By the way, if you want really “authentic” Mexican food in Austin, while La Fonda San Miguel has the classics, to eat like you’re really in Mexico you go to the taquerias (usually with names from the states of Jalisco and Michoacan), and especially (if you want an experience where you almost need a passport and a tourist permit) go to the supermarkets: La Moreliana, La Hacienda, and, best of all, La Michoacana. That’s where the GOOD stuff is…it’s like being in the market in Jacona, Michoacan…guisos, huaraches, chiles rellenos…todo sabrosisimo, güey!

I have tried hard to stay on the wagon–but every now and then I backslide and take a drink of that good old Tex-Mex apologist Kool-Aid!

Thanks as always for keeping me honest.

Watch for a tribute to Velveeta coming soon to this blog!!

I could understand if you were complaining about the gringo-ized remakes of Mexican classics that you find in a place like Topolobampo, where upscale ingredients, such as foie gras or lobster or kobe beef, are added to dishes to make them more “sophisticated” in order to justify their high prices, but in reality, those items just create something incoherent. That I would get.

I would also understand if you were complaining that too many Mex-Mex restaurants in the United States (not that there are a lot of them) just give a “best of” menu of well-known Mexican dishes: mole poblano, ceviche, chiles en nogada, cochinita pibil, and the like, whether they’re good renditions, or (all-too-often) not.

But instead, you just trash tradition. Somehow a mole poblano, something you can find made every day in Puebla, is tired but a carnitas taco isn’t? Chiles en nogada, a September festival dish, seasonally appropriate both because that’s when pomegranates are ripe and because that’s when Mexican independence day is, is tired, but nachos aren’t? Really?

As if to emphasize my point rather than to make your own…. To show how tired a ballet folklorico is, you don’t counter with Mana or Los Lonely Boys, but Freddy Fender? Huey, I have a couple of Freddy Fender albums, Texas Tornados, and Los Super Seven, but I’d never try to convince myself that Fender is “current”. You just come across provincial — as someone who likes his era’s “stuff” but is unaware of what came after and thinks what came before is old-fashioned.

You have my sympathies when you defend Tex-Mex or call on people to stop thinking of Tex-Mex as a “lesser” cuisine (and call on people to cook with better ingredients where appropriate), but you’re not even making that point well here.