16 ms·

In praise of mass-market American tacos

68 points by lxm 5y ago

paxys 5y ago
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.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Authenticity is always a point in time authenticity anyway, as everything is changing constantly.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    And even when scoped to a specific place and time, definitions get fuzzy and the whole discussion gets a bit too navel gaze-ey for my tastes.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I mean it always boils down to “what I like is good and authentic and better than what you like which is fake and bad and you should feel bad.” And if you can’t argue it as authentic just call it fusion.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        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.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > 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.
  - em-bee 5y ago
    authentic food is what my grandparents made.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      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.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > grandparents of people alive now would’ve been making food during the initial popularity of microwaved and canned foods. Those two things weren't even roughly contemporary.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        You can make a pretty good argument that the popularity of canned foods really came post-WWII.
        barry-cotter 5y ago
        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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning
- munk-a 5y ago
  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).
  - not2b 5y ago
    Except that corn tortillas and enchiladas predate Cortez, going back to the Mayans and before, perhaps 2000 years.
    - Maursault 5y ago
      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.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > Don't forget the tamale. The origin of the tamale dates back 7k - 11k years. This doesn't sound like a claim for which there could be good evidence.
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    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??
- Rapzid 5y ago
  Haha, yeah many don't realize that TexMex isn't "knock off" Mexican food. It's "Truly Texas Mexican" food. Most of what's available outside south Texas (and here and there through southwest) is knock off TexMex though lol.
  - cliftonk 5y ago
    Not to mention it’s very similar to Mexican food in northern Mexico (which is culturally very connected to Texas!)
  - kurthr 5y ago
    And don't forget New Mexican food, which refers to the state... not the age of the food.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  At this point California has distinct regional styles. I’m guessing Texas too.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Tomatoes originate from the americas. Italian food only relatively recently had access to the tomato. After learning this fact, I stopped caring about a foods heritage. Who cares.
  - taeric 5y ago
    Spicy food, as we know it today, also originated in the americas. Which similarly blows my mind.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      I think India might have a word here as well. Reminds me of the origin story disputes of pasta.
      - kurthr 5y ago
        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.
      - smcl 5y ago
        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)
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        India was the commercial source of (black) pepper; that's why Columbus' stated aim was to get to India. Tomatoes, potatoes, and chili ("red pepper") are all New World plants foreign to India.
- krageon 5y ago
  > going back hundreds of years. Really? Hundreds?
- croon 5y ago
  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).
  - ricardobayes 5y ago
    Well I don't think lebanese made pork dishes though.
    - croon 5y ago
      Indeed, it was originally lamb, but that's another point for fusion, I'd say.
    - FerociousTimes 5y ago
      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.
  - genocidicbunny 5y ago
    > 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.
    - croon 5y ago
      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.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 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.)
- bumby 5y ago
  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.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >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. The classic Taco Bell taco is genuine southern California Cal-Mex cuisine. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/dining/north-of-the-border-its-everyones-mexican-food.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/dining/north-of-the-border...>
munk-a 5y ago
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.
- bllguo 5y ago
  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.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    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. Food is constantly evolving.
    - enaaem 5y ago
      Another thing is that everyone makes "authentic" food differently.
maybelsyrup 5y ago
> 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!
DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
Rapzid 5y ago
Guessing the author has never lived in San Antonio or the Valley :)
- dv_dt 5y ago
  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/ https://www.lataco.com/tag/guides/ for examples of what one misses out on by going mass market.
fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
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.
- munk-a 5y ago
  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.
  - msrenee 5y ago
    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.
- koolba 5y ago
anm89 5y ago
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.
bee_rider 5y ago
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.
muzani 5y ago
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.
karaterobot 5y ago
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.
- Tagbert 5y ago
  In our local places, you can order Tacos (soft corn tortilla) or Tacos Dorados (fried corn tortilla). Flour tortillas are more of a side in this case.
booleandilemma 5y ago
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.
ricardobeat 5y ago
> 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"?
- ethbr0 5y ago
  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.
  - tomcam 5y ago
    One of two ;)
  - e2e8 5y ago
    Apparently they still make 3 unfrosted flavors: https://www.poptarts.com/en_US/products/all-flavors.html https://www.poptarts.com/en_US/products/all-flavors.html
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      Now I'm going to be "that guy" who buys Pop Tarts on eBay to get the right flavor. Thanks! (said with equal parts sarcasm and gratitude)
  - mrexroad 5y ago
    Wait, people don’t have fond memories of pop tarts?
  - hyperbovine 5y ago
    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.
FpUser 5y ago
To me if it tastes good it is "authentic". I do not care about the rest, leave it to the professionals.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  Well it depends, in France this is what they call Tacos... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_tacos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_tacos
  - Zababa 5y ago
    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.
nemo44x 5y ago
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.
mitchbob 5y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/fCfa2 https://archive.ph/fCfa2
bayesian_horse 5y ago
Hotdogs are tacos too.
xivzgrev 5y ago
It’s about damn time. I’m the only one I know who prefers these over the “authentic”, small shit tacos. They’re so unfilling, and I miss the crunch. There’s a Mexican grocery store in San Francisco that sells these big crispy tacos. Now those are good (and seemingly authentic)!
dragonwriter 5y ago
> 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.)
washadjeffmad 5y ago
Those are tostadas, not tacos.
ggm 5y ago
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? That tempura? It was the Portugese... That spam fritter in the Philippines...
- GauntletWizard 5y ago
  "thats noo how ye mak purridge" - https://youtu.be/UTcA-e6bqVY https://youtu.be/UTcA-e6bqVY
- munk-a 5y ago
  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.

68 points by lxm 5y ago

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.

bombcar 5y ago
Authenticity is always a point in time authenticity anyway, as everything is changing constantly.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  And even when scoped to a specific place and time, definitions get fuzzy and the whole discussion gets a bit too navel gaze-ey for my tastes.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I mean it always boils down to “what I like is good and authentic and better than what you like which is fake and bad and you should feel bad.” And if you can’t argue it as authentic just call it fusion.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      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.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 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.
- em-bee 5y ago
  authentic food is what my grandparents made.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    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.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > grandparents of people alive now would’ve been making food during the initial popularity of microwaved and canned foods. Those two things weren't even roughly contemporary.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        You can make a pretty good argument that the popularity of canned foods really came post-WWII.
        barry-cotter 5y ago
        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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning
munk-a 5y ago
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).
- not2b 5y ago
  Except that corn tortillas and enchiladas predate Cortez, going back to the Mayans and before, perhaps 2000 years.
  - Maursault 5y ago
    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.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > Don't forget the tamale. The origin of the tamale dates back 7k - 11k years. This doesn't sound like a claim for which there could be good evidence.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  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??
Rapzid 5y ago
Haha, yeah many don't realize that TexMex isn't "knock off" Mexican food. It's "Truly Texas Mexican" food. Most of what's available outside south Texas (and here and there through southwest) is knock off TexMex though lol.
- cliftonk 5y ago
  Not to mention it’s very similar to Mexican food in northern Mexico (which is culturally very connected to Texas!)
- kurthr 5y ago
  And don't forget New Mexican food, which refers to the state... not the age of the food.
nemo44x 5y ago
At this point California has distinct regional styles. I’m guessing Texas too.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bushbaba 5y ago
Tomatoes originate from the americas. Italian food only relatively recently had access to the tomato. After learning this fact, I stopped caring about a foods heritage. Who cares.
- taeric 5y ago
  Spicy food, as we know it today, also originated in the americas. Which similarly blows my mind.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    I think India might have a word here as well. Reminds me of the origin story disputes of pasta.
    - kurthr 5y ago
      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.
    - smcl 5y ago
      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)
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        India was the commercial source of (black) pepper; that's why Columbus' stated aim was to get to India. Tomatoes, potatoes, and chili ("red pepper") are all New World plants foreign to India.
krageon 5y ago
> going back hundreds of years. Really? Hundreds?
croon 5y ago
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).
- ricardobayes 5y ago
  Well I don't think lebanese made pork dishes though.
  - croon 5y ago
    Indeed, it was originally lamb, but that's another point for fusion, I'd say.
  - FerociousTimes 5y ago
    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.
- genocidicbunny 5y ago
  > 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.
  - croon 5y ago
    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.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> 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.)
bumby 5y ago
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.
TMWNN 5y ago
>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. The classic Taco Bell taco is genuine southern California Cal-Mex cuisine. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/dining/north-of-the-border-its-everyones-mexican-food.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/dining/north-of-the-border...>

munk-a 5y ago

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.

bllguo 5y ago
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.
- munk-a 5y ago
  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. Food is constantly evolving.
  - enaaem 5y ago
    Another thing is that everyone makes "authentic" food differently.

maybelsyrup 5y ago

> 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!

DaiPlusPlus 5y ago

Rapzid 5y ago

Guessing the author has never lived in San Antonio or the Valley :)

dv_dt 5y ago
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/ https://www.lataco.com/tag/guides/ for examples of what one misses out on by going mass market.

fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago

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.

munk-a 5y ago
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.
- msrenee 5y ago
  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.
koolba 5y ago

anm89 5y ago

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.

bee_rider 5y ago

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.

muzani 5y ago

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.

karaterobot 5y ago

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.

Tagbert 5y ago
In our local places, you can order Tacos (soft corn tortilla) or Tacos Dorados (fried corn tortilla). Flour tortillas are more of a side in this case.

booleandilemma 5y ago

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.

ricardobeat 5y ago

> 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"?

ethbr0 5y ago
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.
- tomcam 5y ago
  One of two ;)
- e2e8 5y ago
  Apparently they still make 3 unfrosted flavors: https://www.poptarts.com/en_US/products/all-flavors.html https://www.poptarts.com/en_US/products/all-flavors.html
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Now I'm going to be "that guy" who buys Pop Tarts on eBay to get the right flavor. Thanks! (said with equal parts sarcasm and gratitude)
- mrexroad 5y ago
  Wait, people don’t have fond memories of pop tarts?
- hyperbovine 5y ago
  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.

FpUser 5y ago

To me if it tastes good it is "authentic". I do not care about the rest, leave it to the professionals.

curiousgal 5y ago
Well it depends, in France this is what they call Tacos... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_tacos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_tacos
- Zababa 5y ago
  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.

nemo44x 5y ago

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.

mitchbob 5y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/fCfa2 https://archive.ph/fCfa2

bayesian_horse 5y ago

Hotdogs are tacos too.

xivzgrev 5y ago

It’s about damn time. I’m the only one I know who prefers these over the “authentic”, small shit tacos. They’re so unfilling, and I miss the crunch. There’s a Mexican grocery store in San Francisco that sells these big crispy tacos. Now those are good (and seemingly authentic)!

dragonwriter 5y ago

> 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.)

washadjeffmad 5y ago

Those are tostadas, not tacos.

ggm 5y ago

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? That tempura? It was the Portugese... That spam fritter in the Philippines...

GauntletWizard 5y ago
"thats noo how ye mak purridge" - https://youtu.be/UTcA-e6bqVY https://youtu.be/UTcA-e6bqVY
munk-a 5y ago
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.