S/D: Mexican food in the southwestern U.S.

My experience is very inexact because I don't eat meat, though. I miss the lovely thin tortillas (usually made with lard, oops) and I miss green corn tamale season most of all.

I had no idea this was an arizonaism until I moved away.

http://www.foodmuseum.com/images/navajo%20taco.jpg

yeah, the spices in both cuisines are ruddy-tasting (that's the best way i can describe it), like if burnt-sienna had a flavor. earthy, but not in a vegetal way. also, the amount of heat is similar.

but this thread isn't about mexican food from mexico. and this thread IS about places in the southwest where certain styles of americanized mexican food predominate.

Then I think you might have pegged California wrong then... No worries!

Then again.

i hardly ever drink non-diet soda though.

Man, so what is the story of Sonoran style food, aside from the "Sonoran hot dog," which I am currently quite scared of?

The Sonoran hot dog, found in Tucson, Metro Phoenix, and in neighboring Sonora, Mexico, is a hot dog grilled in a processor or on a griddle, wrapped in Mesquite-smoked bacon, topped with freshly chopped tomatoes, onions, shredded yellow or cotijo cheese, tomatillo salsa or red chili sauce, pinto beans, mayonnaise, ketchup and/or mustard, and served on bread. Often served with a fresh-roasted chili. Douglas, Arizona is known for the hot dog speciality with hot dog trucks lining many of the city's parks, the most famous being Rico's Hot Dogs who have claimed the 10th Street Park as their domain[1]

damn...you could leave the hot dog out of this and nobody would ever notice.

OH man this is a thread for me

i don't know if it's exclusively a sonoran mexican thing as much as it is just norteno mexican food in general, but flour tortillas are way more common than corn. always always fresh too, and sit-down restaurants often make them in-house. and you can get nopalitos (cactus). and the closer you get to san diego, the more likely you are to see carne asada fries on a menu, which is what i will order as my last meal when i go to prison.

Yeah, I saw these on my last trip out to Bisbee (trucks were grilling them up in Nogales). Reminds me a lot of the bacon-wrapped dogs you find in downtown LA.

the ILLEGAL bacon-wrapped hot dogs?

Jonathan Gold vs. Rick Bayless Mexican Food knife fight

Gold launched into a critique of whom he said many people call America's greatest Mexican chef: Rick Bayless.

Gold said Bayless was a "good" chef who knew his way around Mexican recipes, but he sneered at Bayless' nerve in coming to Los Angeles and opening a restaurant--Red O--that presumed to introduce Angelinos to "authentic" Mexican cuisine. In particular, Gold zeroed in on Bayless' inclusion of chilpachole--a glorious seafood soup from Veracruz--as some rarity, when Gold said the soup was easily available in the Southland, along with dozens of other Mexican regional specialties. Very true: I saw Red O's menu, and you can purchase nearly every meal he offers somewhere in Southern California (and most of them in Orange County, even). Gold also said the decor of Red O made the restaurant seem as "if it survived a nuclear blast," much to the delight of the crowd, who snacked on Argentine- and Spanish-inspired appetizers offered by the ever-flexible, ever-impressive Marché Moderne team.

The food god went on to extol the virtues of Southern California's own homegrown Mexican cuisine--the burritos with no real provenance to Mexico, yet wholly wabby, the baked nachos, the tacos. Gold mentioned a burrito place, whose name I can no longer remember because I was on my fourth glass of Cabernet, but made the note the restaurant was essentially a fraud: the woman who had run it for decades wasn't the woman in the restaurant's name, and there was no first location even though this particular place advertised itself as the second location. Was it Lucy's #2? Linda's? Licha's?

Ah, who cares? Gold's point was well-taken: nothing funnier on Earth than outsiders trying to lecture Mexis on what constitutes authentic and real. I like Bayless, and he is a seminal figure in the history of Mexican food in the United States, but nothing better than seeing the king of all food critics take down a giant.

Bayless replies in the comments and the sparks fly...

god bless j. gold

Street Gourmet LA visits Bayless' Red O and is underwhelmed

(n.b. I don't mind Bayless too much, but damn he can be a tremendous tool. His anti-LA stance is grating and I can't stand his missionary stance on how street food needs to be uplifted to gourmet status to be taken seriously.)

Rick Bayless is the worst. lol. he's like the Weird Al of mexican food.

except not funny.

bayless' chicago restaurants are exceptional but it's a poor fight to pick and red o sounds like a a clusterfuck. it's weird b/c his other places are very friendly and red o sounds like it's being run like a bad nightclub.