Assail the Unassailable: 70's Mexican Food

Made by Hormel! Hell yeah. Don't forget the cheddar cheese.

In 1914, these families built their Mexican cuisine empire upon quality and trust. Their ever-expanding, loyal customer base today reflects the same values. "Hechos con amor," or "Made with love," is the HERDEZ tagline signifying the commitment that every HERDEZ®, DOÑA MARÍA® and BÚFALO® product is crafted with the highest standard of quality and the freshest ingredients delivering an authentic Mexican experience that you and your family can expect from the best.

After nearly a century, more than 5,000 people are employed at seven locations throughout the Mexican Republic, and more than 42 authentic food products are offered in the United States. HERDEZ® Salsa is the number one brand of imported salsa consumed in the United States today."

* nine times out of ten the word "authentic" will actually appear on the signage.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0006PUBVM.01-A2MDGNBFSCCZAG._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

And I'm probably going to get some beef fajitas. With peppers and onions. Yum.

The Chung King of Mexican food, thought I read in Saveur that it was actually started by a real Mexican family in the 40's. They still own it, at least part of it.

The kind of fancy-pantsed Whole Foods Mexican you get now can be pretty disappointing. If a burrito tastes mostly of plain black beans and brown rice, it's not really "Mexican" -- it's rice and beans in a wrap.

http://www.sat.lib.tx.us/Displays/Exhibits/LatinoSports/images/trevino_bk_50.jpg http://www.moviemadnessvideo.com/library/actors/chong/photo2.jpg http://www.salih.co.uk/singers/santana.jpg

'Cause that's so much less disgusting! Bring on the lengua, vato!

x-post: Yeah. "authentic" tacos should be tiny and soft. And usually just with meat and some cilantro.

These are my favorite places in the world.

I WENT HERE LAST NIGHT

It's going to be the latest hipster revival now that lounge/tiki has been gone over eight million times.

"It's going to be the latest hipster revival now that lounge/tiki has been gone over eight million times...."

These guys were all in a Chicago math rock band two years ago.

http://www.columbuschefs.com/kahiki_night_200w.jpg

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), May 27th, 2005 1:35 PM. (spencermfi) (later)

SOOO otm

Says Ned "El Coyote" Raggett!

leave out the iceberg lettuce and i'll agree with you.

http://www.morrisseydance.com/morrissey-crying.gif

no, i like iceberg sometimes. just not in tacos.

I highly recommend this. 773-227-1688. Write it down. Better yet, memorize it.

Dig in, amigos! Que sabrosa!

Born there. Nothing I could do about it.

Sort of tangentially related: http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html

Holy shit. Fish balls!

Tempting idea, actually, but dinner tonight should be closer to Hollywood given the show. ;-)

classic i think!

Oh, god, is there anybody else here old enough and living in the right place to remember Juan's Little Tijuana in Long Beach? CLASSIC X1000.

I Xerox the taquitos love.

Pancho's Mexican Buffet in Austin in the late 70s and early 80s was fantastic. You ran a little mexican flag up a flagpole to alert your waiter that more sopapillas or chips and salsa were required.

haaaaaaaa i love it!

'70s Mex still available at Little Tijuana's in Mpls. Matos and I went there for Christmas night ESCAPE!!! dinner.

Somebody has to post the Tres Hombres gatefold

Pancho's in San Antonio was the same setup, and same crappy food, in the mid 90s even. I don't live there anymore, but I think it's now closed. We used to go because lol college, ooh it's a buffet of MEXICAN food (never mind that there are really good Mexican buffets in SA, e.g. Las Palapas on Tuesday/Wednesday nights).

What I can't get over is the extent to which 70s Mexican salsa is still what there is largely at the grocery store...and I'm even thinking of places like SA, not just lol Kansas.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/164/392163124_3f900fc921.jpg?v=0

Euler?

San Antonio?

Did you used to post to the KFM boards about Shaolin Do?

that doesn't look especially 70s Mexican to me, though, at least not 70s Mexican as in the spirit of this thread. That looks like what you can get today at e.g. Las Palapas.

no, that's not me on KFM boards.

ok. Just a funky coinkydinky, I guess.

The album is from '73, right? Looks damn good to me!

Yeah it looks awesome, unlike the "unassailable" Ortega / Old El Paso stuff the thread is about.

Why is it 1970's, though? Mexican food in California, at least, was predominantly that Northern Mexican style food for ages.

Euler, that couldn't be more '70s Mex, unless there were some of these in the photo too:

http://www.guildcraftinc.com/images/products/full/620-103%20Gods%20Eye.jpg

This is making me want to go back to Wahaca, London's only decent Mexican restaurant, but I went there on Sunday. Suddenly there are also TONS of burrito places here - good ones. Wahaca looks like this:

http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/upload/venuegalleries/img_Wahaca2_WC2N4HG_300.jpghttp://www.andyhayler.com/images/restaurants/wahaca%20tostados%20228.JPG

Michael, you're right; I think what's being called "70s Mexican food" here is the low quality prefab stuff. So in places like California or south Texas, this category doesn't make as much sense.

my mom loves those crunch Old El Paso shells so I get to relive the 70s Mexican thing once a year, and for old time's sake it's pretty good.

I bet the food is really good, but Wahaca looks kind of depressing from that picture

Dude, Pancho's! I used to work at a Pancho's in probably 1990, when I lived in the Houston suburbs. I loved their food at the time, and actually got fired for smuggling handfuls of flautas into the kitchen and eating them with the cooks and dishwashers.

I moved away and years later, while living in Phoenix, I saw a freakin' Pancho's while driving with a friend and I was like, "Pull over." Needless to say it was not nearly as good as I remembered it as a kid (especially after sampling some of Phoenix's awesome taquerias), and it also gave me the runs and heartburn afterward. :(

> smuggling handfuls of flautas into the kitchen

INTO? Where did they originate?

I don't know, man.. they just sort of... appeared in those food tubs!

'70s Mex still available at Little Tijuana's in Mpls. Matos and I went there for Christmas night ESCAPE!!! dinner.

-- suzy, Friday, March 14, 2008 12:53 PM (19 minutes ago)

ha i'm always sort of disappointed when i get cul-de-sac mexican somewhere and i don't have 18 y/o girls with a lot of tattoos serving it

Food from 70s stale by now so dud.

I miss andy -- what happened??!

Lookout folded. Was anyone a fan of his band?

first mexican restaurant i went to was in greenwich village, probably early 80s, on christopher or w 4th, can't remember. it was just as described in first post, really bad. mexican food was so shit in nyc at that time, i remember it was either lol straight outta the can places or some horrible yuppie joint like Ay Caramba.

ha I went to the same place probably -- on west 4th -- the first week I lived in the village (very early 80s) I remember really clearly cause I found a $10 bill on the sidewalk and i was hungry so I walked into the first restaurant I saw and chowed. such a greenhorn I didn't realize how shit mexican food was in nyc then.

first time I had mexican food was in texas around 1974-75, awesome esp because I was from Ohio and had never even seen an avocado etc. spent the next couple decade trying to find mexican food half that good.

lookout folding should just mean andy has MORE time to spend on ILX!

yesterday I succumbed to a longstanding curiosity about how 7-11 nachos would taste to an adult palate, 'cause I ate that stuff all the time in my late teens. Stopped at a 7-11 someplace in Massachusetts yesterday afternoon, saw the nachos, went for it.

I have now returned from the front and I implore you not to do as I have done.

> Wahaca

LOL-UK

Oaxaca, bitches!

I have now returned from the front and I implore you not to do as I have done.

Taking sides: 7-11 nachos vs movie theater nachos. I find them both completely terrifying on sight

7-11 because you have control over the "cheese." You have to actually decide to push down on the pump and put that stuff on some perfectly good chips. So 7-11 nachos are sort of a religious/moral code, whereas movie theater nachos are just a bad idea.

Hah

I heartily applaud your experimental spirit and philosophical musings in this neglected area, sir.

Curious as to how one might apply Calvinist doctrine to gooey orange/yeller cheese-stuffs + corn

I saw some '70s game show on GSN where a lady was asked to identify "frijoles," obv right after the Tex-Mex craze had started. She said, "...meat?"

My mom made these awesome tamales when I was a kid that were Lawry's taco seasoning + ground beef. She used just normal corn mush, boiled in water, for the outside, and wrapped them in tin foil and steamed them for lord knows how long. Is this how tamales were made in the '70s? I really crave them sometimes but I can only get the real ones in corn husks. :( It's like wanting a grape soda and you only have grapes in the house: two totally different beasts, craving remains.

;_; home ;_;

what's the verdict on little frozen burritos? Like the El Monterrey bean & cheese family size 8 pack I bought last night

I kind of like them, I fry them in a little canola oil, nice & crispy

We used to go to this place all the time. Of course they had the red plastic water cups and of course they had sopapillas for dessert.

https://www.colfaxavenue.org/2012/06/ramons-mexican-food.html

Incidentally, they were next door to "Dino's Italian Restaurant," a fixture for 58 years.

I grew up right around the corner from Ramon’s! Related: my folks just went to the newly reopened Casa Bonita and said the food is now actually edible.

Amazing! I lived for about five years near the intersection of Garrison and Mississippi before we moved to Castle Rock, so Ramon's was pretty local for us also.

I have fond memories of Casa Bonita, or at least the cliff divers. I have no recollection of the food.

Enjoying a frozen bean & cheese burrito today: CLASSIC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJY59WBqwlM