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Actual Mexican food is as cheap as Taco Bell where you live? Interesting
Yes, especially when you consider the appetizer basket of chips and salsa is included in the price of the entree. Now if I order a margarita then the price goes way up, obviously.
If you want real Mexican food you go to a real Mexican restaurant, if you want faux Mexican food you go to Taco Bell,
Ironically when people say this they are often referring to the local tex-mex joint where the menu is nothing like what is served in Mexico.
Quote:
Originally Posted by southernnaturelover
Yes, especially when you consider the appetizer basket of chips and salsa is included in the price of the entree. Now if I order a margarita then the price goes way up, obviously.
Okay then walk me through this.
How much does the entree cost? Where I lived in USA a basket of chips and salsa usually comes in a sit-down restaurant where lunch specials are $7 and dinner entrees are $9-$15. Throw in a soda for $2 more, then tax, then a tip of 15-20%.
How on earth is that less than a $6 Taco Bell combo meal that includes the drink? You entree would have to cost less than $3.
Taco Bell is junk. Google the quality of the meat they use. They survive because people are lazy to make their own or too cheap to dine at an authentic, sit down Mexican restaurant.
I love Taco Bell. It's super cheap, and I can get vegan options. You can get whole beans, instead of refried beans. It's healthy fast food, if you don't glom a bunch of sour cream, etc., on them or get the fried stuff. I can get two bean burritos fresco (no cheese, added veggies) for around $3.00. Do the drive-through, have my own water in the truck.
It's just really nice to have a cheap, fast food option that is actually healthy and vegan. No wonder they're doing great.
The best chain taco/tex mex place I have ever eaten at is Taco Cabana. They use REAL ingredients that are cooked to order, too, but they only have them here in Texas.
Taco Bell is junk. Google the quality of the meat they use. They survive because people are lazy to make their own or too cheap to dine at an authentic, sit down Mexican restaurant.
The sad part is that for what you pay for a combo or for enough food to at least get you HALFWAY full at Taco Bell, you can actually go to a sit down Mexican restaurant that uses fresh, real ingredients.
It's a part of American mythology that all of these mom and pop restaurants have such great food that is somehow more wholesome and more "authentic". A few do, most don't. That wonderful meatloaf you bought quite likely was delivered to them frozen on a SYSCO truck.
It really comes down to competition in most cases. 'Mom n Pop' is usually just a term used in contrast with 'corporate chain', and for the most part, the best restaurants in any given city are not part of a corporate chain.
However, a greasy spoon in the middle of nowhere can serve up any slop because the locals really have no choice (unless Applebees's opens up and then the locals swear up and down that Applebee's is the paragon of haute cuisine, sadly enough). But if a Mom n Pop tries to serve Sysco forzen meatloaf in my neighborhood which has 20-30 independently owned Mom n Pops, they'd die a quick death.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lieqiang
Ironically when people say this they are often referring to the local tex-mex joint where the menu is nothing like what is served in Mexico.
The menu in Sonora is nothing like the menu in Oaxaca. The menu in Quintana Roo is nothing like the menu in Jalisco. Tex-Mex has more in common with the adjacent "authentic" cuisine in northern Mexico than northern Mexican cuisine has with other parts of Mexico.
If you consider the paradigm of "Mexican cuisine" as a heterogenous food culture arising from the use
and combination of typical food ingredients and source cultures of the region, which includes Spaniards, Native Americans, Lebanese, Anglo-Americans, and the French, as opposed to the cuisines strictly contained within a set of arbitrary borders resulting from competing statecrafts, then Tex-Mex is absolutley related to Mexican cuisine as a whole.
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Taco Bell is 'America's favorite Mexican restaurant'
