Why isn't Mexican food more popular in Spain?

Cafe Society
1

I understand Spanish cooking is regional and uses local ingredients. And I’m very fond of tortilla espanola and most appetizers made from seafood, chorizo, peppers, olive oil, eggs, ham, figs, nuts, dough and saffron. I’ve enjoyed, and even cooked, many memorable tapas dishes.

But although a fair amount of Spanish food is available in Mexico, I don’t recall seeing any Mexican restaurants or food in Spain. A lot of the basic ingredients are similar, although Mexicans often like their food spicier than the Spanish. Is it a question of availability, spiciness, snobbery, perceived quality, custom or something else? Or perhaps my premise is wrong and it has become more popular?

2

One possibility is different immigration patterns; Mexican immigrants to Spain tend to be middle & upper class professionals and they represent less than 1% of immigrants. Of course Spanish cuisine does use New Work ingredients like tomatoes or chocolate.

3

That’d be my first guess as to why not, too (assuming that the OP’s premise is, in fact, true); in the U.S., most of the original Mexican restaurants (i.e., before Taco Bell and Chi-Chi’s) were likely owned by Mexican immigrants – and the same was probably true of other ethnic restaurants, too, like Italian restaurants and Chinese restaurants.

Without enough Mexican immigrants (and specifically, ones who are willing to open restaurants), I’m going to guess that there probably just isn’t enough exposure to authentic (or even nearly-authentic) Mexican cuisine in Spain.

4

In general, “Mexican” food in Europe as a whole is a Crime Against Humanity, and further proof of the evil that lurks in the hearts of Men.

It has gotten to be so bad for me personally that I have begun to get some masochistic pleasure out of trying Mexican places while travelling just to see how truly disgusting they can actually get.

Sadly, the one place here in Krakow that was slightly less awful that all the others (and in any major Southwestern American city, the food there would have been like a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 10 place) went out of business, so now I am counting down the days until I get back to the USA for a visit, and even though my first stop will be New Orleans, (which while by far is my favorite American city, the Mexican food scene there is nothing to write home about) I will forgo the more traditional Crescent City culinary treasures for my first meal, and head directly to a little burrito place I like in the Quarter straight from the airport.

5

Thirty-some years ago, I was in the Navy deployed to Rota, Spain. One night, I made the unfortunate choice to dine in a Chinese restaurant. I don’t know anything about the owners or the cooks, but it was truly awful food. I expect the theory about immigrants opening restaurants could well be the explanation. Or it was opened by immigrants who couldn’t cook.

6

Argentinians have a hold on the market.

7

You could ask the same question about any country in Europe. Why should Mexican food be any more popular in Spain than, let’s say, England or Poland?

8

If you find yourself in Budapest, Iguana Cafe is pretty decent for Tex-Mex. It was started by an expat back in the late 90s. I believe he has since passed away, but the place should still be there. There’s also a chain of fast food Chipotle style places called Arriba that is reasonable (and somehow connected with Iguana.) Last I was there two years ago I was shocked to see them offer (limited time) cochinita pibil tacos. Was a reasonable attempt at it, but suffered from not enough turnover of that particular item.
And you can also surprisingly get most of the ingredients you need at the specialty markets, including stuff like masa harina, dried Mexican peppers of all sorts, chipotles, and I even saw cans of huitlacoche, so if you want to make it yourself, it’s possible.

9

Classism basically

10

With increasing travel and cookbooks about other cuisines, restaurants in many cities are becoming more global.

Spain and Mexico are related, however, by colonization. Due to the criollo influence, a lot of ingredients used are fairly similar - even the sausage and basic cheeses. Of course, Mexicans use more corn, tequila and spicier chilies; and some of the seafood is different. Few Mexicans would consider “patatas bravas” to be very spicy.

Both countries take a lot of pride in their cuisine. The lack of a significant Mexican diaspora probably plays some role. But I suspect classism might as well due to a complex history. Canada’s biggest cities have a growing Mexican population and Mexican restaurants are becoming more popular here, but not like parts of the US. In Mexico itself, ethnic restaurants can be very rustic and not what you are expecting - Italian food is probably more reliable than Mexican sushi.

11

I would rather have guessed that Mexican restating the United States we’re often started by U.S. born Hispanics whose families had been in the U.S. for generations, perhaps many of them longer than the Anglo families in their areas.

12

I don’t know–I can’t say I know a whole lot about Spanish cuisine, (but I grew up working in my step mother’s Mexican restaurant), and from what I do know of Spanish food, I wouldn’t see any particular reason for Mexican food to be especially popular in Spain. Yes, there are a few things that Mexico inherited (such as ceviche, churros), but the colonization was mostly a one-way deal. Some things went the other way, like chocolate, but even that is made really differently in Spain, IME.

I don’t think the ingredients are any more similar than those of Mexico and italy, for example, or many other European countries. For me, the heart and soul of Mexican food derives mostly from its indigenous characteristics–I’d be curious to know how popular something like mole is in Spain.

13

Possibly so, but either way, you had people of Mexican heritage (if not Mexican expatriates) who were operating restaurants in which they were cooking dishes from their heritage. Since it sounds like there aren’t many people in Spain of Mexican descent, it seems like that source of Mexican cuisine knowledge is missing.

14

You would think thst this would count for something, but even though I haven’t spent an extensive amount of time in Spain, (a couple of weeks in beautiful Barcelona, a few days in Madrid and one weekend in San Sebastian, but all on different visits) I don’t think there were any more Mexican restaurants in say Barcelona than there would be in Brussels, Berlin or Bratislava.

As a counter-example, people who have travelled Europe can tell you that there are probably more Indonesian restaurants in just the city of Amsterdam alone (never mind the rest of the Netherlands) than in the rest of all of Europe combined.

(maybe Dutch and their rather bland native cuisine “needed help” from an exotic imported influence more than the Spanish food scene did?)

15

Quite. In Spain we DO have strong influence from the Americas, but it’s part of Spanish cuisine. When my 9th-grade class was informed (Biology lessons) that tomato came from America…

…there was a moment of silence…

…of very heavy silence…

…and then one of us exclaimed “oh my God, what did we eat before!?”

I still don’t know how come more women weren’t like the ladies of the courts of the Goth kings before chocolate was available. Let me put it this way: that Cersei is a wuss.

In general, there has been very few people of Indoamerican descent in Spain until very recently (late 1990s, early 2000s); those who were, were mostly mestizos who’d returned from America with their born-in-the-Peninsula father, and weren’t visible within a generation. Criollos mixed in even faster. Those ingredients which travelled well with pre-20th century methods or which could easily be grown here, had become incorporated into our own recipes.

Another factor is that in Spain it’s relatively rare for restaurants to country-specialize. Yes, there are “Chinese” and “Italian” restaurants, but:
either one is perfectly capable of serving paella (rice is rice is rice…) or its sister fideuá (noodles are noodles are noodles…)
an Italian doesn’t have any dishes you can’t find in a non-Italian restaurant
a Chinese may involve a lot of… peanut sauce? (:confused: only if you know that smells of parts further south)
and many restaurants whose menu is pretty “ethnic” because so is the cook is likely to simply call itself a restaurant. A lot of the bars and restaurants taken over by immigrants in recent decades have simply kept the old name and decoration: so long as it was called Casa Paco (Chez Paco) and not La Casa del Marisco (The Home of Shellfish), it’s as perfectly normal for it to serve ceviche, huevos rancheros and pico de gallo as it is for it to have ensalada de la casa, sopa de lentejas and alubias con todos los sacramentos.

DrDeth, what most people call patatas bravas… well. It’s pretty watered-down. I’ve even encountered people who called “brava” a sauce which was a mixture of pot-mayo and ketchup. I happened to be part of the first taste-test group :smiley: (they were invented by a bar-owner in my hometown in the summer of 1984); while they certainly wouldn’t be considered extremely spicy by any mexican, they were a lot zingier than most of what people serve.

16

I’d say this was a fair assessment, as someone who eats Mexican food in the US (but wasn’t that impressed with the food in the big resort hotels in Cancun and Playa del Carmen, in Mexico) whenever I visit.

The only great mexican food I’ve had in the UK was a restaurant in Manchester, around 1990 (Manchester was once known for its authentic foreign restaurants, rather than just changing the food for the locals). It was wonderful. Never found it again when I looked.

I’ve never eaten anything close to since. While in the UK people seem to think that we like authentic foreign food, because indian curries are so popular, but in reality, we seem to be seekers of the bland for most non indian dishes. Thai food is bland (I’ve eaten in a decent UK Thai, but it closed). Mexican food is basically unspiced tortilla variations over here, priced highly too (so not a source of cheap eats). Absolutely no sign of heat in there too.

For instance Old El Paso is the main home cooking sauce/mix/tortilla provider. They produce a bland fajita mix. Except they had to make an “extra mild” version because the original one tasted of something. Anything.

Inside Europe, a lot of countries are very unadventurous cuisine wise for new immigrant food. Don’t order a curry in Belgium. Italy barely has any immigrant restaurants. Germany likes the Turkish food, but the worst curry I’ve ever eaten was in Hildesheim, near Hannover.

Yes, also immigration seemed to one direction, and the food tends to come with the immigrants. So, there’s that (fella, as they say in Fargo).

However, I’d say pretty much the main factor, which people forget, is that Spain was a fascist state for 50 odd years, when not a lot of immigrants and new ideas was welcome. Just when the rest of the world was widening its taste cuisines. So Spain will always be somewhat behind in that sense.

This wasn’t helped by the influx of british tourists in the 70-80s and the bland British food which was brought with them. Imagine the horror of that influx. Yes, most major tourist destinations were far more British than Britain… So the trauma of that after 50 years of denial. Well, would you want to be adventurous?

17

In fairness to British ethnic restaurants, I had a truly amazing meal in Liverpool a few months back at a kind of hybrid Greek/Turkish/Lebanese place not far from the main train station there, by far the best Greek food I had ever eaten anywhere (I grew up in the Western USA, so I didn’t get to too many Greek restaurants growing up, although Salt Lake does have a couple of really good ones that I used to eat at a few times a year) until I went to Greece in April.

Of course English Indian (“Curry Spots”?) restaurants, even the low dive places generally make better tasting food than what you can find in most major American cities at any price.

(Surprisingly, there is a handful of very good Indian places here in Krakow, surprising because Polish food is generally light on spices, but these all seem to do pretty good business, although with influx of young blackout alcoholic English tourists here every weekend, maybe they get a lot of business from drunken UK lads who are tired of cabbage rolls and sausage)

18

Spain had an unusual period of very little immigration to its mainland (except for refugees from European wars, from Italian unification to WWII) which lasted close to two hundred years. We had more immigration in relative terms during the Middle Ages, Renaissance or Enlightement than during the 19th or most of the 20th centuries. One of the reasons there’s relatively little xenophobia is that any of us doesn’t have to climb very far up the family tree before finding someone who E-migrated during that time: we (our great-uncles, our great-grandparents, and nowadays ourselves and our siblings and cousins) wanted to be welcome in strange land, so on what grounds are we unwelcoming to others?

19

Mexican food is popular in Norway

20

One reason could be that Spanish food is very good. Another is Spain is very locally culture orientated and they like their regional foods as part of their heritage. People are not so much from Spain but from their region of Spain, and that’s what they are proud of.