I’m with WhyNot. I live in Bumfuck, NY, and it seems like there’s at least two dudes from Puebla in almost every commercial kitchen within a 20-mile radius. Not just the urban Mexican places but diners, pizzerias, you name it (well, as long you don’t name Chinese). You’re underestimating how widespread immigration from south of the border has become up here, especially in small cities and anyplace with significant agriculture.
On the other hand, there is an authentic-seeming and fairly widespread demi-franchise of taco places in NYC whose shops are staffed entirely by Chinese people and which serve really awful, sub-food court crap.
WhyNot, mamita, Iowa is being invaded by the Hispanic hordes too. You may want to sign up for lessons and there’s nothing wrong with having the kids translate, people have been doing that for milennia!
Spanish cuisine doesn’t go for “hot” anywhere near as much as Norteño does. Eating around Puebla I was in heaven; when I got taken to a place that specialized in Norteño, or going to Mexican places in Houston, I couldn’t eat. Their idea of “no pepper at all” still had way too much pepper for me (“I don’t just mean ‘don’t add pepper but use that pan and thongs you never wash’, I mean ‘the pan and implements have to have been washed as thoroughly as if you were to use them for surgery’”). So anybody looking for spicy Mexican in Spain will be sorely dissapointed, simply because a restaurant serving those amounts of fire here would be out of business within a month. Whether that will change thanks to our own Latin American hordes or not, time will tell, but most of them are from less-fiery locations.
Hampshire, head to Pepito’s. Chicago and 48th. I went there two weeks ago - fantastic. No idea how authentic it is, but the food is really good. I think I need to go back.
I had the very best Veal Marsalla I’ve ever had in Mexico City. Also, two nights ago I had steak poblano which tasted exactly like what I had in Mexico… the difference was in Mexico I asked for Charo beans, and they brought me French fries (because I was the white American in the group… and we apparently all like French fries), but in central Indiana they brought me the beans.
Or Happy Joe’s in Bettendorf, Iowa (and other locations.) Their Mexican/taco pizza is their claim to fame, and they say they’re the first to have done it. But Mexican pizza isn’t a new idea. I saw frozen “Mexican pizza” in Hungary as early as 1998.
What is kind of fun is the more wacky fusions like Korean tacos (started out West, we’ve just got one here.) Or, I was over at the owner of the Yucatecan restaurant I mentioned’s house the other day for dinner, and his wife was whipping up some tacos. I take a whiff of the kitchen, and it smells like my childhood: smoked meat and onions. They were making tacos with cut up Polish sausage, potatoes, onions, and a little bit of chipotle turning what was basically papas con chorizo tacos into papas con kielbasa tacos. He insisted that this particular concoction must be served on flour, not corn, tortillas. And, damn, they were good! Polish-Mexican fusion cuisine, who whouldathunk it?
True: the quality of restaurants as a whole in San Antonio isn’t very high, especially low to mid-priced restaurants. It really is a city where the chains are the best option.
Now Chicago and NYC… I just gained 3 pounds thinking about the food you can get there. And Boston.
I have a theory that, as a general rule, north of the Mason-Dixon line people care more about their food than those living south of the M-D line, and it shows in the quality of their restaurants.
I will say, the biggest issue I have with San Antonio Mexican restaurants (and this is likely because I’m a gringo who grew up in the Southeast) is that the cheese dip you find in local Mexican restaurants is cheddar-based, and not the jalapeno-laced queso blanco that I’m used to. And I can’t stand cheddar cheeses. So I’m in the bizarre position of whenever I leave SA to go back east, one of the first things I do is find a Mexican restaurant that has my beloved queso blanco.
There was a Happy Joe’s in my home town when I was in High School… they served the first ever I had heard of Mexican Pizza. This was in the late 70’s so 20 years prior to your find in Hungary.
Thanks! I will; always on the lookout for some good Mexican!
ETA: Come to think of it…I ate at a decent tacqueria in Hyattsville when my band played at the (now defunct, I think) Surf Club…it might have been one of those…
No, of course I know Happy Joe’s started in the 70s. I wasn’t making the point that Hungary had the earliest Mexican pizza. The point was, it was so widespread and relatively common in 1998 that you could find it even in Hungary.
Sorry, didn’t mean to sound like I was contradicting you… just trying to set a timeline.
Also I had almost forgotten about Happy Joe’s. I knew a guy in High School who may have had a little to drink and smoke before going there. Someone had a birthday so they dimmed the lights, turned on the red flashing lights and sounded the siren. When the lights came back on he was sitting in a pair of very wet jeans. :smack:
There are Mexican-food restaurants all over Southeast Asia, including one I recently saw in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Have also seen them in Japan and China.
There are several in Bangkok, the best of the bunch at the moment being the American-owned and -operated Sunrise Tacos, with several locations.
Oh, and we even have one place that is actually Mexican-owned and -operated, Tacos & Salsa. A little pricey, but their Saturday-night and Sunday-brunch all-you-can-eat deals are good value. And they carry a range of margaritas not found elsewhere.
In my experience, Mexican restaurants abroad cater to American tourists, not locals. We had a passable Tex-Mex restaurant in Chengdu, but you rarely saw Chinese people there unless they were with a foreigner.
Tex-Mex sucks even at the best of times. Growing up in Texas, and then living in Albuquerque, I could really taste the superiority of the New Mexican fare.
(And as a former decades-long Texas resident, I’ve never bought into this nonsense of Texas being in the Southwest.)
Budapest has two: Arriba Taqueria and Iguana Cafe. Arriba is a Chipotle-level taco-and-burrito joint (apparently they just added fish tacos to the menu. I’m curious to see what they’re like when I’m back in January.) Iguana Cafe is a festive Tex-Mex restaurant, better than the generic middle-American Tex-Mex you find in any random town in the US, but probably not what the OP would consider “GOOD” Mexican. It was passable, however, and better than the Mexican I’ve seen elsewhere in Europe, like they had homemade chorizo that actually tasted like chorizo and was spicy. Most any other place I’ve been to didn’t know anything about chorizo unless it was the Spanish sausage (which is different.) And no ketchup or weird sweeteners in the salsas. (Of which they had three: a pico de gallo, a rojo, and a verde.)
As for who they cater to, my experience is that in Europe, “Mexican” has the same sort of cachet as, I dunno, an Ethiopian restaurant may have here. Sure, there’s some draw for the expats, but it’s more of an interesting, exotic place that you take your date to on a Friday night.
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but my preference is to New Mexican over Texan. Now that’s a cuisine I haven’t been able to find a decent outpost of outside of the New Mexico area.
I was going to say that some of the best – and worst – Mexican food I’ve had has been in San Antonio. (The company I work for is located there; I get to go a couple times a year.) Since I discovered “good” Mexican food (Some being Tex Mex and some being full on Mexican) in San Antonio… I haven’t been able to find anything that comes even remotely close in North Florida. Even in restaurants run by Mexicans. I’ve gotten to the point where I just don’t bother.
ETA: After reading this thread, I am now looking for a job in New Mexico.
and there’s nothing wrong with having the kids translate, people have been doing that for milennia!