I am trying to figure out why people think you can’t get great Mexican food in the Northeast?
A great Mexican chef could recreate his food in a frickin’ outhouse in Armpit Ohio if he had too. Certain ingredients might be harder to come by, but that is what the mail is for -
This may have changed since then, but I used to work in the late 1990s as a fairly senior level exec for a restaurant company that owned two large Mexican restaurant chains. As a Californian, I asked a number of times why we didn’t serve better quality food in the chain that served the midwest and east coast. The answer was that there just wasn’t appreciation and interest in those areas. People went to eat Mexican food in the midwest and the northeast, and they expected ground beef, hard prefab taco shells like Taco Bell, and they weren’t interested in carne asada, pastor, camarones al mojo de ajo, or diced cilantro and onions. Those kinds of items just didn’t sell. The customers basically wanted Taco Bell but with beer and Margaritas.
Now, I’m just talking about a big, low-medium grade restaurant chain type of thing. I’m not implying there aren’t enough people in Boston or Des Moines with better tastes in Mexican food to support a given individual higher-quality Mexican restaurant. But I think the broad answer to the question is not that it’s somehow not possible for a person to make as good of Mexican food in Newark as in Los Angeles, it’s that there isn’t much of a market for more advanced Mexican cuisine in those areas.
the thing about texans and californians is that they believe tex-mex, cali-mex are ‘representative’ of mexican food… it’s pretty much like how panda express is to chinese food. with that said, since i grew up in southern california, i definitely have a bias for cali-mex, and i have a soft spot for organge chicken, but i don’t consider these ‘authentic’ cuisines… but i agree that i’d probably hate mexican food served in maine as well…
We are getting better, but yeah Mexican food in the UK, especially outside big cities, can be absolutely dreadful. Problem when you have some British guy who had been to a Chili’s once when on holiday in Orlando, rather than actual Mexican running the restaurants.
That’s a great point Chris - and I would probably think that most of the bigger Mexican chains are still pretty blah on the food front. My point was, there are little hole in the wall Mexican restaurants everyplace and everywhere, you just have to seek, and yee shall find. Some of the best Carne Asada I have ever had was in a little hole in the wall restaurant in Iowa City Iowa (and I spend quite a bit of time in Mexico).
So Joel, how did the wine work out?
Sorry…
Been busy.
I got saved by my brother in law. He sent me a text and asked me to bring beer so I stopped by the Bruery on my way out there and picked up 3 bottles. My sister was the only person planning to drink wine and she wanted a white. I brought a bottle of Dirty and Rowdy Semillon, which was quite good. Can’t comment on pairing. We didn’t touch that until after dinner so everything played out quite differently than planned.
On wine with Mexican food:
It may seem odd, but I’d encourage you to try a Malbec (I know, I know, Argentina is not Mexico) with any Mexican dish where the chipotle chile stands out (for example, tinga de pollo). I know the arguments about tannic clash, but as long as the dish is not overwhelmingly hot–and chipotle usually isn’t–there is something about the smokiness that the chipotle imparts that finds a nice match with Malbec.
On Mexican food far from Mexico (or far from Alta California):
While dried chiles travel well, the overwhelming secret to Mexican food is incredibly fresh produce. A simple salsa de molcajete made with onions from Mexico City (which have traveled to your local tianguis via the Central de Abasto) will not taste as fresh as the same salsa made on the outskirts of Cuautla with onions picked from the previous day. And don’t get me started on field-ripened tomatoes and their impact on the salsa. Or freshly made cheese overnight. Or tamales made with the first ears of corn. Not meaning to sound like that Wilco song “The Late Greats” --“The greatest lost track of all time…You can’t hear it on the radio, Can’t hear it anywhere you go….” but the best Mexican food I have had has always been on someone’s farm relying on the most local ingredients.