Musings on Tex-Mex Cuisine from the Heart of the Breakfast Taco Belt
Written: Feb 16 '01
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Pros: Tex-Mex offers a glimpse of the Mexican food spectrum
Cons: Some of the best Mexican food is missing
The Bottom Line: The audience for Mexican food beyond Tex-Mex in Austin is pitifully small. If you can find another sub-genre, though, it's well worth the try!
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| scmrak's Full Review: Austin Restaurants |
There's a little-known isogloss I spent some time pinning down a few years back. The linguisitic watershed trends north across west Texas near the towns of Monahans and Pecos, loops north to circumscribe the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and then skids eastward into western Louisiana. I lost it around Shreveport, but from there it peters out on a southward line toward the Gulf of Mexico. Now inside that invisible line; scrambled eggs mixed with potatos +/- sausage +/- chorizo +/- bacon +/- chiles and wrapped in a flour tortilla is called a breakfast taco. West and north of that line (east? who knows), the exact same fare is known as a breakfast burrito. I bring you greetings from the geographic center of what I call "the breakfast taco belt." It's also the heart of Tex-Mex country.
I'll get a shameful secret off my chest right up front: I ate my first Mexican food (a burrito) in Indianapolis, Indiana, in a long-since defunct chain named "Gringos." I remember thinking, "Hey! this ain't half bad!"
I've come a long way, baby!
Since that day, I've consumed thousands of portions of Cal-Mex, NewMex-Mex, Tex-Mex, and real honest-to-goodness Mexican in five different Estados Mexicanos. I've spent three years living in Arizona, one in Wyoming, and twelve in Denver (with brief stints in Oklahoma and Louisiana).
I had lunch with a long-time friend last week while I was in Dallas. My friend, although born in the same hospital in Indiana as I (lo, these many years ago), has lived in Texas for the last four decades less the three years we spent together in grad school in Arizona. Walt confessed to me that he used to consider Tex-Mex the be-all and the end-all of Mexican food, but he's changed his mind of late. Seems he's been spending a lot of time in New Mexico on business! Nowadays I live in Texas, too. And I'm here to tell you, Tex-Mex still needs some work. Wait! before you drop straight to that "Not Helpful" button, as Ricky Ricardo would say, "Lemme 'splain!" my rationale:
Queso Makes Me Queasy: or Five Dishes where Tex-Mex Went Wrong
Queso may be the quintessence of the Tex-Mex cuisine -- a greasy agglomeration of Velveeta cheese melted with a can of Ro-Tel tomatos with "chilies" (I'll get to that later). High-falutin' restaurants improve on the recipe by using some sort of watery cheddar, but those few are cancelled out easily by the millions of cardboard bins of "nachos" sold with a yellowish dollop of better-living-through-chemistry ladled on the top of a pile of stale taco chips. Ugh! Even worse are the home-made versions that involve not the Rotel, but instead a can of Hormel Chili (no beans, of course). It's your cardiologist's dream boat in a bowl!
Beware of hot salsa. No, not salsa picante, salsa caliente. There's a story (apochryphal, I'm sure) of the college kids who stopped at a border-town restaurant for lunch. One wanted some salsa for his meal, but couldn't remember the right Spanish word -- he asked for salsa de tomate caliente and the waitress brought him ketchup -- fresh from the microwave. Well, not long ago, I had lunch at a restaurant in a town near Austin, and they brought warmed salsa: water, tomato puree, and chopped onions. Maybe there was some cilantro, but there wasn't anything picante about it at all - just caliente.
Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. Much of Texas cuisine in general is about meat (see also BBQ), and Tex-Mex is not an exception. Anything vegetable is usually on the side, so you can readily scrape it off the plate if you find such greenery offensive. It's a little scary to be offered the option of chile con carne as a sauce on a "vegetarian" enchilada.
What's with the Squeeze Parkay? I've never before seen a restaurant put squeeze bottles of liquid margarine on the table -- patrons eat their tortilla chips with a squirt of margarine and a shake of salt (guess the warmed salsa's too hot). Some braver patrons eat their chips with a fifty-fifty mix of margarine and salsa. Talk about clogging your arteries! I first saw this in East Texas, though I don't think it's all that common anywhere else.
Green salsa should be chile verde! Tex-Mex green chile comes in two versions: tomatillo salsa, a sort of sour-tasting concoction that's about as picante as your average oatmeal, and "Hatch" salsa, which is mashed, roasted green chiles (and rarely very hot).
I Agree! or Four Things Tex-Mex Gets Right
Making a virtue out of poverty and doing it right. Poor folk can only afford the cheapest cuts of meat, which are dreadfully tough. Some enterprising soul hit on marinating the meat in lime juice with a little salt, and then cutting it into strips, broiling them, and serving them with tortillas and garnish. Fajitas were born! The name comes from the Spanish faja, "belt" or "girdle," and refers to the flank cut of meat from which they're usually made. Author's note: since fajita means "little belt," the concept of a shrimp fajita is a bit strange...
You say tamale, I say tamale. Everybody says tamale! The cornmeal/meat concoctions wrapped in corn husks are sublime, and they're done well here. It's a Texas tradition to have tamales on Christmas, partially because making your own is such a family activity. The local Central Market sells tamales with all manner of fillings, and they freeze well. Just don't buy any of those plastic-wrapped ones from your local 7-11; it's too hard to tell where the wrapping leaves off and the tamale begins.
How do you spell barbacoa? Also known as "Mexican Barbecue," it's shredded pork or beef that's been marinated in its own juices for hours on end. Too often it's heavily laden with chili powder and additional salt, but that's a matter of taste, I guess.
Sopa de Tortilla, por favor! A mainstay in most Tex-Mex restaurants, a well-made tortilla soup is sublime: slightly piquant broth with a little meat (generally chicken) and flakes of cilantro floating in it and a pile of things to add on the accompanying plate. Pencil-thin strips of crisp tortilla, slivers of jalapen~o [sorry, can't get the tilde over the 'N'], minced onion, shredded cheese, maybe some avocado strips and a little lettuce. I think I'll go home now and have a bowl!
Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be: They're Called Tex-Mex, but they're not!
Huevos rancheros, chiles rellenos, tacos, enchiladas, migas (they're called chilaquiles everywhere else), sopaipillas, burritos, the list goes on...
What's Missing Here? Five Things Tex-Mex Restaurants Almost Never Serve, but Should!
Real chile verde. Green pork chile, made from roasted jalapen~os and pork spare ribs, cooked for hours with onions and a few tomatoes, then thickened with flour. It's a meal in itself when served with some sour cream, shredded cheese, and flour tortillas. Or you can cook more peppers, and add some potatos and carrots for a green pork chile stew (Pojoaque stew). Sublime! example of Santa
Fe-style cooking.
Where's my posole? We had a get-together with some friends over the holidays. One friend-of-a-friend was a Mexican-American from San Antonio; he'd never heard of posole... This hearty soup combines beef or pork chunks and hominy (I don't know, about forty?) in a spicy, thickened broth. It's much the same as menudo, but without the icky-looking tripe. You'll get garnishes, too -- lettuce, cheese, chopped onion... Never mind that tortilla soup, bring me my posole!
I'd faint for flan! Got any idea how hard it is to find flan in this town? The custard with caramelized sugar coating is a perfect ending to a spicy meal -- the sugar content kills all the heat from the capsaicin in your meal, but leaves the taste of the peppers there. Just can't find it, though... Especially in North Texas, your dessert just might be soft-serve ice cream -- ask a Texan about a two-ice-cream-cone meal sometime.
How 'bout a chimichanga? This Arizona-Sonoran dish is a burrito (soft flour tortilla) briefly deep-fried to make the tortilla crispy but not long enough that everything gets greasy. Good stuff!
Veggies. I'm not a vegematic, as my friend Robert calls himself, but I also don't voluntarily consume mass quantities of meat -- red, white, or blue. My favorite restaurant in Tucson, Arizona was a joint called Araneta's Mexico Inn. They served a burrito there that was incredible -- it had the requisite meat (chicken, IIRC) and beans, but there was also lettuce! and radishes! and cheese! wrapped up in there! I don't honestly think I've ever seen a radish in a Tex-Mex restaurant.
Before I Leave: A parting Salvo on the i Before e Question
1) Chili with an 'i' is a meat soup. Many Yankees have been ridden out of town on a rail for suggesting that it have anything vegetable in it except for small amounts of onion, tomato and chili powder. For safety's sake, I won't even say the 'b' word!
2) Chile with an 'e' is a fruit (yes fruit -- it has seeds inside it). A dish made of roasted chiles, with or without meat, is also known as chile in much of the southwest (New Mexico, Arizona, So-Cal). It's also a country shaped vaguely like the fruit that bears its name.
3) Chili powder is ground up dried chiles mixed with large amounts of salt, some coriander, a little cumin, and turmeric.
Any questions?
So, next time you find yourself hungry for something spicy, look elsewhere on the menu at your favorite Mexican restaurant, and try a non-Tex-Mex dish or two. Or, better yet, drive past that restaurant that advertises itself as "Tex-Mex" and try a new place [in Austin, by the way, I'd suggest El Rey -- Sonoran cooking; at CapTex and south Lamar in Brodie Oaks]. Your taste buds just might dance for joy, especially if they have flan!
Recommended:
Yes
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