Of course.
Most definitely
I seriously doubt it. I’d never trust the ethnic food (foreign to the country I’m in) any place that doesn’t have a healthy, active enclave of said ethnic group. AND access to ingredients. Life is way too short to eat corn on pizza or eat what Europeans think Mexican or Tex-Mex is.
Interesting article on the appeal of Taco Bell to South Asian Americans.
Interesting. I work a lot in the South Asian community, and Taco Bell has always seemed to be really popular, especially among the South Asians my age or younger (early-mid-40s or less). I wondered if that was just some odd connection I was just imagining and was merely co-incindental to the groups I worked with, but it does seem to be a “thing” according to that article.
(And I don’t know about Germany, but I found decent Tex-Mex in Hungary even as early back as the late 90s. That said, it was a restaurant started up by a Texan ex-pat. Hell, last time I was in Budapest there was even a place selling cochinita pibil that was actually reasonably close to the real thing.)
You doubt that it was good, or you doubt that it was “authentic”?
Good is in the eye of the beholder (well, the tongue of the taster). I thought it was tasty, even if it wasn’t “pure” or “authentic” Mexican food. If Tex-Mex can be a thing, why not Deutsche-Mex?
My family makes a pot luck dish that we call “Taco Salad”. On it’s face you’d say oh, this is Mexican or Tex-Mex food or at least its my Midwestern family’s interpretation of such. But I assure you it is not. It’s got Taco-seasoned meat in it and that’s where the similarities end. The fact that we all like it does not implicitly make it some legitimate regional variation on Mexican food.
Words matter. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t eat it if you enjoy it, but be honest about what it is and what it is not.
And then there’s Okinawa taco rice, a wonderful dish that is basically American style taco except served on rice instead of a crispy tortilla shell. Tasty stuff.
Where do you get that? In Okinawa? Or locally?
Taco Bell has some tasty stuff. It can’t be very good for you—what fast food is? If it were healthy, I’d eat there more regularly.
On the topic of authenticity, I enjoy that Taiwanese concoction known as “Mongolian BBQ” that was born in 1951, despite its faux back story about warriors cooking on their shields.
I’ll also eat American BBQ from the various regions—beef, brisket, pork, hot links, whatever—and let them fight over which is “authentic,” sauce or no sauce.
I just make it. It’s straightforward enough. If you had taco night as a kid using taco seasoning and ground beef, you’re 95% of the way there, just make rice to go with it. Here’s a typical recipe. That one uses a made-from-scratch taco seasoning mix, but you can just use your favorite packet of taco seasoning if you wish.
I’ve never been to Japan nor have I seen the dish at any of the restaurants here, but I enjoy it. My understanding is that there is also an Okinawan chile condiment that is often used at the table with this dish. The chile condement, called kōrēgusu is made of chiles macerated/soaked in rice spirits (awamori). Not having awamori, I made an ersatz version with vodka and sake (aiming to keep the ABV above 30%) that worked out fine, if not completely authentic.
What does make a regional variation on Mexican food legitimate? And how am I, as a short-term visitor in another country, to judge whether I’m eating one particular restaurateur’s interpretation of a regional cuisine or a “legitimate” regional variation?
My main complaint about Taco Bell was that it was almost never hot, and often not even particularly warm. And that was as presentedd by several restaurants, not just one.
Last night there was another civil war about proper tacos in Twitter, this time people disparaging a local Los Angeles taco joint called “Taco Time” and there were a ton of people saying to not each Taco Time and to instead eat “Authentic Mexican Food”
I’m not the arbiter of such things, but I think @silenus gets us pretty close to a working definition. Does the region in question have an established and sizable population of expats and immigrants from said culture and access to most of the traditional ingredients? If yes, you’re on your way to something you can call legit. Now if that population has absolutely nothing to do with the production of said food, then you’re probably still not there.
The point is sticking the word “Mexican” on your restaurant marquee simply isn’t enough to qualify you to claim a regional variation of a famous national cuisine. This is the kind of stuff that gets SJWs up in a twist about cultural appropriation. Now I need to go wash myself after being forced to validate these SJWs.
Some in this thread may enjoy this currently active thread in reddit’s r/AskCulinary:
Weekly discussion: Authenticity in Food
For those that don’t know, a ‘weekly discussion’ is a topic or other discussion idea put forth by the mods instead of the usual user-created content/question. Taco Bell is mentioned!
I forget where I read it, but I recall an article somewhere on the 'net not that long ago which said the quest for “authenticity” in cuisines was a facet of white supremacy. I kind of thought that was a stretch, and I don’t remember what support the writer advanced for that claim because I probably rolled my eyes so far back I could inspect my hypothalamus.
I just try to enjoy things I like. I know Tango Bravo isn’t “authentic” Mexican cuisine. But it’s still inspired by it; if I was to use a music term I’d call it a pastiche of Mexican cuisine. when I want something more “authentic” I’ve got tons of options in Mexicantown (Detroit) and the surrounding communities like Melvindale and Lincoln Park. But I will still wolf down a few regular hard-shell tacos w/diablo sauce when I feel like it.
Call them tacos dorados instead. Open sesame, authentic!
I took one of my Chinese employees to Greektown, Detroit, while he was on a business trip and I was on home leave. I took him a lot of places, but we ended up there to eat. This anecdote isn’t about whether or not the Greektown food is or isn’t authentic, but it’s about people from a culture where dog, bat, and anything that moves is fair game (literally fair game!) being a picky eater. I helped him order, but all I can remember is something wrapped in grape leaves, he unwrapped, and picked little bits and pieces out of it.
To be fair, the guy’s on the autism spectrum; highly functional, highly intelligent, but doesn’t deal well with the unknown. My wife (also Chinese) is the complete 540° from that.
They where whooshing her. There are no Taco Bells in Mexico, despite a few attempts to make it happen.
I prefer the taste of the Fire Sauce, however. Even though its name is definitely a misnomer.
Diablo sauce is a bit spicy but definitely not worthy of being called Diablo. The hottest hot sauce at Taco Bell is literally the medium hot sauce at Del Taco.
Not that this is a direct response to what you posted, but you reminded me of a passage from Lila: An Inquiry into Morals by Robert M. Pirsig. Talking about an anthropologist he knew in Montana who went to Native American Church peyote rituals on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
"One time they were supposed to have the food, you know, from before the white men came. Blueberries and venison and all that and so what did they do? They broke out three cans of Del Monte corn and started opening all the cans with a can opener. I stood it as long as I could. Finally I told them ‘No! No! No! Not canned corn,’ and they laughed at me. They said, ‘Just like a white man. He has to have everything just right.’
“Then after that, all night long they did everything the way I said and they thought that was even a bigger joke because now they weren’t only using white man’s corn, they were having a white man run the ceremony. And they were all laughing at me. They’re always doing stuff like that. We just love each other. I just have the best time when I’m down there.”
It’s a case of emic and etic: the former is how people live their own culture; the latter is how scholars (like the dude in the book) examine that culture from outside it. Here the egghead and the Indians were openly, consciously playing the emic/etic game with each other and making light of it. He was an anthropologist who rebelled against the professional objectivity that was supposed to form the etic view.
Everyone knows Taco Bell is the phone company down there.