8 Dirty Truths About Mexican Food (That Nobody Wants to Talk About)

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As the righteous and just fight for heirloom corn rages on in Mexico, and masa awareness penetrates the U.S. market, what is sometimes forgotten north of the border is that one tortilla does not fit all. Take the fish taco. In Ensenada, the lukewarm, bland tortilla recien hecha (from a tortilleria) is merely an instrument to hold tempura fried shark fillets with all its salsas, creams, and veggies. Heirloom corn dominates the flavor and changes the dish. In Mexico, a taquero carefully selects his tortillas based on how it goes with his dish, and sometimes a lighter flavor is required. Do we need better tortillas? Absolutely, just don’t fuck with my fish taco.

How many more times must hipster chefs subject diners to soyrizo, jackfruit tacos, “gluten-free” flour tortillas (newsflash: stick with corn), seitan carne asada, and other culinary ignominies? That’s not to say you can’t eat great Mexican food that happens to be vegetarian, or even vegan. Indeed, most Mexicans in central and Southern Mexico don’t really bother with meat, instead preferring a plant-based diet that can incorporate everything from calabasitas (tender squash stew) to grilled nopales, verdologas (purslane), huauzontle, beans, and a million manifestations of corn—and we haven’t even gotten to fruit! But the tyranny of vegans insists that food must assimilate to them, instead of bothering to learn about indigenous foodstyles that are cheaper, healthier, and better-tasting. Vegan pozole? Why don’t you just boil hominy in ionized water and call it a día?

If you want a capsaicin cleanse, try your local southern Indian, Isan Thai, or Sichuan restaurant, where there are sometimes so many chiles in a dish, we Mexicans mistake it for a salsa. Mexico is the only country that consumes chiles as a food and as a condiment, where there are 64 distinct varieties and around 140 regional varietals. We stuff them, craft moles, salsas, soups, stews, but the chiles in our dishes are usually mild. Matter of fact, every Mexican family has a relative who can’t handle hot chiles, and Mexico doesn’t use anything spicier than the habanero, especially in the Yucatán. We might spice up a taco with salsa habanera, or chase a bite with a tear-jerking chile toreado (grilled jalapeño or habanero), but we mostly eat mild chiles for the flavor. 

It’s easy to attack non-Mexican chefs for trying to pass off Mexican food as something new, but it’s also part and parcel of the restaurant industry—and Mexicans are particularly ruthless at the game of ripping Mexicans off. In Taco USA, the late El Torito founder Larry Cano explained how he’d send out a trusted lieutenant to get a job at the kitchen of a trendy Mexican restaurant, find out the secrets to their best dishes, then leave after a month so El Torito could “refine” the dish and make millions off of it. The same is happening right now in Southern California, where Burritos Las Palmas’ extraordinary Jerez-style birria de res is getting copied by other loncheros hoping to capitalize on all of its press coverage. As we always say, who hates Mexicans more than Donald Trump? MEXICANS.

From the moment tamale men and canned chile spread across the United States after the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the biggest consumer of Mexican food in los Estados Unidos have been gabachos. But while it’s easy to dismiss a whole race as a bunch of Chipotle-loving, Pace Picante Sauce-buying pendejos, gabachos have been far savvier in promoting Mexican food than anyone will ever give them credit for. It’s been their desire for “authenticity” that has given rise to Mexican food’s continued evolution, and it's their patronizing of Mexican restaurants that has kept tens of thousand of Mexican restaurant owners employed for over 125 years. But will Mexicans ever acknowledge that maybe white people know something about Mexican food? No, because...

You finally got that invite to the latest hot Mexican concept by your favorite gringo chef on food television, who has just released himself from the Tree Position and is ready to show you what Mexico is all about. There it is: grilled corn with mayo, chile powder, cotija cheese—and of course he elevated the dish with non-GMO corn from a local farm, and ground his own chili blend. You just squealed when he gave you a fresh, homemade kaffir lime paleta, because you know, tejocote, guanabana, and zapote negro at the paleteria are so boring. So congratulations, you’ve just fetishized pinche corn on the cob—do you see us Mexicans running to the state fair to Instagram hot buttered corn? Elotes, paletas—they are great snacks, but they are as interesting to us as corn on the cob is to you.

Mezcal is the most interesting spirit to drink now in the agave kingdom given the exciting new varietals and producers entering the U.S. market, but I 100% reject the partisan mezcal vs. tequila argument. Tequila is a mezcal, and like that fantastic table wine, may sometimes lacks the complexities of a first growth Bordeaux. But there are many tequilas that are delicious, and there are plenty of mezcales that taste like the inside of a used gas can. Tequila is industrial because of volume; it has to be. Mezcal is artisanal because many productions are small and there’s not the demand or funds to justify modern equipment. That doesn’t make it better by default, but great mezcales have the potential from many more natural flavors and layers. So, let’s just be for great expressions of agave and stop this bullshit: tequila, raicilla, mezcal, bacanora, and non Denomination of Origin mezcales are all mezcales, and sotol—you’re not a mezcal, but we love you, too.

The narrative that Mexican food was in danger of disappearing until people like Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy came along to document and save it is preposterous (if the food was so endangered, then how did they get all those recipes?). Such an obsession with people like them strips Mexicans of their agency, quashes Mexicans who should’ve become more famous long ago, and continues to perpetuate Columbusing in the food world. And you can’t put all the blame on Americans for enabling this cult of celebrity; many a Mexican-American proudly owns one of Bayless cookbooks, damn sinvergüenzas.