One of the reasons that good Mexican food is not available outside of the Americas is lack of demand. Faux-Mexican places pop up from time to time but the lure of genuine Thai, Veitmanese, Korean, chinese etc means faux Mexican has no chance.
What is Mexican food? Spicey, good-for-you, well made because of the locals? Everyting Asian food is. The reason Mexican food is not popular is because it just can’t get a groove in the market…South East Asian food stole that niche.
My restaurant going days started in the 1970s and I was brought up to eat anything that is good. My mother taught me to cook Indian food when you couldn’t buy ready made sauces - if you looked for curry you just found Keen’s Curry Powder. A curry was just prawns(shrimp) or sausages in a gravy with curry powder in it.
Apart from the ubiquitous Chinese retaurant that has existed since time immemorial the first “ethnic” restaurants I encountered were Lebanese, Spanish, Indian and Mexican. There was a very popular Mexican place on the main street in town that lasted years and now there are several very good upmarket Mexican places in Sydney like Cafe Pacifico, Vera Cruz, Cocina and Juanita’s.
People have been trying to get Taco Bell off the ground for years but it has to find anyone who likes their “Mexican” alleged food. They are either dead or close to it. At one stage they were piggy-backing KFC. You could get a two piece pack plus taco kind of thing.
I would suspect it’s because there hasn’t been a large number of Mexican immigrants worldwide, contrarily to Italians and Chinese who exported their cuisine with them (I’ve yet to meet even one non-tourist Mexican in France, for instance). Similarily, Indonesian restaurants are (mostly) nowhere to be found outside the Netherlands.
This is a good point, and worth keeping in mind. The vast majority of what people think of as “Mexican food” is no such thing; it’s a cross-pollinated hybrid of Mexican ingredients and techniques with compatible American flavors and methods. True Mexican food is almost certainly not on the menu at your local taqueria. My paternal grandmother is from Mexico and used to make tamales from scratch; I know from Mexican food.
(Incidentally, there was an episode of the Japanese Iron Chef that featured a guy who had spent several years studying local cuisine in the heart of Mexico because he was tired of the Americanized version that had become popular in Japan. Interesting show. He had his own wooden tortilla press and everything. He didn’t win, but the food looked pretty good.)
Anyway, the point is, the only place I’ve had a really great, truly authentic molé is in Mexico proper. I’ve had tasty variations on the idea here in the States, but they aren’t the real deal, and believe me, I’ve looked.
Oh, and I also have people from Venezuela, Panama, etc. in my circle of friends, and I can confirm that Mexican food is entirely unlike what you get elsewhere in Central and South America. It’s all delicious, but it’s all very different. You’d never confuse a ceviché from Mexico with one from Peru, for example. And good luck finding ceviché on the menu at all at your local Mexican restaurant. (If you do, and it’s well-made, consider yourself fortunate.)
Then again, I’ve been to a jazz brunch at a Mexican restaurant (owned by a Jewish guy from Indiana), in Sagimahara, Japan.
I guess you have to know where to look…
I haven’t been to any of those, but do you think the old wisdom is still correct? Ie. Sydney, because of our cultural melting pot, access to fresh produce, cheap, quality meat, etc is one of the best cities in the world for authentic food and good restaurants from just about any country you could care to name - except Mexico. Does that still hold? It’s what I’ve always heard and believed. I don’t even see many bad Mexican restaurants. They just don’t seem to be around much at all. In fact, my knowledge of Mexican cuisine is pretty basic as a result of this, and I suspect many of my fellow Sydneysiders are the same, which I suppose leads to a vicious cycle of Mexican places tending not to open in the first place.
It’s a shame, because we have a good climate for it, we have a love of spicy food and are no strangers to chilli, thanks to the 1990s explosion of Thai and Vietnamese places. I’d love to see ubiquitous Mexican places dotted along King St Newtown or King Georges Road, just the way the Thai ones are. Good , affordable Mexican food in the suburbs still seems unknown here though.
even sven writes:
> Fifty years ago in America, Italian food was exotic and Chinese food was as
> weird as you could get.
Some of you probably don’t realize just how true this was. I graduated from high school in 1970. I was not ignorant or stupid, but I grew up in a struggling working-class family. I had travelled with my family around the eastern U.S. a little. Despite this, I was almost completely unfamiliar with any sort of food outside the narrow confines of working-class midwestern America. I had never eaten or seen in real life any Chinese or Mexican food. We occasionally had spaghetti at home. We occasionally had pizza made from a pizza kit bought at the grocery store. I assumed that I just didn’t like pizza because it was so terrible. I was astonished in my freshman year in college to discover that the delivery pizza we sometimes got in the evening (which I probably wouldn’t like very much now) was actually fairly good. My sophomore year I finally ate at a Chinese restaurant.
While this wasn’t universally the case in all the U.S., it was true in a lot of it. The amount of choice in cuisine in the U.S. is much greater than it was just 36 years ago. I’m willing to cut the rest of the world a little slack and assume that the food that we like will eventually reach there too.
This is true even within Southern California. Different parts of Mexico export very different kinds of food (and other things, such as attitudes towards "Cinco de Mayo.’) Johnny L.A. mentioned fish tacos. Well they’re distinctly Baja cuisine, and even in Southern California, they vary. (Sorry, Johnny, Rubios sucks. Why don’t you just go to Burrito King–the founder of which is a very nice guy from Colombia…go figure. Still, the best fish tacos in L.A.)
A point to be considered, but “true” depends upon what part of Mexico you’re talking about. It all depends upon where your grandmother is from in Mexico. My “local taqueria” might not be “true” for your paternal grandmother, but it’s sure as hell pretty similar to what you’d get on the streets of Tijuana. (By the way, have you been to my local tacqueria?) I know that Tijuana is “not really Mexico,” but, you know, actually, it is really Mexico–just south of the Line of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which is good enough for me. I’ve been all over Mexico, but Tijuana attracts people from all over the country, who are waiting to do you-know-what. (And I can say that the tacos I get in a good taqueria in L.A. or San Diego are pretty similar to those I get on the streets of Tijuana, or D.F. So why are they not "true Mexican food’?) But outside of California, I’ve never encountered that kind of taqueria, so with regard to the OP, your point is right.
Well, you haven’t looked hard enough. Try my step-mother’s place in San Diego (she’s a chilanga), where Auora (from Michoacan) makes a fine mole, as good as any you’ll get in Mexico. I worked there for three years, and usually ordered that in some form as my complimentary meal.
Again, look harder. Granted, you’re generally right. But many of the fishing towns in Baja have great ceviche, and really good cheap seafood. Just don’t go where all the tourists go.
Not picking on you in particular, but several people have said this same thing in this thread, and I don’t get it. Mexican food and Southeast Asian food taste nothing alike. Okay, they’re both spicy, but other than that, have nothing in common. Is there a “spicy food niche” that only one ethnic cuisine can occupy?
That is true. I didn’t eat at a Chinese restaurant until I started college and that was in 1991. They simply didn’t have many around in driving distance of where I grew up. My mother and other older relatives didn’t have pizza at all when they were growing up. It existed only in a few Italian neighborhoods.
My wife’s family is in the high-end gourmet foods distribution and manufacturing business. People tend to forget but if you went to regular town USA circa 1985 and even most suburbs and cities, you would find the food very limited and of poor quality outside of the mainstream things. The specialty food industry only exploded in the US since the mid-1990’s and continues to do so.
That includes ethnic restaurants and things like sushi that you would never find outside of limited areas even 15 years ago.
What’s it called/where’s it located? I’m going to be in San Diego in about a month - I’d love to try it!
Yeah, no need to get all snooty with the “from Mexico” thing.
Mexican culture extends well in the United States. The reason why all of California’s place names are in Spanish for a reason- this used to be Mexico. Not long ago, there were only Mexicans and Native Americans here. Now, there are still Mexicans here. We tend to think of the border as some sort of magic line, but the truth is things are far more coninuous and we share a great deal of common history, culture, language and cusine with Mexico. Tex-Mex, California-Mex, etc. are by no means bastardizations of some “true” Mexican cusine, but are rather regional cusines in their own right with a history and pedigree dating back to the origional Mexican settlers of the areas in question, made by and for Mexicans as long as mole has been made in Puebla.
Now, I hate Taco Bell, gloopy refried beans, and endless gobs of cheese on stale tortillas like the best of them, but tell me my burritos and fajitas are somehow less good because they were invented by Mexicans above the Rio Grande instead of Mexicans below it, and I’ll fight you.
But if you do want regional Mexican cusine, there are plenty of places out here where you can get everything from high class haute cusine from Mexico City to Mayan specialties from the Yucatan cooking to seafood that makes you think you are in Veracruz- remember, not all “Mexican from Mexico” cooking is the same, either. Anyway, 20% of this city is Mexican and they don’t all forget how to cook when they come here, you know. Indeed, probably 80% of restraunt food here is cooked by Mexicans- even the local chaat house has a Mexican kitchen!
I’m about as far from Baja as I can get and still be on this coast. Say what you will about Rubio’s, but compared to the fish tacos up here they’re pretty good. (At least they were two and a half years ago.) Of course Rubio’s is nowhere near as good as the little taco place in PB I mentioned. I swear if I move back to SoCal I’ll put on the 23 pounds I’ve lost so far in about a week!
Okay, this is a Café Society question: How do I make my own authentic Baja-style fish tacos? What kind of fish? What kind of batter? (It has to be something I can get in the PNW.) How do I make the sauce? I think I can manage shredding the cabbage. 
Face it…the best fish tacos are served by some guy with a push-cart on the streets of Ensenada. I have fond memories of walking up to such a cart, handing the guy a twenty, and saying “Corona and tacos until that runs out.” Good times.
¡Muchas gracias!
De nada. 
I mentioned Thai, but not in the way you criticise here. I was merely saying you get more “Mexican” food in the US because you’re next to Mexico (and should have added as others did after me that there are few Mexicans elsewhere in the Western world). We get lots of Thai here in Australia because we’re quite close and also (or, consequently) have lots of Thais here. In no way was I conflating the cuisines themselves.
No no. The best fish tacos are those made with pork fish and served with actual beer, like Dos Equis.
Just to go with the whole “What is Mexican food to you depends on what Mexicans you live near” meme.
We have lots of Thai food here in Chicago, too. There are, let’s see, three Thai restaurants within a few blocks of my house. (A fourth recently went out of business.) We had a Dopefest at a Thai restaurant awhile back. Indian cuisine is also gaining in popularity. (Mostly in one particular heavily Indian & Pakistani neighborhood, but there are a couple Indian restaurants around the corner from each other a five minute walk from here.) Now, neither of these cuisines are as commonplace as Mexican, but they’re certainly there, and readily available.
All I’m saying is…there’s always more room for some good food. Especially when it’s spicy. Mmm, peppers.
Corn tortillas are nixtamal and water. No lard.
Flour tortillas can be made with either vegetable shortening or lard. Most commercial flour tortillas here in México are made with vegetable shortening.