“Did you see that? He jumped the line and took our table!” I incredulously ask Cecilia, one of my closest friends and fellow foodie.
Celia moved forward to talk to him. “Excuse me, sir, but do you need the entire table? We’re a big group.” she asked politely, to which he flippantly replied, “Yeah, I’m getting married tomorrow and I have a family, who flew in from Oklahoma and Michigan.”
At this point, I could feel people were starting to get entertained by the exchange, and I couldn’t help but say, “Well, we flew all the way from Dubai and I was standing ahead of you in the line!”
We had decided to take a mini break from the hustle and bustle of our New York schedule and visit our close friends, the Ayoubs in sunny-friendly California. Cecilia and I share a common love for good food and a dream to one day serve authentic Mexican cuisine. So a visit to The Taco Stand the night we arrived seemed appropriate. It was also very important for me to understand the huge difference between Mexican food and its Tex-Mex variation.
It was a simple place, with one large table that everyone seemed to be fighting over and a seating area that was made up of a few high tables by the window with stools. We were greeted by a smiley cashier, a mouth-watering menu on a corrugated metal sheet painted in white hanging above him, and three cooks in white t-shirts with ‘100% Mexican grill’ written on the back (almost like we needed a reminder of the authenticity of the food).
I’d never been to Mexico, but at that moment with the sounds of the kitchen and the aroma of the spices I felt transported there. After cranking our heads up for a few minutes surveying the menu and asking questions like “what was carne and asada again? And was “pollo chicken and camaron shrimp?” Matt, in our group, took charge and ordered a selection of carne asada (grilled beef) tacos, fish tacos, chicken (pollo) quesadillas, which is made up of two tortillas with filling, toasted on the fire until crispy and then cut into triangles, shrimp (camaron) burritos, which is a rolled tortilla sandwich and tortilla chips with freshly made guacamole.
Since we were not going to get our table back, we chose to sit at the long bar facing the cooks, with only a small barrier-like window separating us from the action. It was a prime location, in my opinion, as I watched one of them roll out perfectly flat and round tortillas, from a machine that looked very similar to a pasta maker, and then throw the pancake-like tortillas on the hot griddle to cook. Next to the machine was a bowl full of light yellowish dough and whenever the machine got messy and jammed with dough, the cook would expertly reload it and reroll.
Cecilia, who is from Chihuahua, explained that in Mexico tacos were comprised of soft tortillas, where the dough was made from roasted corn flour and water and they were filled with either shredded beef, pork, chicken, fish or seafood. It is also this specific recipe that was the base for the burritos and quesadillas. The hard shell that I grew up eating and loved filled with ground beef and refried beans was considered more of a Tex-Mex creation with more American than Mexican influences. I also discovered that the burritos in the US were packed with a lot more ingredients like rice and beans than the Mexican version of it, which mainly included the protein, lettuce and salsa. In Mexico, they take pride in their endless array of salsas made to order from the freshest of ingredients; it’s also the crowning glory of their cuisine.
So when our bright and colourful dishes were ready for pick up from the cashier, we carried them over to the salsa buffet. There was a roasted habanero salsa, red in colour and the spiciest of all Mexican peppers; the mildest would have to be the Poblano followed by the Jalapeno, both are green in colour, the chipotle (my favourite), which is a smoked Jalapeno, then the serrano, which starts off green in colour but ripens to an orange, yellow or brown. There was also a milder tomato salsa made from fresh tomatoes, cilantro, onions and jalapeno peppers (a tomatillo salsa from small roasted green tomatoes called tomatillos lent it a smoky palate and added another dimension to our dishes) and finally a squirt of lime and a creamy salsa akin to a tartar for our fish and seafood tacos and burritos. All it took was a few bites from our scrumptious Mexican smorgasbord and we forgot about the skirmish over the table. We needed our energy to savour and digest!
By Lana Nasser | Instagram: @l4n4n
