What is Mexican Food?

What is Mexican food?  I am no longer so sure of the answer.  I know that when I am in Mexico, I am eating Mexican food.  When I lived in New Mexico, I ate New Mexican food.  But what is the food that I am eating in New York?  Many of the restaurants aren’t even owned by Mexicans.  Take, for example, Metro Taco.  This restaurant is in Forest Hills, and it is owned by a person who grew up in Forest Hills and only had a few trips, at most, to Mexico.  He grew up enjoying Mexican food, and he established a restaurant in Forest Hills called Metro Taco. He felt that this part of Forest Hills was lacking a good Mexican restaurant.

Maybe it is my mistake to think that I was eating at a Mexican restaurant.  It specialized in tacos, but I’m not sure that these tacos were Mexican. Although the restaurant had good food, and it also catered to vegetarians and vegans, I did not think of it as being an authentic Mexican restaurant. Only one of the cooks was from Mexico. The others were from Central America.  I believe they were from Honduras and Guatemala.  One of the signature items on the menu was a Nacho Tower. I never had one before, even in Mexico or in the United States.  My wife said that it may be a specialty of Guatemala. I’m not sure that she is right. But I am used to going to a Mexican restaurant and being offered nachos with salsa. To me the salsa is the most important ingredient, as it is one of the ways that I judge a good Mexican restaurant. Metro Taco did not have any homemade salsa on the table, but it did have a bottle of Valentina Salsa Picante. 

The tacos were very good.  They were served on blue corn tortillas.  They were also very artfully presented.  They even had gluten free tacos and tacos with seitan.  For the most part, they were quite delicious. I just didn’t think that they were from Mexico.  I guess that it was New American Mexican food.  There were also papas bravas on the menu.  I may be wrong, but I thought they were from Spain.  But what do I know?  Maybe I just need an education on the new types of Mexican food.  But, to tell you the truth, I would much rather go to a small Mexican restaurant like Los Compadres on Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park where most of the people speak Spanish, the salsas are picante, and you can choose between green and red. When I finish a meal, I can tell the waitress, “panza llena (full stomach), and she will reply, “corazon contento (happy heart).”