Photo by katieharbath/Flickr (Creative Commons)
The OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano knows a thing or two about Mexican food, and not just the traditional stuff that is actually found in Mexico. In his by now legendary “¡Ask a Mexican!” column, Arellano routinely fielded inquiries like “I always wondered why Mexican restaurants en los Estados Unidos use queso amarillo (yellow cheese) on their food.”
Lately, as he’s been researching a book on the history of Mexican food in the United States and its many variations, Arellano has given us a taste of a “Spanish” feast in the Orange County of the 1890s (served with a sauce that a newspaper reporter at the time called “sarsa”) and brought us the food-genre term “Bro-Mex.”
Along the way, he has encountered plenty of gooey yellow cheese. But American-style Mexican food is about much more than that, a point that Arellano makes in his forthcoming “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America,” set to be published in April of next year by Scribner.
And while he can’t reveal all he’s learned while researching the book, he is clear about one thing: There’s no shame in ordering that chimichanga combo plate.
M-A: So you’re writing a book about Mexican food in the United States. Is this the type of food that comes smothered in yellow cheese? Is it really Mexican food?
Arellano: It absolutely is Mexican food, with no qualifiers. The great Chicano scholar Américo Paredes coined the term “Greater Mexico” to refer to how, even though Mexican migrants might’ve gone into the United States, that somehow didn’t negate their mexicanidad on virtue of geographic movement; they were still Mexican.
Similarly, the Mexican combo platter smothered in yellow cheese is as Mexican as the chilango tlacoyo, as the Taco Bell taco, as whatever comes out of Rick Bayless’ kitchen. They’re all different regional manifestations of the mother tortilla. The cheese touch, by the way? Came from Texas’ version of Mexican food, which we all know and ridicule as Tex-Mex, even though we stole their combo plate idea.
M-A: What are the signature dishes and/or touches, and who serves it?
Arellano: Depends on what you’re talking about. The classic Tex-Mex meal is a combo plate-beans, rice, and an entree that can range from chile con carne (what the rest of the country now calls chili) to enchiladas and even cheese tacos, which is really nothing more than a corn tortilla stuffed with processed cheese – and then comes the cheese.
Cal-Mex cuisine has more guacamole, burritos, and tacos, and is really the pocho child of Sonoran cooking (where beef reigns, along with the flour tortilla) and central Mexico, specifically Jalisco (home to menudo, birria, pozole, and flautas, which we know better as taquitos). Then there’s New Mexican food, Colorado Mexican, Fresh Mex…just wait for the book!
M-A: Where did this cuisine originate, and how did it evolve into, say, the chimichanga combination plate?
