Pueblo Colorado Mexican Food (Denver, Englewood: appointed, closing, restaurant)

[Sockeye]

Sunsprit wrote:"When I travel to Mexico, or visit friend's homes with native cooks from Mexico, I see chili as a soupy stock with lots of huge chunks of pork shoulder and big pieces of peppers (hot and mild, all freshly seared and skinned before going into the pot). Made to be eaten as a dish by itself with tortillas on the side, it's a boiled dish. The "green" chili that starts with a roux and fries the meat and green chilies and comes out thick and green ... that's made to be a "sauce", sparely applied to a burrito or similar item ... and not on top, but inside, along with the filling. And, no way is there beans in chili."

My green chile uses a roux-sparingly. It gives the chile a nutty taste thats tough to beat. It is also the main dish. The pork shoulder I use slow roasts all day and is then thickly sliced, and the juice is added to the mix. All I throw in to cool the roux down are chopped onions. The chiles have already been flame roasted.
We digress here-let's get back to McGow's sumptuous topic of Pueblo's Mexican food!!

[McGowdog]

Thank you very much Sockeye, but tell me you don't put onions in your Green!

[Sockeye]

Originally Posted by McGowdog

Thank you very much Sockeye, but tell me you don't put onions in your Green!

Not many, maybe a half cup sweet Vidalias per gallon of chile. Why? I likes 'em!!

[McGowdog]

I know. I suppose if you chop them up really small and get them crispy. I like using the garlic for sure. But I've been told by a number of folks out here that the onions don't mix with the Pueblo chile too well. That's what many of us would use here to make Green.

The Pueblo Chile grown here looks like an Anaheim, but it's usually a good bit hotter. Not always. But if you have long strings of onions in your green, it just sort of gets soggy and has the texture of snot.

[suzco]

Originally Posted by sunsprit

Wow ... I stumbled across this thread, and the OP's ravings about how good some of the ... IMO ... worst excuses for institutionalized garbage masquerading as "mexican" food being served in Pueblo. Mi Ranchito, tres Magaritas ... big portions of beans, rice, and lots of goo on your platter ... bluck!

If all you're looking at is a crispy taco, crispy tostada, burrito, enchilada filled with ground beef, chunks of chicken, or chunks of pork, and rice and beans ... smothered with tons of gooey, gloppy, cheesy toppings, sliced lettuce ... and "chili" , or slices of beef sliced so thin it's only got one side to it and then grilled .... you're not getting Mexican food.

Call it whatever you want, enjoy it if you like ... but it's so far removed from the real gems of Mexican cooking as to compete with "chow mein" in a Chinese restaurant for authenticity and good flavors/texture/appearance. Mexican "food for the gringo taste", at best.

When I travel to Mexico, or visit friend's homes with native cooks from Mexico, ....

What we're looking at here is Pueblo Colorado Mexican Food, as the thread title says, not "the real gems of Mexican cooking." Go to Mexico for that. Pueblo has good representations of Coloradan Mexican, whether or not that's to your taste or satisfaction.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by suzco

What we're looking at here is Pueblo Colorado Mexican Food, as the thread title says, not "the real gems of Mexican cooking." Go to Mexico for that. Pueblo has good representations of Coloradan Mexican, whether or not that's to your taste or satisfaction.

So we now get to the crux of the thread ... It's not "Mexican", it's "Coloradan Mexican".

As I commented in my post, if you like it ... enjoy.

[McGowdog]

Originally Posted by sunsprit

Wow ... I stumbled across this thread, and the OP's ravings about how good some of the ... IMO ... worst excuses for institutionalized garbage masquerading as "mexican" food being served in Pueblo. Mi Ranchito, tres Magaritas ... big portions of beans, rice, and lots of goo on your platter ... bluck!

If all you're looking at is a crispy taco, crispy tostada, burrito, enchilada filled with ground beef, chunks of chicken, or chunks of pork, and rice and beans ... smothered with tons of gooey, gloppy, cheesy toppings, sliced lettuce ... and "chili" , or slices of beef sliced so thin it's only got one side to it and then grilled .... you're not getting Mexican food.

...as to compete with "chow mein" in a Chinese restaurant for authenticity and good flavors/texture/appearance. Mexican "food for the gringo taste", at best.

What I don't see is gooey, gloppy, cheesy to the point of indistinguisable like the pictures in the stryofoam box above on this thread. At least "Tex-Mex" has the honesty to call itself something different, which it is ....

So we've got gooey gloppy, non-authentic "chow Mein", "gringo taste", worst excuses for institutionalized garbage...

But how dare I accuse you of calling my favorite places slop. No, slop might be a step up.

So I'm no Mexican food expert. I'll award you that honor, Sunsprit.

Man, I actually thought I was doing a service by putting all this time and effort here. I think I like the thread better when it was sitting at the bottom of the pile with only two reads.

Vegaspilgrim will agree with you totally as well.

I give up. I'm really sick of talking about Mexican food. You guys win.

[vegaspilgrim]

Originally Posted by McGowdog

So we've got gooey gloppy, non-authentic "chow Mein", "gringo taste", worst excuses for institutionalized garbage...

But how dare I accuse you of calling my favorite places slop. No, slop might be a step up.

So I'm no Mexican food expert. I'll award you that honor, Sunsprit.

Man, I actually thought I was doing a service by putting all this time and effort here. I think I like the thread better when it was sitting at the bottom of the pile with only two reads.

Vegaspilgrim will agree with you totally as well.

I give up. I'm really sick of talking about Mexican food. You guys win.

I saw this post earlier today, I was actually just going to say with regards to sunspirit-- now here's a man who shares my tastes! There's only about 3 times when I think the "gloppy" styrofoam box Mexican food fits the bill perfectly-- when drunk, when stoned, or when insatiably hungry at 2:00am in the morning. Not that I've ever experienced either of these three states of being. I wouldn't trash Mi Ranchitos the way sunspirit did-- I actually thought it was pretty good overall. I'd give it a B+/A-. I wouldn't call Mi Ranchitos slop-- far from it. But the picture of the styrofoam plate though did make me kind of gag a little in my mind; it just doesn't look appetizing-- and that's pretty typical American Mexican fast food fare. Actually, I hate cheese so maybe I have no business eating Mexican food at all? Or at least not that kind of stuff. But one thing's for sure-- iceberg lettuce ain't food. I think even rabbits eat better greens than that. And shredded, liquidy (and often canned) chicken just ain't no way to cook a chicken. I think what has been left unspoken here is the context. Mexican food is great food to eat when you're doing physical, hard labor all day long. You NEED all those carbs and protein to fill you up and give you energy to do your job. But for people who have to sit in a chair all day long, this is exactly the wrong kind of food to eat.

[McGowdog]

Well I pulled the picture. It's not there anymore. I hope ya'll are satisfied now and I'm not going to argue Pueblo Colorado Mexican Food anymore.

I'm not happy that my thread got trashed like this either. I would never EVER do that to someone elses thread, something they put time and effort into like I did there.

I talk a little smack, but I try to do it in good fun. This isn't fun anymore.

Have a good life.

[sunsprit]

[mod cut]
The forum is here for us to exchange information ... as each of us sees it.

The original basic premise was flawed. While the restaurants cited can call themselves "Mexican", what most of the restaurants serve, for the most part, is simply not Mexican food. It's very "americanized" stuff, and it's served because it makes money for the operations ... people like it and buy it, so it's a happy marriage.

I used the example of chinese food as a comparable, because so much of what passes for "chinese" food in most restaurants has fallen into the same model ... "americanized", gooey, gloppy ... foodlike substance. The chinese laugh at us for eating it ... I grew up with friends, first generation Americans ... whose parents owned some of the "finest" chinese restaurants in town, and they never served the menu items cooked like the restaurant at home. Once having eaten their home cooking, which was simple, aromatic, etherial, and a wonderful combination of fresh flavors from many kinds of ingredients (although much from the same basic ingredients) ... you simply couldn't walk into a "chinese restaurant" again without knowing and appreciating the difference.

The same goes for me having traveled through Mexico and having eaten at the home tables of many people ... rich and poor (darn little middle class in the years I was traveling there). You'll be served a cusine which is more varied, simple, and flavorful than what passes for "coloradan mexican" food. Much more salads, fish, barbeque type meats without gooey sauces, much fresher foods. They go pretty easy on cheese toppings ... a sprinkle here and there, and I've never seen thick "green chili" poured on anything. In fact, the cookbooks I've brought home don't even mention making anything like that thick green chile; you'll see thin broth soups, dry soups, menudo, posole.

You can search out and find the places that serve the "authentic" cuisine in many towns. For example, in Salt Lake City ... there's a number of prominent "mexican" restaurants where you'll see a pleasant decor in a commercial location, well traffic'ed with lots of coats and ties, heavily advertised, and consistently voted "reader's choice" "best" in the local free alternative press. And you'll get served stuff comparable to the OP's list on this thread for a "reasonable" price, modestly spicy, salty, cheesy, gooey, and satisfyingly gloppy.

But, if you want ceviche, pork ribs, simple whole chicken dishes, turkey, fresh/simple seafood dishes, albondigas soup, good menudo, superb chili soups/stews ... all served without half the platter covered in rice and refried beans smothered with cheese and a bit of shredded iceberg lettuce ... you'll have to go into the ethnic mexican neighborhoods where the small "mom and pop" family restaurants exist. They don't have the fancy decor or storefront, the fake ambiance of a mexican beach tourist town, nor nice tableware and decorated tables. Most are very blue-collar, and the atmosphere is rather off-putting for anyone less than an adventurous eater. In reality, they're pretty tame places and the food is authentic ... you'll see a lot of "odd" meats ... tongue, brains, cheeksmeat ... good chorizo sausage (perhaps homemade), shredded meats marinated and slow cooked, and very few of the "taco" and "burrito" and "fajitas" type of menu items. I know I've hit the mother lode when I see "cabrito" on the menu, or fresh menudo every day of the week.

I've been in one of these places in Pueblo ... it's in an old plain commercial building storefront, and the kitchen is lost in the vast space of the place. It's self serve at the kitchen/order counter, it's all in spanish, and the dining space is an assortment of old patio and cast off convention center tables. If you aren't hispanic, you're most likely the only person there that isn't. Probably aren't three chairs in the place that match, and you'll be likely to bus your own table if you want a clean spot to eat when the place is busy. You'll get your own "set-up" and napkins from the counter, and serve your own beverage from the dispenser at the front table. I recall a couple of bullfight posters on the walls, an old picture of a family somewhere in dirt poor mexico, and a bunch of cerveza advertising posters ... that's the decor, along with the old paint on the walls and the very worn VCT tile on the floor. But they serve a killer shrimp cocktail, ground ceviche, and a wonderful thin broth pork soup (which some might call chili) with huge chunks of pork shoulder, slow simmered and not greasy, but fairly spicy hot. Their menudo was simply etherial, a wonderful blend of flavors and very savory. Definitely not for people who think that the "hot sauce" at Taco Bell is "spicy" ... as my friends who visit from Wisconsin or Chicago or Baltimore or Cinncinnatti think. Not crazy "hot" (much much less than thai food), but flavorful, and not salty, or cheesy/gloppy.

It is priced about 2/3 or less of what you'll pay at the more prestigious mexican restaurants in town ... oh, that touches upon another pet peeve about the restaurant industry. Two cusines stand out as the least expensive to serve: Mexican and Italian. There's a lot of profit in serving pasta, rice, and beans to fill up hungry diners at today's accepted prices. There's not a lot of food loss, not a lot of labor intensive prep, and the stuff is easy to serve. When I see a plate of three tacos going for $7.00+ on a lot of menus, I know the value isn't there in the food ....

But to each their own. If you like the places the OP mentioned, if you enjoy that stuff ... go for it. A lot of people do, which is why those places survive in business. I don't ... and I'll seek out those out of the way hole in the wall places that have the real stuff and flavor and value for my money.