Mexican Food

I hate Mexican food.

No, that is a lie.  I really like Mexican food.  But I hate it.  Hmm, lemme 'splain...

I am originally from Texas.  Specifically, the part of Texas with the purple X over it in this picture.

Being from Texas I assumed I had eaten a TON of Mexican food in my life when, in fact, I had eaten a TON of Tex-Mex food.  There are pretty dramatic differences between the two but because people who own restaurants in Texas are jackasses (okay, not all of them, but some) they name their restaurant So-And-So's Mexican Restaurant and then serve Tex-Mex food so that little white girls who go out to eat with their families assume that people in Mexico eat lots of deep fried foods covered in molten cheese.

When I moved to New York I found a lot of Mexican restaurants and thought, "Awesome!"  Then I tried to eat at these places and they served me foods I was unfamiliar with, like soft corn tortillas filled with vegetables and small amounts of meat.  No cheese.  No sour cream.  And when I say I want salsa I mean this:

Notice that this is a liquid.  It is full of deliciousness that has been blended and pulverized beyond recognition into a sauce-like substance.

Apparently in Mexico salsa is this:

Notice that this is a solid foodstuff.  It is more like a tomato-onion-cilantro salad than a sauce.  I have always known this to be called Pico De Gallo (pronounced Peeko-De-Guy-o) and I don't like it.  As far as I am concerned uncooked onions and tomatoes should not be considered edible food much the same way that we consider harvested grains that haven't been processed not to be edible foods.  Unfortunately not everyone agrees with my ideas of what things should be and this stuff shows up on my food every time I order tacos in New York.

When I got here and went out for Mexican food the first couple of times I just thought that maybe people in NYC didn't understand true Mexican food, as though people from Mexico got across the border into Texas and stopped going when they hit the Dallas area or something.  They didn't understand that all of these uncooked vegetables and the lack of dairy was obviously a gross error on their part.  I even asked one of the restaurant's owners about it once and he advised me that he was born and raised in Mexico and he had never heard of a sopapilla and that most people in Mexico don't eat much cheese.

Now, the food I've eaten in NY that calls itself Mexican food is tasty, I'm not going to lie.  But my expectations are always set for Tex-Mex when I go for Mexican and then they give me my tacos and I am sad about my lunch when I see that it is authentic Mexican food.  Then I get about 5 or 6 bites in and realize it is pretty dang good and I shouldn't be sad anymore but the first few bites are always filled with sadness.  I feel like I have been misled by the restaurant.  It is kind of like if my husband called me at work and said, "Sweetheart, when you get home from work I am going to rock your world so hard you will temporarily go blind" but when I got home he said we would just sit on the couch holding hands and watch Under The Tuscan Sun.  I would love to hold hands with my husband and watch an adorable movie but not when my system is all geared towards sweet, sweet lovin', you know?  That is how I feel about Mexican food in NYC.