Mexican cuisine in the USA is wayy past the point where people can criticize it for being inauthentic. Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex both have their own histories going back hundreds of years.
In general, whenever there are debates about the authenticity of a certain dish, I can guarantee that people of the native country are doing even crazier "non-traditional" things with it, and no one cares.
I think the issue here is that the word "spicy" is overloaded, meaning both "hot" and "of or containing various spices". India has long used the sort of of spices that give its food the characteristic rich, interesting flavours. I guess the hotness part comes from chili peppers from the America (I hadn't heard that before, I'm taking another comment at face value)
To me what is more interesting is Korean food without chili peppers.
Korean food is notoriously spicy today, gochugaru and gochujang are fundamental condiments of modern Korean cooking, but pre-chili recipes for things like kimchi are not notably spicy.
This is interesting actually. I'd be curious to see what Korean food was like before the Americas were discovered. And you have now got me daydreaming about kimchi a full hour before lunchtime, thanks a lot :D
I believe the fact that Columbus thought he was in the Indies was why chiles derived the name of a “pepper” even though they are technically a different taxonomy, correct?
The names of foods are often... merely suggestive of there culinary use and fairly divorced from their scientific taxonomy. Consider that most of the "nuts" in a container of mixed nuts... aren't nuts.
Huh. I knew the common peanut was a legume but has no idea most of the other nuts are botanical fruits/drupes. In my container, the only real nut is the hazelnut
Yep definitely. I've recently used it a couple of times when talking about alcoholic drinks - mulled wine when I've messed up the proportions (it was a little too spicy), and when trying to briefly summarise a difference between two particular whiskies (one being a bit more spicy than the other). I guess it's unambiguous in these contexts though.
India also used a lot of black pepper in its cuisine (which is local) before chili arrives on the scene. I looked into the pre chilli cuisine of south India a few years ago and it was very interesting and pepper heavy.
As I understand it, chilis were brought (first to Goa) from the Americas by Portuguese traders. Similar to tomatoes in Italy these are hundreds of years ago shortly after Columbus failed to find the spice route (to Asia) he was looking for... but finding another spice, silver, and tobacco route.
Indian food traditionally was not red hot spicy the way it is now but instead relied on the unique flavor of Asafoetida (Hing) which is still a key ingredient in legit Indian cooking
I've seen very few things where spiciness isn't code for added capsaicin. To be sure, spiced things can still be black pepper (or other classic spice) based. But largely that is referred to as seasoned, nowadays.
I do like Szechuan food. Most of it that I can get, though, is accompanied with capsaicin, as well.
This is basically the trap of what spicy means. There are other spices than chili peppers, true. But if I say I'm getting spicy food, I'd wager most folks don't think of seasoned foods.
Edit: easy way to consider it. Spiced rum is not considered spicy. Nor is KFC, even though it famously has spices.
Just to be fair, tomatoes arrived in Italy more or less 500 years ago. The concept of a unified Italy wasn’t even a thing at that time! That’s lot of time to develop it’s own “authentic” cultural use of tomatoes.
Mexican cuisine is also a derivative cuisine itself like every other cuisine ever - chefs borrow techniques all the time and mexico, as we know it, has only existed for about 500 years (503 years ago is about when Cortez first started interacting with the region). Authentic is an extremely hard thing to define - one of the more celebrated "authentic" native north american dishes is fry-bread which was innovated when America relocated a whole bunch of Navajo and basically just handed them bags of flour and lard to sustain themselves on during the march - it's spread across reservations to be a pretty common offering even in haudenosaunee gatherings (though "more authentic" things like strawberry water and venison stews are still more prevalent).
Don't forget the tamale. The origin of the tamale dates back 7k - 11k years. They were eaten by the Aztec and Maya civilizations and previously as well by the Olmec and Toltec. And tamales were sacred, food of the gods. I've always loved tamales. They're a treat and good for you, too.
Yes, and just as it would be ridiculous to call items that originated through culinary fusion in Mexico “authentic” cuisine of the cultures from whence the various influences came, it is ridiculous to try to call American fusion dishes whose influences include, among others, Mexican cuisine authentic Mexican cuisine.
on that note, if tomatoes were taken to europe only after Colon's famous trips... how come Italian cuisine is famously known for it's tomato-based pasta sauces?
also, what did they irish eat before potatos were taken over there from south america??
They mostly ate a few different grains and dairy, along with some occasional eggs, fish, and meat. Just like everyone else in northern and western Europe.
Also - how come Italian cuisine is famously known for its spaghetti when that innovation was quite probably brought by Marco Polo back from China... well, because food innovations constantly mingle.
Agreed, and not only on that point. Al pastor for example came from Lebanese immigrants. Almost all food was fusion at some point, and that's what's great. I was making tacos one day and didn't have any tomatillos. I did have gooseberries, and they're the same genus and work fine. Another time I used kiwis because they're both sweet and tart and brings similar things to a salsa.
I won't make any claims about my abilities, but I do really love trying to understand the basic concepts of food, so that I can figure out with why certain components are used, and what you can play around with to mix it up (both literally and figuratively).
> I did have gooseberries, and they're the same genus and work fine.
Did you mean family? Gooseberries and tomatillos are different genuses, though the same solanaceae family. With that said, this is an interesting observation, and now I want to do a side-by-side comparison between tomatillos and gooseberries.
You are of course correct. And to straighten another record, it was specifically cape gooseberries I used (they're not called either here), which might be relevant to your future comparisons.
I had a slightly heated discussion with a family member recently over gooseberries and oh boy she didn't take it very well when I mentioned that these fruits are related to tomatoes more than the other fancy berries you're accustomed to see in an upscale supermarket fresh produce aisle.
Most of the first wave of the Lebanese diaspora in Mexico were Christians. So, I don't see any dietary religious restrictions to their choice of going kosher and presumably forgoing pork in their commercial recipes for that dish.
It really doesn’t. American-style tacos can be wonderful food. (The mass-market commercial ones aren’t, though the mass-market commercial shells themselves–basically, U-shaped tostadas, are a fine starting point.) They just aren’t authentically Mexican food. Good, and authentically <national origin> are orthogonal concerns.
> Authenticity is always a point in time authenticity anyway
American-style tacos are not authentically cuisine of Mexican origin of any time. They are authentically American food, developed in America, by Americans.
I remember once hearing a critic describe “food like grandma made” as not necessarily a good thing, since grandparents of people alive now would’ve been making food during the initial popularity of microwaved and canned foods. Not to mention the weird things from previous eras like aspics and jello salads.
Canning was invented in 1809. One plausible reason British food was legendarily bad for such a long time is that it was the ground zero for processed food. It got the first, worst version of everything and people got used to eating it.
> The main market for the food at this stage was the British Army and Royal Navy. By 1817, Donkin recorded that he had sold £3000 worth of canned meat in six months. In 1824, Sir William Edward Parry took canned beef and pea soup with him on his voyage to the Arctic in HMS Fury, during his search for a northwestern passage to India. In 1829, Admiral Sir James Ross also took canned food to the Arctic, as did Sir John Franklin in 1845.[7] Some of his stores were found by the search expedition led by Captain (later Admiral Sir) Leopold McClintock in 1857. One of these cans was opened in 1939 and was edible and nutritious, though it was not analysed for contamination by the lead solder used in its manufacture.
In 1817, almost a hundred years before WW1, the period you mentioned, less than nine years after the invention of canning, one of the biggest employers in the world was using canning. I trust you can look at the rest of the article to see it got a lot now popular well before WW1.
> Large-scale wars in the nineteenth century, such as the Crimean War, American Civil War, and Franco-Prussian War, introduced increasing numbers of working-class men to canned food, and allowed canning companies to expand their businesses to meet military demands for non-perishable food, enabling companies to manufacture in bulk and sell to wider civilian markets after wars ended. Urban populations in Victorian Britain demanded ever-increasing quantities of cheap, varied, quality food that they could keep at home without having to go shopping daily. In response, companies such as Underwood, Nestlé, Heinz, and others provided quality canned food for sale to working class city-dwellers.
> Mexican cuisine in the USA is wayy past the point where people can criticize it for being inauthentic.
American-origin Mexican-inspired food is authentic American-origin Mexican-inspired food (or, simply, authentic American food.)
Its not authentic Mexican food. (Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex encompass some things that are Mexican in origin and some things that are not, just as Mexican food includes some things that are of Aztec origin and some things that are not.)
>Mexican cuisine in the USA is wayy past the point where people can criticize it for being inauthentic. Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex both have their own histories going back hundreds of years.
I mean, look at how much pork is included in true Mexican cuisine. But pigs are Eurasian species. Would we claim none of those dishes are truly Mexican? At some point, it’s all an arbitrary classification of convenience.
It's really "in praise of the supermarket cornchip taco-shape" because it doesn't seem to note there are soft-shell taco kits. The point is probably substantively the same though. Most british 'curry' experiences run up against the same problem. At least one cooking show (Rick Stein in India) explored the "curry is just an indial dialect word for gravy" thing. And others have noted all the varietal restaurants of the sub-continent in the UK appear to depend on Bangladeshi cooks, Just as all the distinct US restaurant cuisines are employing huge numbers of mexicans and other southern immigrants.
There was an instant porridge campaign which had a wee scots laddy saying "thats noo how ye mak purridge" as various people made instant oats without a concern. So the idea "we know its not authentic, move on" is actually embedded in the model.
Probably in due course the explosion of ethiopian, somalian and other places using Teff to make giant grey rubbery pancakes underneath their food will morph into using more normalised grains, with necessary textural change to the pancake.
Most UK Chinese restaurants are Cantonese. Finding that northern Chinese eat grilled lamb and that not all Chinese food has cornstarch thickener was a revalation. But it would be a mistake to say "thick sauce Chinese food is inauthentic" -it's maybe just western palette adjusted.
I freely admit that when I use a food court, my sense of real or unreal is heavily conditioned. I reject an aussie roast with trimmings because they don't give me decent crackling and go for the "real Japanese curry" option which is an analogue of the actual curry-don experience, passed through a sieve of what works with the tools and inputs in an Australian food court. They're using much the same ingredients. The Aussie roast is but a shadow of the english roots, but when you need some crispy pork skin, its good to go. Should the gravy be bonox or somebodys stock pot? Chicken Salt or not on the chips?
Is Ethiopian and Somali food taking off in the UK?
I discovered Ethiopian cuisine a few years ago, and once you know about it it can be found in large-ish cities in the US, but the businesses all seemed like they were on the edge of collapse. It makes no sense because the food is incredibly delicious, approachable, and unique.
And I guess by taking off I mean: likely to be present in small communities, present in abundance (competition, market segmentation) in large communities, and available (not in an exclusive way) in a form tailored to western lifestyles (on DoorDash/ Deliveroo, available as supermarket kits comparable to the taco shell kits or pizza-making kits, or made into fast food like Taco Bell, KFC, Burger King, Panda Express, etc).
It seems like it’s about time for a new cultural cuisine to be mainstreamed in the US, IMO.
There are Ethiopian restaurants in medium-sized towns, but I don't think ready-made or "kit" versions are available at supermarkets. You can buy teff flour from health food shops or online.
I wouldn't expect large fast-food chains to appear in the UK -- these are almost exclusively American food. Indian and Chinese food has been widespread for years, and there are many restaurants and takeaways but they are all small/local businesses.
In the city I live, there's a vegan market twice a month and they have a nice food market. One of the stalls was Ethiopian food, and I'd never tried it before so I decided to get lunch there.
It was really tasty, from what I remember a lot of it was mashed up in a texture similar to hummous. No idea how authentic it was as I have nothing to compare it to but amazing whatever it was.
so I wouldn't so it's taking off yet, but it probably will :)
Approachable meaning it doesn’t take a giant leap for an American to consume it - it isn’t bugs (ants, grasshoppers, locusts) and it isn’t raw fish.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those things - Americans do in fact eat those things, but there can be some mental hurdles around eating something that is identifiably an insect.
The Ethiopian food I’ve seen is injira and various combinations of spices, chicken, beef, eggs, and common vegetables. The least “approachable” part is that you eat it with your hands, but in practice it’s not any different from a burrito or taco.
A fast food take on Ethiopian would almost certainly include a wrap made with injera, maybe tibs, and gomen wat. Doro wat would work as well. In restaurants it is often served platter style, which is directly analogous to many Chinese restaurants in the US.
By "approachable", you mean more familiar and less adventurous or exotic, right?
What makes Mexican cuisine popular beside the usual reasons like taste and flavors is that it lends itself very well to the operations of fast food businesses with all those diverse and rich offerings that make the life of the business owner easier and enjoyable than with other challenging cuisines like that of Horn of Africa to adopt to the type of operation seen in this kind of establishments.
I don’t think that really makes sense. There are plenty of popular/commercially successful cuisines that involve long prep times or intricate procedures. And Ethiopian cuisine doesn’t have to be super difficult to make - I took a class last year and made doro wat and gomen wat. The teacher (who immigrated from Ethiopia) made some adaptations so the recipe could be made within class time, but also told us how to do it with a slower traditional process.
And like I said, approachable means approachable to western audiences. In other words, less of a hurdle than asking people to eat bugs. I don’t see anything about the Ethiopian cuisine at restaurants that explains why those restaurants aren’t more successful or common (like Thai, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Sushi, etc).
It’s not really about adventurism or exoticism because I think Ethiopian is plenty adventurous and exotic for probably a sizable portion, if not majority, of Americans.
Eating 4 "curries" from a shared platter on grey-purple rubbery pancake you tear up requires people to overcome their "yuk" instinct, for touching food other people are also touching. It breaches the "no double dipping" rule.
So the first approximation here might be, individual portions. Once you morph to serving single-serve plates from a communal platter, its down the road to wrapping the meat and veg stew to make an enchilada and calling it "ethiopian tacos" or something.
> its down the road to wrapping the meat and veg stew to make an enchilada and calling it "ethiopian tacos" or something.
and then they have to outdo the established items in that food category from other international cuisines like burritos and pizzas, and the outlook doesn't look very promising for the Ethiopian fast food.
We weren't discussing preparation times or elaborate procedures, we were discussing convenience, portability and service time, or in other words; overall friendliness, and those factors are what matter in running a fast food restaurant and for your information Mexican fast food preparation takes long time for some items but the service should be quick for the customer for the business to flourish.
Most of the cuisines you cited in your defense of Ethiopian cuisine has robust and rich fast food offerings esp. those of Mexico, Italy and China, a point which is lacking in that of Ethiopia and thus poses a challenge to enjoy wide adoption and achieve the status of mass-market fast food category.
A side note - Teff flour is a bit of a godsend to gluten-free folks. Genuine teff doesn't illicit a response in Celiacs so my wife has been able to use it (along with other less common flours like buckwheat(yes, the name is super misleading) and even crushed chickpeas) to make all sorts of baked treats.
As we internationalize we can pick from the wide bounty of ingredients to our personal tastes and allergic requirements... I will be a happy man if I never again eat mock duck (aka wheat gluten with weird things done to it) in a vegan chinese dish.
I had Vietnamese veg "pho" in San Jose which included wooden "drumsticks" to eat the seitan off. Cute, but surprising. Unlike chicken bones, they didn't splinter.
> the "curry is just an indial dialect word for gravy" thing
It is not a word for gravy. In Tamil kari can refer to any cooked accompaniment to rice or bread. Even a dry stir fry. The Telugu equivalent kura is even more generic and can mean either a cooked dish or a vegetable.
And Tamil and Telugu are both distinct languages, not dialects.
Indo-Aryan is a real dialect continuum where people in the next village over can understand each other extending from pretty deep in Central Asia and Iran into Southern India until you reach Dravidian speaking peoples. Same deal from Punjab to Bengal. It's not the same language but it's the same family of them. punjabi and Bengali aren't mutually intelligible just as Spanish and Romanian aren't but if you speak one the other is not difficult to pick up.
> There is actually, its called Hindustani - the mix (pidgin?) of the dialects that is actually spoken by people rather than any pure single dialect.
Every single assertion in that sentence is wrong.
Hindustani is only spoken by ~60% of the population and a even lower percentage speak it as a first language. It is not a pan-Indian language. Hindustani is not a pidgin. Hindi and Urdu are both standardized registers of Hindustani. And Telugu and Tamil are not even in the same language family as Hindustani.
My understanding is that Hindustani is more of a continuum than a single language, a sort of umbrella term for all Hindi and Urdu standard languages and sister languages/dialects.
>>> At least one cooking show (Rick Stein in India) explored the "curry is just an indial dialect word for gravy" thing. And others have noted all the varietal restaurants of the sub-continent in the UK appear to depend on Bangladeshi cooks,
Just one cooking show does not prove anything. Curry is not an "indial dialect word for gravy". Some curries maybe gravy-like, but others may not be.
Also Bangladesh was partitioned off from India, so food culture is common between India, Bangladesh and pakistan
I think there are perfectly fair criticisms of a lot of American foods being styled in a manner that makes it easy to cram full of all sorts of unhealthy crap - but I think that general food authenticity judginess is a useless hill to die on.
Food is supposed to taste good and food is made fresh(ish) everytime you make it - you're never going to eat a feast served by Emperor Nero because his cooks are dead and cooking is a very artistic job - even a contemporary of theirs wouldn't cook a precisely identical feast. Make food how you want to eat it and enjoy.
Broaden your culinary horizons by tasting meals based on historic recipes if you want, have someone's home cooked dinner where they use a mix of ingredients and spices that they like or try and replicate something you ate at a restaurant but tweak it to be more to your liking.
Food is an extremely ephemeral thing that we consume everyday because we need to love - we can enjoy this daily task by making it to our own tastes without fearing judgement from others.
who is saying you can't eat unauthentic dishes, or that there's something wrong with experimenting? they are saying hey, can you not call this X if it's not authentically X. this is not a lot to ask and I will never understand all the hostility about it.
But what exactly is authentic? Cultures mix all the time and food tastes shift rapidly? Just to clarify - I'm not trying to be hostile here... I just have problems with how authentic is trying to be defined. I ate "authentic" Alsatian food that would be entirely unheard of a thousand years ago in the region and is largely the product of those peoples being repeatedly displaced and adopted into different nationalities and adopting one ingredient from here and another from here as it suited their needs.
Something that is what it claims to be; “authentic” isn’t a free-standing adjective for cuisine (I mean, beyond that if it is food that it is intentionally prepared, it is “authentic cuisine”.) It applies only to some claim about the cuisine, e.g., that is of a particular origin. So, the question isn’t “is X dish authentic” but, e.g., “is X dish authentically Mexican”
> I ate “authentic” Alsatian food that would be entirely unheard of a thousand years ago in the region
That’s…not surprising. I mean, its not “authentic pre-1000-BCE Alsatian food”, then, but…
(OTOH, American-style tacos are an invention of Americans in the United States. They are authentic American cuisine, but not authentic Mexican cuisine. They are inspired by Mexican cuisine, and they have also inspired some things in newer Mexican and Mexican-American cuisine, but they themselves are just plain American.)
That started like 500 years ago, in 1500s. At that time America was just about to be settled by Europeans. That makes tomatoes in Italy as authentic as Mexican cuisine. Whatever authentic means.
> That started like 500 years ago, in 1500s. At that time America was just about to be settled by Europeans.
Tomatoes came to Europe from America as a consequence of settlement, so you have that backwards.
> That makes tomatoes in Italy as authentic as Mexican cuisine.
Well, it makes it almost as old as Spanish-derived Mexican identity. There is quite a bit of cuisine now identified as “Mexican” that is older, e.g., of Aztec origin.
What bothers me more is when someone generalize about a large country with a lot of different regional styles. I've been told stacked enchiladas aren't authentic or traditional, when as far as I can work out, they're just kind of localized to in New Mexico/Chihuahua area. And authentic (American) BBQ isn't served covered in sauce, when they actually are just talking about Texas-style BBQ. Just because that's what you've experienced doesn't mean it's the only authentic way to do it.
hey to clarify, not accusing you of hostility. was a general statement.
i dont dispute that authenticity can be hard to nail down at times but there are plenty of situations where it isn't, so why does the whole concept need to be tossed out? saying american tacos are not like mexican tacos is objectively true; if someone lets that affect how they enjoy american tacos, that's a personal problem, but the statement itself doesnt imply american tacos have no value
i feel like this is a touchier subject than people realize. many cultures have rich and storied culinary traditions regardless of all the one-off examples like fry-bread and so on. saying "authenticity is meaningless" is easily interpreted as an attack even if that wasn't the intent.
I've watched videos critiquing Italian American dishes while simultaneously watching an old southern Italian lady do the same thing the master youtube chef was saying was inauthentic. As an Italian American it's especially annoying to hear in a negative connotation that somehow a dish made from the same recipe in writing from my Great/Great Grandmother is "inauthentic".
At this point, Italian-American cuisine is distinct from Italian, which itself has a ton of distinction between regions. People who go on about Italian-American stuff being inauthentic fail to realize this.
The article is commenting on a very common critique of food not being “authentic” and therefore inferior or not worthy of eating, especially foods that visibly derive from other national cuisines like tex mex.
If your goal is to help people find something that they could try, i.e. telling people about using galangal instead of ginger, then sure.
Since "authentic" is such a weird and ephemeral thing that's hard to pin down, policing people's language generally just comes across as petty and small.
My problem with the hard shell tacos is that I can’t seem to eat them. They break in half as soon as I take a bite. This problem isn’t unique to americanized mexican food though. It’s nearly as difficult to eat a sope.
Taco Bell made a hard shell taco with a soft shell wrapped around it - that worked fine.
I’ve also had tacos where the tortilla was fried so that it had crust, but still had enough give and integrity to hold together. Those were excellent!
I suspect that the hard shell taco kit format was developed because it was easier to make it shelf-stable, not because it tasted good. But I don’t have any evidence.
> Taco Bell made a hard shell taco with a soft shell wrapped around it - that worked fine.
The double decker taco supreme did not “work fine”. It was the undisputed apex of humanity’s culinary development.
The perfect vessel to combine the crunchy mouth feel of a hard shell taco, with the practical consistency and resilience of a soft shell wrapper. Bound together by a mix of refried beans.
I still can’t believe they removed it from the menu.
Taco Bell is constantly adjusting their menu. It seems like they do it more than other fast food places (not that I eat if that often). Mexican pizza is there one day, gone the next. At least they recently re added the nacho fries.
I saw a “Taco Bell Cantina” the first time the other day. Their “urban, open kitchen” experiment with alcohol, but with the regular Taco Bell stuff. Kind of fun.
I get one every now and then. I just ask if they still have those Double Decker tacos. Every time, without fail, they've said, "No, but we can make you some." Maybe it's just a Southern California thing, I really don't know. And yeah, I share your sentiments about its excellence and its "mouth feel". Yum.
I will agree that Fox News sucks, but leave Taco Bell alone. Even I can see that both of the above are products and corporate apparatus that creates the products. The parent company of Taco Bell is also the owner of a bunch of other fast food brands, so it just feels strange to call them out specifically.
That said, it’s practically the only vegan/vegetarian restaurant option available in large parts of USA. And people can eat what they like.
Shaming people for their food choices, in current year? I’ve seen you around HN - I know you can post better than this.
Fox and Fox News can both suck independently. My bad for assuming you meant Fox News. I take it as a given that most broadcast TV is horrible no matter where you are. What they did to Firefly they will do again to countless other shows. Part of me wants to just not care, but culture matters, and people dedicate their lives to the culture. They deserve better too.
> But yes, I would also judge someone who considered Taco Bell "good" food (by any metric). "Cheap" I'd accept.
Ah I guess I’ll agree there. It’s not great, but it’ll keep you from starving. Sadly, that’s the nutritional status quo in much of food desert America.
The trick is, fill the bottom with meat and put them in a 350° oven for 6 minutes – the hot oily meat will soften the "hinge" of the taco shell just enough that it won't crack when bitten.
The closest "authentic" thing to a hard shelled taco is, IMO, Flautas Ahogadas (sorta translated as fried flutes) which I'd encourage you to try if you ever get a chance - unlike hard tacos they're formed like thinner enchiladas so you can take chunks of them whole as bites.
Actual corn tortillas are an absolute royal pain to work with - they need to be reheated in a pretty precise manner to avoid cracking and damage and their shelf life is extremely short. I agree that it's probably more mundane concerns that led to the innovation of hard taco shells.
I wouldn't say corn tortillas have a particularly short shelf life. Or that they're all that hard to reheat. If you're getting fresh ones straight from the tortilliera, they're not going to last long on the counter, but that's because they're not formulated or packaged for shelf life. There are quite a few larger brands that make more shelf-stable corn tortillas and I've never noticed them going bad any faster than flour tortillas.
I'm not sure if you mean something specific by reheating, but I've always just toasted them in a pan on medium heat for a bit. I'm sure a good Mexican cook puts more finesse into it than I do, but there's at least enough structural integrity when I toast them to get the filling down your gullet with minimal complications.
Damn I miss living where the grocery store had a cooler of this morning's fresh-made corn tortillas. La Banderita is better than nothing, but it's just not the same.
I love gringo tacos. I love authentic Mexican ones too. But I grew up with gringo tacos and I make them sometimes because it reminds me of what I grew up on which is as authentic an experience as anything else.
American style tacos suck not because they are inauthentic, but because hard shells are terrible. Give me the same ingredients, whatever, but don't put them on a corn chip with the dumbest possible shape.
I challenge the assumption that hard shell tacos are the "mass-market American taco" of choice. Unless they're just talking about Taco Bell, I don't think that is true. If I went into a Mexican restaurant anywhere in the country and ordered tacos, I would be really surprised if they were hard shell. Not mad about it, but surprised. I think hard shell tacos with ground beef, etc., are a style of tacos you can make, but I don't believe they are the default anywhere I've lived.
Authenticity might be the last thing I look for in food, to be honest. I just care about the taste and cleanliness. Life is too short to be picky over a dish’s provenance.
> Chubby, crackly American tacos may be unknown in Culiacán or Toluca, but they taste good. They may well seem “inauthentic” in Mexico, but they are deeply authentic in the minds and memories of millions in America.
Like any food item, it depends? To me Taco Bell tasted terrible. Having existed for 50 years doesn't make it any better or 'authentic'. Are pop tarts "authentic"?
I think I may be the only person in the world who has fond memories of Pop Tarts, but only the un-glazed versions that I don't think they even make anymore.
Had a pop tart for the first time in ~20 years recently. Did they change the recipe? Not nearly as good as I remembered from back when I practically lived off them in high school.
I have a friend who worked as a food scientist for Kraft and later Mondelez. One day were talking one day about how shelf-stable foods had suddenly gone through a fairly drastic shift in flavor. She told me a lot of that was a result of the banning of artificial trans fats. My guilty pleasure used to be Wheat Thins (hers was warm Oreos straight off the production line) until one day somewhere between 2013 and 2015 they began to taste like a crappier version of salted fried cardboard. I was sure this was a result of cost cutting and preparation to spin off Kraft's snack food division into Mondelez but she assured me that while that may have had something to do with it the major driving force was the shift to fats other than those based on artificial trans fats.
I can't say for sure if Pop Tarts suffered a similar fate but I'd say there's a pretty good chance.
No, it's mostly beef. And the part that isn't beef is mostly water and seasonings, not filler. The taco beef I make from scratch is even less beef by proportion. That whole fuss was so stupid, but their response was too. They should've just said "Ya, it's taco beef. Not beef. Go make it yourself and measure the proportions."
As a non-American, we don't even really call the tacos Mexican food. It's categorized as American or perhaps "American-Mexican". Taco Bell is cheaper and tastier than any other home made taco around here, even with it's well known 88% beef. It's good enough that it's the kind of place you'd take someone on a date.
These days I click on the Economist, remember that they have the singularly most obnoxious cookie consent out there and hit the back button before I see anything.
> Authenticity is a terrible metric for judging food
Perhaps, but the crappiness of mass-market American-style tacos compared to Mexican tacos (also widely available in many parts of America, especially places where there are lots of people of Mexican descent, including the parts that were once part of Mexico) is a separate and very real issue (common to mass market American food generally, regardless of cultural inspiration or authenticity of general ingredients and stylistic choices.)
Not that I would expect a New York writer for a British-headquartered magazine devoted to ideological defense of neoliberal corporate capitalism to really have much of use to offer on discussion of cuisine in general, much less Mexican-inspired American food, though the defense of mass market anything from that source is…rather painfully on-brand.
(Yes, there are good, even if not-authentically-Mexican, American-style tacos; they are, however, not the mass market ones, though I’ve certainly had many made at people’s homes using mass market taco shells.)
To be more precise, this is one of the thing we call "tacos", usually sold by small shops that will also do doner kebabs. But we also have "regular" tacos, sold by shops that are focused on mexican/tex-mex cuisine. The french tacos are usually called just tacos, "tacos Français" (French tacos), or "tacos Lyonnais". There are debats on the origin, with people saying it comes from Lyon and other that it comes from Grenoble.
I first I thought you meant the San Fernando Valley in LA. It's not that the mass market tacos are inauthentic, the mass market taco is terrible bland food - see https://www.lataco.com/tag/guides/ for examples of what one misses out on by going mass market.
> Chubby, crackly American tacos may be unknown in Culiacán or Toluca, but they taste good. They may well seem “inauthentic” in Mexico, but they are deeply authentic in the minds and memories of millions in America.
Why is the Economist hawking 20-year-old Anthony Bourdain takes on food authenticity? "Um actually, processed food is good and delicious you guys." Lmao. Is the war in Ukraine not going so well or something?
What a cushy sinecure these people have. And they don't even have bylines!
In general, whenever there are debates about the authenticity of a certain dish, I can guarantee that people of the native country are doing even crazier "non-traditional" things with it, and no one cares.