Several years ago I made a deal with a little taqueria in Washington State that I would be their handyman in exchange for free food. I mostly did plumbing repairs, but I also built a cabinet for their soda machine, and put some skirting around their trompo to keep the wind from blowing out the burners.
It was a win for all parties involved, as the restaurant could feed me for very little money compared with what it would cost to hire contractors, and the amount of work I actually had to do was negligible in light of what it would have cost to pay for my meals.
Most days I let the chef decide what I ate, and I was never disappointed.
One afternoon an older man and his wife walked in and took a seat at a table near the salsa bar. When the server came to take their order, the man asked her, “Do you know what a Taco Supreme is?”
It occurred to me that knowing what a Taco Supreme is and being able to make one in your restaurant are not the same thing.
This was an authentic taqueria. The owner had a second location in Mexico City. Her corn tortillas were handmade. Her ground beef, for those few who ever ordered it, had actual beef in it.
And here was a man, in an authentic Mexican restaurant, asking an authentic Mexican waitress for a trademarked fast food taco. And when she hesitated, because she had a basic understanding of reality, he began to describe it to her, and suggested she take notes.
It turns out that it’s not that easy to make a cheap, shitty taco with quality ingredients, but at least they had the requisite sour cream to make that taco “SupremeTM.”
The customer wasn’t thrilled with what he received, but in the end his wife told him to shut up and leave the poor girl alone. Or not. I don’t remember, but I like that ending.
I’d have sent him packing, but that’s why I was snaking drains for free tacos and not running a restaurant.
On another occasion a young man and his girlfriend visited the taqueria and he ordered four beef tacos. What he received were four, fresh, handmade corn tortillas, piled high with carne asada, which he was free to top as he saw fit with various salsas, diced or grilled onions, cilantro, and lime juice.
“These aren’t fuckin’ tacos!” he growled, violently shoving the plate away from him.
The owner had made them herself, and was fairly certain she knew what tacos were, as the proprietor of taco shops in two different countries.
“These aren’t fuckin’ tacos!” he repeated, to the stunned taco professional.
His girlfriend was on the phone when his outburst occurred, and stepped outside so her belligerent boyfriend would not be heard by the other party. When her call concluded, she did not come back inside immediately, instead sending a text to her companion to join her out front.
Through the closed door, she could be heard shouting, “WHAT THE FUCK!”
It was more of a statement than a question.
He stormed off and she came back inside and apologized for his behavior. It seemed that the only tacos the young man had ever seen were from Taco Bell, so authentic Mexico City-style fare was unrecognizable to him. I could almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn’t such a bitch.
Thankfully, minutes later, he was hit by a logging truck and killed, and we all finished our meals before going outside to point and laugh at how silly his guts looked all over the street, and then I made out with his girlfriend with tongues and everything.
That’s how I choose to remember it.
I have spent nearly all my life eating Mexican food, and for many of my years, I thought I had a solid grasp of what it was.
I did not.
There was a time when I’d have told you that Taco Bell, with its weird, crispy corn tortillas and mealy ground “beef” was merely the white man’s crude attempt at Mexican food.
I’d have confidently asserted that only the whites ask for flour tortillas with their carne asada. I’d have insisted that ground beef was for hamburgers, not tacos.
Then I learned that entire regions of Mexico prefer tortillas de harina over tortillas de maíz. And I learned the history of Taco Bell.
San Bernardino, California has as much a right to call itself the birthplace of modern fast food as any. The first McDonald’s developed its assembly line approach to cooking there, and it’s where Glen Bell was introduced to Mexican food.
After seeing lines around the block at Mitla Cafe, he began eating there daily, befriended the owners, and eventually learned their recipes, which he adapted to the assembly line system used by every fast food restaurant today. Since then, his restaurant chain, Taco Bell, has done pretty well.
The story of Mitla is a bit more interesting. Founders Lucia and Salvador Rodriguez were unable to find many of the ingredients they had cooked with in Mexico, so they improvised with what was locally available, and their own unique style of Mexican food was born, though one could argue quite convincingly that the food is nothing if not American.
You can still eat at Mitla Cafe today and judge for yourself.
When it comes to Mexican fast food, I’m more of a Del Taco fan, but I no longer write off Glen Bell’s creation as the white man’s taco, though it literally is.
Neither do I pretend to know what Mexican food tastes like, even after living and traveling extensively in Mexico.
Most of the food in Mexican restaurants in the US consists of a handful of the same ingredients and the choice of which delivery mechanism to receive them with. A taco, a torta, a sope, a tostada. Same stuff, different vessels.
But try cochinita pibil or chiles en nogada and you’ll have your perception of Mexican flavors turned on its head. As a lover of more familiar Mexican dishes, you might not even like them.
Or you might find them to be supreme.
More importantly, you will be reminded that a nation of over 130 million is not a monolith, and it can no more be constrained by our narrow perceptions than its people can be held behind a crudely built wall.
You might be inspired to travel, and learn, and eat. To get to know your neighbor.
You might even decide that cultural authenticity is a false ideal, because a culture is just a bunch of people finding meaning where they can, in schools and churches and artisan workshops; kitchens, the backs of trucks, and drive-through windows.
And that’s pretty fuckin’ great.