A Call for More Mex-Mex Cuisine

As Hispanic cuisine grows in scope and complexity here in the United States, product developers and chefs have begun to play around with more-authentic foods. After all, it should come as no surprise that the “Mexican” fare served up at many of the American QSRs and other restaurants is just as foreign to our neighbors to the south as baked Alaska is to Inuits.

Along those lines, the Mexican government recently made an effort to bring more-authentic fare to the rest of North America by inviting U.S. and Canadian restauranteurs to Mexico City for a crash course covering the true cuisine of the country, as noted in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article. The forum, which brought 50 Mexican restaurant owners to Mexico’s capital, was organized by the Institute for Mexicans Living Abroad (el Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior).

Although this might prove a bit of an uphill battle for operators and product developers looking to get more authentic—since we Americans have shown an affinity for Cal-Mex cheesy burritos and fried chimichangas and Tex-Mex fajitas—it could result in some nice additions to sit beside Americanized Mexican foods (but of the two Oaxacan examples cited in the above article as authentic options, I have a sneaking prickly pear jam might fit into our foodways a bit better than grasshoppers…). The cheeses of Mexico certainly deserve more attention than we have been giving them, and I would love to see more homemade-style tortillas in restaurants and used in processed foods.

As Frenando Olea, owner of Bert’s La Taqueria in Santa Fe (among other ventures)—a restaurant that includes sautéed grasshoppers on the menu—notes in the article, “…what we want to promote is Mex-Mex food.”

Amén, hermano.