican.
The key to New Mexico Mexican food is the chiles, which only grow well in a certain area of New Mexico. The chiles are the key and are used in just about everything. The only difference between green and red chile is the age, green ripens into red. The standard in New Mexico for chile is Hatch. Hatch has great flavor and the heat ranges from pretty mild to fairly hot. Finding good chile outside of New Mexico can be hard. I had a hard time finding it in Vegas for a while. Now a chain store carries Hatch.
My experience with New Mexican Mexican food back east was that a) it was all pretty mild b) they didn’t use nearly as much chile as I expected and c) a lot of places called Tex-Mex Mexican. Finding good chile back east was also hard. All the chile was mild and pretty tasteless. I found one joint that had decent chile but they watered it down so much it sucked.
In New Mexico chile is close to a religion. The state question is ‘Red or Green’. Hell, one place makes green chile ice cream, which is surprisingly good.
So finding good Mexican is going to depend first on what kind of Mexican you think is good.
Speaking as another New Mexican, Slee has it right. If you are from here and go to a restaurant where the waitress asks if you want red or green 'sauce’ you just know that you walked into the wrong place - it’s never called sauce here. It’s red or green chile. And it’s not a matter of semantics, the sauce is never the same (nor anywhere near as good) as chile.
That being said, I have had good mexican food in California and other places, it’s just missing chile.
It’s certainly not very common in much of Western Europe, though there is a “Mexican” place off of Damrak Square in Amsterdam that I have been past many times.
I don’t recall seeing any Mexican places in Eastern Europe at all, even though Prague (for example) has many various Asian restaurants (Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese) and of course plenty of Italian or French places, alongside the typical Czech and German bistros that are everywhere.
Growing up in the 1970’s in the Mountain Western US, Mexican food was the only common authentic ethnic cuisine available, and to this day it’s the only type of food I am really, really picky about. Salt Lake has many EXCELLENT Mexican options, from gourmet regional places to dumpy hole-in-the-wall dives with dirt-cheap yet killer fare, staffed with (and mostly patronized by) Mexican nationals who speak almost no English.
I have tried Mexican food in NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Chicago and several other major cities west of the Rockies, and have been disappointed nearly every time—I don’t think that means that great tasting , authentic Mexican food is NOT available in those cities, maybe just not as widespread as in places that are a bit geographically closer to Mexico.
It’s also slightly sad that corn on the cob is talked up as an exotic import only available for a short period of time.
Nearly every small city in New York and New Jersey (and I’m sure tons of other places outside my experience) has small restaurants run by Mexicans and catering to other Mexicans that serve simple fare that’s just as good as anything I’ve had in similar places in California and Texas.
> There was a very good Mexican restaurant in Maryland (The Alamo, in
> Hyattsville) - at least as good as some of the restaurants out here. The key is
> avoiding “chains” - they mostly have miserable Mexican food.
There are now better Mexican restaurants right down the road from the Alamo, like La Sirenita and Tacqueria La Placita. (It’s only three miles from me.)
In any case, to return the OP, claiming that you can’t find good Mexican restaurants outside the Southwest is one of those ridiculous exaggerations that people think they have to make to get people to understand them. They may have done enough research to justify a claim that Mexican restaurants in the Southwest are generally quite a bit better than those elsewhere in the U.S. They don’t want to say that though. They feel that unless they wildly exaggerate their point, no one will listen to them.
It’s just not true. There are a lot of good to superb Mexican restaurants outside the Southwest in the U.S. They may not be as good on average as those in the Southwest, but they aren’t that bad. Furthermore, the quality of Mexican restaurants has been getting better all over the U.S. and less regionally differentiated.
I grew up in San Diego and during college, we could cut class to dash down to Ensenada for fish tacos. The further away from the border I moved, the more hideous the Mexican food became.
When I lived in Los Angeles, I missed the Mexican food I had access to in San Diego. Now that I live in San Francisco, I miss the Mexican food I could get in Los Angeles.
My only consolation was working the wine industry in Napa and attending the harvest parties thrown by the vineyard crews. Mostly Mexican immigrants, eating their food made me realize there are very few restaurants preparing and serving the authentic food they prepare for themselves. Even now, I don’t bother with the “Mission burrito” available in San Francisco…
I have to wonder where and when you’ve been to Mexican in Chicago. As MikeG states, the regional Mexican cuisine in Chicago is quite astonishing. It’s as good or better than anything I’ve had in LA (or anywhere in the Southwest) but with the major caveat that I am much more familiar with where to find various Mexican cuisines in Chicago, given that I live here. So I will keep that in mind. At any rate, I don’t think there’s any question that Chicago’s varieties of Mexican food are up there in quality with anything from California, the Southwest, or Texas.
Well to be fair, I only recall one specific Mexican meal in Chicago and don’t remember the name of the restaurant itself. It was not awful, just not anything to write home about.
That said, when I am travelling back east, Mexican cuisine is usually the LAST food I will focus on because A) there is SO much exceptional Mexican food to be had right here at home and B) in the east there is a vast cornucopia of foods that are not well represented in here in Utah, namely authentic Italian or pizza places, quality Chinese food and good ol’ greasy Greek-style diners.
To this day Salt Lake City (where the greater metro area has to be 1,250,000+ in population) still only has a small handful of really good Italian or Chinese places, and so when I am spending time in places that are saturated with excellent restaurants that are sorely lacking at home, those are what I gravitate towards.
Next time you’re in Chicago, you should give some Mexican places a shot, but do a little research. That’s probably the most diverse and interesting ethnic cuisine in Chicago today. I, too, avoid Mexican when I go out East. But if I find myself in LA, New Mexico, or San Antonio, I’m definitely checking out the Mexican there, even if Mexican is well-represented here in Chicago. LA’s Mexican is probably the closest to what Chicago Mexican is like, and the one I like the most outside of Chicago.
While I’ve been to Salt Lake City, I’ve never had Mexican there, so I have no idea what it’s like. I didn’t realize how large the Mexican population was out there, but apparently, you have a decent number out there.
I ate there once on a lark, just to see what Mexican food in Amsterdam would be like. I can’t recommend it. It was pretty bland. Not that I am suggesting you can’t get good Mexican food in Europe. Maybe you can…somewhere. I haven’t had much luck though. I also tried Mexican restaurants in Madrid and Barcelona with disappointing results.
Also, there are plenty of good Mexican restaurants in Atlanta. Plenty of bad ones, too.
Heh—I have been this close to trying it on a couple of different occasions (both after plenty of appetite-enhansing activities) and I have backed out each time.
I knew it would be a let down to say the least, so I ultimately decided against it. Amsterdam has plenty of places that I know I will really enjoy, so I couldn’t bring myself to settle for something that I was almost certain to be substandard, at least to my personal tastes. (maybe next time I will sit down and have a beer so I can at least check out how the food looks)
I don’t ever recall even seeing a Mexican place in Barcelona or Madrid, not that I was looking.
And now for some reason, I am seriously jonseing for some chile rellenos and a couple of bottles of Grolsch Pils.
That is because last week the guy that is making your taco in LA was making them in Mexico is one reason.
The local restaurant we go to here in the barrio is named El Abuelo. The grandfather. The mothers and aunts are cooking in the kitchen, the nieces and nephews are serving. You won’t find this in Chicago or New York.
You won’t find this in Chicago? Are you freaking kidding me? Have you even been to Chicago? Let me just name one place I go to: Xni-Pec, a Yucatecan restaurant in a Chicago suburb. The owner and wife are from Merida and later Cozumel, moved here five or six years ago. Mother is from Merida as well, owned several restaurants out there. Grandmother comes in from Mexico (sadly, she died recently) a few times a year to check on the recipes and general quality of the products. Brother and sister work as servers. Owners, mom and aunts cook in the kitchen.
This is typical. I don’t know where in the heck you get the idea that Chicago wouldn’t have Mexican family owned and run restaurants. Chicago’s got the second-largest Mexican-American population behind LA–1.6 million people of Mexican ancestry in the Chicago metro area. Almost 700,000 of these are Mexican-born immigrants.
I think you guys don’t really understand the scale of Mexican food in the West/Southwest.
Sure, you may be able to find a few good restaurants, but in Mexican-influenced areas of the US, Mexican food is not something special. It’s not something you go out for or go out of your way for. It’s just what food is. It’s like getting a hamburger. Imagine, for a moment, that you moved to a town where if you wanted a hamburger you would have to go out of your way. Imagine if there were just a couple restaurants that could serve a hamburger above McDonalds quality- that even the kind of hamburger you’d get at Denny’s is rare. THAT is how we feel.
From my house in Santa Cruz, which was not in a particularly Mexican neighborhood, I could walk to 11 taquerias, of which maybe 5 were reasonably good. This doesn’t even count the high-end sit down restaurants or taco trucks. Hell, we had tamale vendors walking down the street. We don’t consider it “ethnic food” in the way that, say, Chinese food is. It’s more like pizza to us. It’s just normal food.
I also never understood the "it’s not really Mexican- ZING!’ attitude. California was Mexico long before it was America. Mexicans have lived here continuously for pretty much as long as there has been a concept of “Mexico.” The American Southwest is a part of the same cultural continuum as Mexico, and has been for centuries. Southwestern US Mexican food was invented by people who identify as “Mexican,” and is largely consumed by people who identify as “Mexican.” It’s just the Northern end of Mexican cuisine, which happens to be across the border.
You can good Mexican food (Tex-Mex or whatever variation you are into) anywhere there are people who know how to cook AND run a restaurant properly. That can really be anywhere.
I am a Hispanic person living near San Antonio Texas. We have a million Mexican restaurants. A suprisingly large percentage of them are not very good. The people running these restaurants may be fantastic cooks at home on a small scale, but don’t know how to run a restaurant professionally so the quality of their product is substandard. It may be easier to find a good Mexican restaurant in the Southwest/California, but only because of the shear numbers of restaurants.
Sure, and I argue that Chicago is one of those places, not just the Southwest. I couldn’t even begin to count how much Mexican there is within walking distance of my house. Limiting “walking distance” to one mile, I’d estimate at least two dozen places specializing in everything from Veracruzan seafood to Jaliscan birrieria to Guadalajaran tortas ahogada to Zacatecan tacos, morcilla (blood sausage), chorizos of all kinds, menudo, red or white or green posole, handmade tortillas, etc. Steak tacos, brain tacos, eyeball tacos, tacos dorados (deep-fried) stuffed with mashed potatoes, al pastor tacos, etc. And this isn’t counting the Mexican bakeries or groceries.
I agree with you here but, boy, did we have an lively discussion a few months back with a poster from Mexico who completely disavowed those cuisines as being Mexican. I, too, see it as an extension of the norteño culinary traditions.
It has something to do with migration patterns. There probably has to be enough of a population to support it. What is happening now is that Mexican folks are becoming more prevalent outside the southwest, esp the midwest/southeast. So, the food is starting to catch up.
Here in the DC area, there’s not that much yet. I think it’s because the hispanic population here is more likely to be from Central American countries than Mexico, and their cuisine, while good, isn’t Mexican.
Honey, I volunteered at a community flu vaccination clinic on Friday, and you know what I learned? I absolutely MUST learn Spanish in the next 4 months or move to Iowa. Of 72 patients, 7 spoke English.
You know what else I learned? “Firma aqi, por favor! Si! Gracias!” But gods help us if anyone had, y’know, a medical question. I had small children waiting in line translating for me. :smack:
