October 25, 2007

• Terrorist plot? We report, you decide.
• A mouth-watering article. Up here most Mexican joints tend towards Cal-Mex. The local place, Gina's, serves up a sort of Can-Cal-Tex-Mex menu that's about as authentically Mexican as Benny Hill in a sombrero but their halibut tacos, when the fish is fresh, are sex on a plate. North American Chinese food is another great example of an exotic foreign cuisine adapting to local tastes and ingredients and becoming part of the local culture. Chow mein enchiladas anyone?
• awful food.
• Nobody can touch Tucson Mexican food. Santa Fe is a good second, though.
• You're treading into dangerous territory, rushmc. I can only ascribe your opinion to ignorance. Good New Mexican food is transcendence.
• I heard that Cox and Box like Tex Mex Chex Mix.
• I live in New Jersey and every time I go home to Texas, all I do is eat Tex-Mex and a little Mex-Mex of various kinds. I'm not moving home for the food, but I must say it's a factor in wanting to live in Austin. New Mexican is good too. I ate like a pig the last time I was in Santa Fe. Haven't been to Tucson, so I can't talk about that, though.
• I was hungry before. Now I'm starving.
• Austin has some of the best Tex-Mex I've ever had. If you're there before they tear down Las Manitas, make sure you stop by. It could be your only chance to experience one of the high points of Austin dining.
• I always say that Tex-Mex (or Americanized Mexican) is really just a lot more cheese and less spice. Americanized Italian is also just a lot more cheese and less spice.
• Monkeyfilter: just a lot more cheese and less spice.
• awful food. You've never been to Texas.
• America: just a lot more cheese and less spice. I think I like that.
• I always say that Tex-Mex (or Americanized Mexican) is really just a lot more cheese and less spice. Depending entirely on where you are eating. Tex-Mex and especially New Mexican foods can be very heavy on the spice in more authentic restaurants, but both have also been bastardized and blandified in chain restaurants (looking at you, Chuys) and the like.
• I always say that Tex-Mex (or Americanized Mexican) is really just a lot more cheese and less spice. Actually, I was once asked by a Mexican friend of mine why we Americans like things so spicy! As a Texan living in Pittsburgh, one of the things I miss the most is decent Tex-Mex. It's even hard to make things at home because you have to search high and low for the ingredients sometimes. (I used to live in the midwest, and it was surprisingly easy to get decent Mexican-ish food because of all of the migrant farm workers around. Many left the farm-worker business to open restaurants that were stunningly good.) I miss Joe T. Garcia's in Ft. Worth (which has, admittedly, gotten pretty touristy -- but still yummy, last I checked), and this little hole in the wall in Houston whose jukebox was entirely filled with Selina and Madonna. It was open until 3am every day and served this most excellent homemade chili sauce over everything. *sigh* I might have to make some enchiladas for dinner.
• You have to bow down to the sheer amount of food on the Elvis Memorial Platter at Chuy's though. That's the most food for the least money I've ever seen.
• Is Chuy's a nationwide chain? I'm not crazy about Chuy's but there is one just a few blocks from my house, so I end up there from time to time. The ONE thing they had that I really liked, the rajas con queso (MMM!), they took off the menu. Damn you Chuy!!
• Is Chuy's a nationwide chain? You're right, they're a Texas-only chain. Still emblematic of attempting to use atmosphere to make up for poor food though, imo. I was originally going to use Chili's as my nationwide example of blandified Tex-Mex, but it just seemed too cruel to believe that anyone could possibly take Chili's seriously as Tex-Mex cuisine.
• >>Good New Mexican food is transcendence. Did I dispute it?
• Who is Al Pastor?
• Minn-Mex has y'all beat. Open a single serving size bag of Frito's corn chips. Put a bunch of hamburger meat on top (don't season it though, that's un-lutheran). Get a bucket of sour cream, and there ya have an Uff-Da Taco. But seriously, the upper Midwest has some amazing Mexican restaurants... none of which are franchises. And I have also been told by Mexican friends that our "mexican" food is too spicy for their taste.
• Open a single serving size bag of Frito's corn chips. That's funny, annasbrew, funny and horrifying. And I have also been told by Mexican friends that our "mexican" food is too spicy for their taste. It's easy for us Americans to forget that Mexican cuisine varies by region just like ours. Here in NM we tend to think of northern Mexican as Mexican, which, in my experience, is kind of like Tex-Mex without the fire. But watch out for some of the other styles.
• awful food. Them's fightin' words.
• All about the "silver torpedo," San Francisco's #1 contribution to cheap-eats awesomeness. Speaking of which, it's time for lunch. Hel-lo Tacqueria Cancun! Con aguacate, por favor!
• I'm sorry, but rice in a burrito just destroys the experience beyond the point where really good carnitas and salsa will make up the difference.
• Weird thing is that in Los Angeles we can get just about any regional Mexican cuisine from Oaxacan to Yucatecan to Chihuahuan within a twenty mile radius, but good, and I mean good TexMex/New Mexican style cooking here sux. You could argue that the old school "yellow cheese on canned frijoles refritos and spanish rice" style cooking from El Coyote and El Chollo could pass, but after eating at a couple of places in Albuquerque that knocked my socks off, I would beg to differ. Any Angelenos have some special New Mexican restaurants that you wanna share?
• Any Angelenos have some special New Mexican restaurants that you wanna share? You can end your search now. It can't be done. There's a peculiar geographically induced chemical transformation that happens to good chile that prevents it from being transported across the state border without it immediately losing all of its flavor and heat. I'm sorry. This is a simple fact. I have yet to be proven wrong on this.
• I was once served a "vegetarian soft taco" in Canada that contained... cream cheese and Thousand Island dressing. (All together now - *shudder*) The moral of the story? Beware "Mexican" restaurants anywhere north of, say, southern Kansas, if some of the patrons and staff themselves are not speaking Spanish.
• I was once served a "vegetarian soft taco" in Canada that contained... cream cheese and Thousand Island dressing. There's that ol' Canadian ingenuity!
• Hey, it was vegetarian and it was soft, right?
• One of the few complaints I have about Oregon is the dearth of decent Mexican food, by which I mean, of course, Tex Mex. Not that I'm surprised, really. I'm not in Texas. Still. It's a travesty. Burritos seem to be the pinnacle of Mexican food in Eugene. Personally, I have nothing agaist burritos. But...goddamn. Wrapping shit in a flour tortilla does not a burrito make. My favorite hole-in-the-wall place back in Texas (the panhandle) made their salsa fresh every day, and the spiciness was a crapshoot. Some days it had just enough kick to be interesting. Other days it singed your nose hairs from the kitchen. Tasty. Migas. Huevos rancheros. Sigh. And...fish tacos, while delicious, are an abomination unto God.
• As an accidental Canadian, I've never been able to figure out the food in Ontario. There is abundant Indian cuisine, plenty of Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese, some authentic Greek cooking, your usual Italian and French grub, and enough English, Irish and Scottish pubs to swamp onesself in mushy peas. But there ain't no Mexican. No place. Too cold?
• And...fish tacos, while delicious, are an abomination unto God. This is nonsensical. I reject you.
• Hey, it was vegetarian and it was soft, right? Perhaps, but it sure wasn't a taco. I made pico de gallo for some Canadians once. They found it an interesting concept, but "too spicy". These are the same people I had seen suck down curry that would peel paint off a wall. *shakes head*
• Did you remember to put the cardboard in the pico de gallo? You didn't, did you. Knew it.
• No Mexican food in Winnipeg, either (except Carlos & Murphy's, but we shan't speak of that). No Mexican population to speak of. Plenty of South and otherwise-Central Americans, but no Mexicans. Lots of Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Fillipino, Indian, Pakistani. Plenty of Polish, Ukranian, Hungarian, German. We have English and Irish style pubs, and even an Australian restaurant. But only one pseudo-Mexican place, and it blows. Man, I miss them Mission burritos!
• And...fish tacos, while delicious, are an abomination unto God. NEVAR!
• Ralph: Try Latino's in Guelph, or even The Salsateria, which isn't strictly Mexican but has some Central/South American dishes.
• Thanks. Sounds good.
• HW, Nick...you know I'm right. You think that was an apple Eve ate? Too many fish tacos and you'll find yourself eating vegetarian soft tacos in Canada. And then where will you be? Oh, and you'll go blind. With hairy palms. An abomination, I tell you.
• He will be in Hell, Hell, I say. The Hell of Thousand Island Salsa.
• Stop being loco, malthusan. Anyone who's ever been to Baja can vouch for the heavenly goodness that is the fish taco.