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>>Presenter: Hi everyone, I’m Catherine Eng and I’m on the Authors at Google team
here at Google Los Angeles. It’s my pleasure, today, to welcome Gustavo Arellano to our
campus today to talk about his new book “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.”
Gustavo is the editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, and
he’s the author of “Orange County: A Personal History”, a frequent commentator for L.A.
Times and Marketplace, a lecturer with the Chicana and Chicano Studies department at
Cal-State Fullerton. Gustavo also writes the very popular and nationally syndicated column
“Ask a Mexican” in which he answers any and all questions about America’s spiciest
and largest minority. This award winning column has a circulation of over 2 million in 39
newspapers across the U.S. and was published in book form in May of 2007. Gustavo is a
long, lifelong resident of Orange County and is a proud son of two Mexican immigrants,
one of whom was illegal. Please help me welcome Gustavo Arellano.
[Applause]
>>Gustavo Arellano: Thank you, thank you.
>>Michael Brown: Thank you. I would first like to thank you for all the contributions
you’ve made to the understanding of the Mexican culture and, you know, the format
that you’ve put it in is just really unique and special.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Thank you, I appreciate it.
>>Michael Brown: Thank you. One of the first questions we have is why are so many Mexican
foods like chili and salsa and tacos, of course, been turned into a national and international
money maker and yet, from an outsiders view, not a lot of that money is being filtered
back into Mexico? What are your thoughts on that?
>>Gustavo Arellano: What, the book, “Taco USA” I address that. There’s this misconception
that it’s only rapacious Americans who are making all this money on Mexican food or Mexican
food stuffs like Tequila, like hot sauce, tortillas, Fritos, Doritos and all these different
things, but that’s not necessarily true. What happens is, when it comes to food or
the production of food, it’s a business and business is capitalism and capitalism
is rapacious, so in the book you have everyone ripping everyone off. Mexicans ripping off
Mexicans, Americans ripping off Mexicans, Mexicans ripping off Americans, Koreans coming
in and ripping off Mexicans, Mexicans coming in and ripping off Koreans and when I first
started doing this book, part of me, you know, you have that sort of jingoistic thing like
no person other than a Mexican can make Mexican food, everything else is fake. But that’s
not the case, food is food is food. I think what matters, ultimately, is the foods good,
after that, I mean, you cannot ding someone for ripping someone else off. I mean, they’ll
get theirs in the afterlife but [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: here in the terrestrial world, they would do it too. One example I
had was Taco Bell. We all know what Taco Bell is, of course. They got, Glen Bell, the founder
of Taco Bell, he got his idea for making these tacos from a restaurant in San Bernardino
that still exists, Mitla Café, it’s on the corner Mount Vernon and Sixth Street,
now celebrating, in San Bernardino, celebrating its 75th anniversary. So that kind of sucks,
okay, that’s fine, but then at the same time I also interviewed the founder of El
Torito, Larry Cano, who is a Mexican guy and he admitted to me his business strategy was
he would tell his trusted employees, “Okay, you’re gonna find Mexican restaurants around
the United States that are popular, you’re gonna get a job at those restaurants, you’re
gonna work there for a month, you’re gonna steal all their secrets, then you’re gonna
get fired and then you’re gonna come back to me and we’re gonna rip em’ off. So,
you know, it goes both ways. [Laughs]
>>Michael Brown: Nice. That’s great. Also, in “Taco USA” you talk about the history
of Mexican food in the United States and its evolution. Everywhere from the TamaleMan to
the Chili Queens to Taco Bell and Tex-Mex food that you were saying, what are your thoughts
on authentic, on authenticity and how people really kind of portray that theirs is authentic
and yet they’re doing it here in the United States so how authentic could it be?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Exactly. When it comes to food there’s always going to be that
question of authenticity. What is authentic, what isn’t? And the funny thing is, most
people, they really do care about that question and they’re incredibly passionate about
it. I was one of those people, again, before I started doing this book I was one of those
people that there’s real Mexican food and then there’s fake Mexican food. But as I
started doing the research for the book, doing the research for the book took me about two
years, well, a lifetime of eating Mexican food with two years of actual intense research
via eating Mexican food all across United States. It quickly dawned on me that people’s
idea of what, quote unquote, Mexican food is, is completely different, yet at the same
time everyone assumed that their Mexican food was not only the authentic version but the
version that everyone else ate. I’ll give you an example, I travel a lot to Denver,
Denver’s one of my favorite cities to travel, it’s just a great atmosphere. So, over there,
the Mexican food is absolutely crazy. Chile Rellenos which we all know what they are,
here in Southern California they’re stuffed chilies with cheese and you fry them in egg
batter and voilà, there you have it. In Denver, you have that but instead of white cheese
it’s yellow cheese, instead of like the big Anaheim Chilies that we use they’re
smaller squatter chilies from Southern Colorado. They put the egg batter, sure, but then on
top of that they wrap it in won ton skin then fry it and there’s your chile relleno. That’s
one dish. A much crazier dish is something called the Mexican hamburger. A Mexican hamburger
is a burrito of beans and chicharrones, pork rinds, with a hamburger patty right in the
middle. Then they serve it to you on a dish and they cover it in chili, in chili gravy.
And there, we would call it a wet burrito, over there they call it a smothered burrito
and it’s covered in this chili gravy that is orange, bright, bright orange, for the
Broncos, they love the Broncos so much. [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: It is an amazing dish. It is an absolutely amazing dish, yet it exists
nowhere else in the United States. So, when I first found out about the Mexican hamburger,
I asked, “What’s a Mexican hamburger?” They would look at me. “You mean you don’t
have them in Southern California?” I’m like, “No, guys. You guys only have it in
Denver.” And then they got really sad about that. They’re like, “Oh, we thought everyone
knew what a Mexican hamburger was.” So you go all across the United States and everyone
has this idea of what’s authentic and what’s not. So, ultimately, we’re reduced to having
to acknowledge that there is no such thing as authentic Mexican food. It’s authentic
if you say it’s authentic but really it’s not authentic. It’s like this existential
morass that we should never really get out of, right? Similarly, what matter is, is the
food good? And if it’s good, good for you, and the great thing, though, about, all this
said, that question of authenticity is what’s driven American consumption of Mexican food.
There’s always been, in the mind of Americans, they’ve always known that the Mexican food
in front of them, that it’s great, but there’s better Mexican food somewhere down the path.
That’s been the course of Mexican food in this country for over 125 years starting with
tamales, going with what we know now as just chili in a can, it used to be called Chili
Con Carne, going through Taco Bell, at one point people thought Taco Bell was quote unquote,
authentic food, or the most authentic food you could find. And, of course, every decade
there’s a new Mexican food stuff that comes in to be the new authentic Mexican food. In
the '80s it was fajitas, now fajitas are as American as Doritos.
>>Michael Brown: Absolutely. And, you know, I’ve noticed in a lot, you know, of the
Carl's Junior commercials and some of the brands that are out there now, that the Chipotle
Chili is like the end all to chilies. [Laughter]
>>Michael Brown: And that one is just really, it’s got a great smoky flavor but as far
as depth of flavor compared to all the other chilies like the Guajillo and Cascabel, you
know, is it ignorance on their part or is it just lack of experimentation? What is your
thought on that?
>>Gustavo Arellano: I don’t think it’s ignorance as much as they just haven’t been
exposed to it. And, of course, I guess that’s ignorance in a way where if there’s something
in front of you and you don’t know it that’s ignorance, but at the same time, as you know,
with foods there’s different trends that come in. There’s different trends that fall
in and out of flavor. So, for the longest time the only chili that Americans knew, well
no, the first quote unquote chili that Americans knew came from Mexico, was a Tabasco pepper
that they would eat in their Tabasco hot sauce. Then it became chili powder, just chili powder,
you created from, was it Tabasco pepper? I don’t think it was Tabasco pepper, other
peppers from Northern Mexico. Then it became hot sauce. That, for them, was their perception
of peppers. Oh, then, of course, just chili peppers from New Mexico. Which we now know
is the Ortega pepper or Anaheim chili that came from New Mexico. So these were all different
traditions that would come into the United States. Then, of course, the Jalapeño comes
in once nachos became popular in the 1970s, all of a sudden people were eating jalapeños.
Then Chipotle, the chipotle pepper not the Chipotle burrito chain that really kicked
in, in the late 1990s and so forth. But now you’re starting to see more peppers come
out habanero, people are starting to realize what habaneros are, you’re having these
habanero eating contests. Google YouTube there’s this great clip, I think it’s this 13 year
old boy he’s like, “I’m gonna eat a habanero” and he chomps, he bites into it
full on and then within 20 seconds his face turns crimson. He’s like, “Ahh!”
[Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: Well, typical teenager going
[Makes monster-type noise] >>Gustavo Arellano: But people are realizing
that. Did these peppers become invented in those decades? Of course not, they’ve always
existed in the United States. One big thing though that’s happened is those peppers
come up along with Mexicans. Or, rather, get into the main stream so the chipotle pepper,
it’s most famous use is around central Mexico with Poblano cuisine, Chilango cuisine, food
from Mexico City. That, those traditions didn’t really penetrate the mainstream of the united
States until, really, the 1970s and 80s with Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy and other chefs,
you know, here in Southern Califor--, or just here in Santa Monica actually, the Two Hot
Tamales. But they really didn’t explode into the American consciousness until Chipotle,
the Chipotle burrito chain, which interestingly enough doesn’t use chipotles.
[Laughter] >>Michael Brown: Right. And that’s what
leads me to my next question. You know, you talk about the hot sauces and sauces in modern
day cuisine and, you know, what is, you know, and the habanero we were talking about, you
know, at what point does burn your insides out
[Laughter] >>Michael Brown: and look how much heat I
can take supersede the flavor and the balance of a well balanced salsa.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Exactly. Americans, the world really, the world has always been enticed
by heat, by spices. That’s what made Columbus, so they told me elementary school, sail the
ocean blue, “Oh we need to get some pepper and salt and what not.” And then when it
comes to the chili pepper, Americans have always been entranced by it but also scared
by it. So they’re like, “Oh my gosh!” like, “It’s gonna kill us.” In fact,
the first, the very first write ups of Mexican food in the United States, they were negative.
They were from scouts who were going across what’s now the American Southwest during
the Texan War for Independence and also before the Mexican-American War. They would write
these dispatches that would say, what was it, oh okay, that after the Texan war, after
one battle, that the vultures or buzzards, they wouldn’t eat the corpses of dead Mexican
soldiers because Mexicans eat chili pepper and if the vultures would eat their corpses
they would die because their flesh was so spicy and so filled with peppers that they
would die. And later on, through the 1850’s, 1860’s you still had this urban legend that
if you, you know, in Texas wherever there were corpses of dead Mexicans, you shouldn’t
have your cows eat on the grass there because the cows, cause that chili pepper, it’s
still there and the cows are gonna eat it and they’re gonna die.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: So Americans, so part
of that it’s like they’ve always known that about Mexican food, that it’s super
spicy. So that masochistic tendency in our culture, you wanna eat the spiciest, hottest
thing alive. That’s where you have your chili contests, chili, you know, chili with
beans or, no, no not with beans, don’t talk to Texans about that.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: But the, chili, you know,
chili cookouts and so forth, but at the same time, again, Americans, when it comes to Mexican
food, they don’t just eat what’s in front of them, they won’t just accept it. They
always want something more. That’s one thing that critics of fast food Mexican, they’ve
never got the American palate, the American palate is much more refined than we give them
credit for. We used to, Americans used to eat something called taco sauce. Taco sauce
basically tomato paste with vinegar and a little bit of chili, it’s pretty disgusting,
you should not eat taco sauce. But Americans ate that for decades and decades until other
consumer, or, other marketers, rather, other producers started making better hot sauce;
Tapatio, Cholula and onward, and those became multimillion dollar empires as well. And,
you know, you taste Tapatio, it’s not gonna fry you; it has a certain flavor to it. And
then on top of that you skip over actual fresh produced salsas, you know, freshly made salsas,
go to Trader Joes, go to Whole Foods, you have whole aisles full of these really tasteful
salsas. So, again, on one part, Americans do wanna get fried by Mexican food but on
the other hand, you also want the best possible experience imaginable. And that’s the great
thing about Mexican food, that you have the whole panoply of experiences all within this
one cuisine.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah. It’s funny you bring up the Tapatio and one of the first questions
I get, and you touch upon this in your book a little bit, is about the, about the charro
who’s on the front of the bottle and I always get the question, “Why does he have blue
eyes?” [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: They give him, Tapatio, of course, is amazing hot sauce. We all know
it here in Southern California, it’s a little Mexican with a massive sombrero with a smile
and yes, he has blue eyes. And the reason he has blue eyes is, it’s in regards to,
the word Tapatio, Tapatio refers to somebody, it’s a nickname for somebody from the city
of Guadalajara in Jalisco. Jalisco, I like to describe Jalisco as the Texas of Mexico.
It’s a place that, it’s a really great place but people there, they think a little
bit too highly of themselves but at the same time they have that right to do that. Jalisco
is that birthplace of Tequila, Jalisco is the birthplace of mariachi and as it so happens
to be, Jalisco is also a place where you have a lot of very light skinned Mexicans with
blue hair, or blue hair [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: Blue eyes and blond hair. So a lot of people say, “Oh, typical Mexicans
always trying to scrub off their brown skin.” But you talk to the founders of Tapatio who
actually come from Mexico City but they spent a couple years in Jalisco but they said, “Well,
no, this is how the people from Jalisco look like so we’re just depicting what’s truthful.”
>>Michael Brown: Right.
>>Gustavo Arellano: But, of course, Americans are like, “Mexicans don’t have blue eyes.”
So silly, so silly.
>>Michael Brown: I did notice, I’m married into a Mexican family and I do notice that
the way that Americans use Tapatio compared to the way a lot of Mexicans use it, in my
wife’s family, they just use it to put on the popcorn or maybe on some sort of potato
chip but not necessarily as a salsa you would put on your taco or anything else. Has that
been your experience as well?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Absolutely. For Mexicans, hot sauce, it’s really a condiment to use
on just, on snacks. So, of course, on Doritos and Fritos and now you have Tapatio flavor
Doritos and Fritos, and what do Mexicans do? They put Tapatio on those Tapatio flavored
Doritos and Fritos and popcorn, just little snacks. But the great thing with a Mexican
family, usually you have somebody there who knows how to make salsa. And let’s face
it; salsa is much more tastier than hot sauce. The reason why the founder of Tapatio created
Tapatio in the first place was because he couldn’t bring his salsa to work because
they said, “It’s not in a bottle so it’s unsanitary.” So he needed to create something
that he could package in a bottle so he made Tapatio. And, of course, Americans, some Americans
do know how to make salsa but most Americans don’t so they’ll just buy, they’ll just
go with what’s at the store and they’ll just get Tapatio and pour it. Hey, Tapatio’s
great, it’s. My favorite hot sauce right now, though, is *** Bandito. *** Bandito
is a hot sauce made by Dexter Holland of the Offspring, you know the famous punk band?
And I kid you; well I’ll tell you the story of *** Bandito. The first time someone
gave me a bottle of *** Bandito, it has Dexter just like the charro on Tapatio, so
imagine, you know, big old sombrero, big old [inaudible] but instead of a Mexican it’s
Dexter Holland, you know, blonde hair punker with sunglasses going like this with guns.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: Somebody gave me the bottle
and I threw it in the trash can immediately. It was that, “Oh, dumb Americans thinking
they can steal Mexican food.” But then I became smart, I got smart so about 20 minutes
later I fished it out of the trash can, I opened it and it’s great sal, hot sauce,
you have to have it here at Google. It’s an amazing hot sauce. I would dare say it’s
better than Tapatio.
>>Michael Brown: Wow, that’s a bold statement.
>>Gustavo Arellano: It is a very bold statement. I’ll stand by it.
>>Michael Brown: You touched upon Tequila, um, you know, that’s a huge, huge moneymaker
and I know there are specific limitations on where it’s produced, how it’s produced
and other things about, you know, how you can call it Tequila. Can you touch upon that
a little bit and, again, how come a lot of the other Mexican spirits didn’t take off
like the Mescal and the Tepache and stuff like that?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh, I love Tepache. Tepache is this fermented pineapple drink that’s
cut with brown sugar, it’s absolutely amazing. You have to, you can only find it here locally
at Mexico City style restaurants but you have to try it, it’s absolutely good. In my book
there’s a whole chapter devoted to Mexican alcohol and the reason that Tequila is, the
reason Tequila took off the way it did, again, going back to the Jalisco methods. Why did,
you know, Mexico has so many musical traditions, why is it that mariachi got associated with
Mexico more than any? It’s because there was a concerted effort in the 1930s in Mexico
with the Mexican government when they were basically branding themselves to the rest
of the world, they made a conscious effort that were gonna use most of the culture of
Jalisco because in their mind Jalisco, people from Jalisco, they never inter married with
Mexicans, with Indians, they were all proud Catholic capitalists which, not necessarily
true, but those were the myths that were created. That’s why Tequila exploded the way it did.
Of course the Mexican government and the Tequila producers in Jalisco, there were more than
just Tequila producers period. They were very, very zealous. No, zealous isn’t really the
right word but they’re very protective of Tequila. So, technically, it can’t be called
Tequila unless it’s made in 5 states in Mexico; Guanajuato, Tamaulipas, in I think
Navolato
>>Michael Brown: Novaleo?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Novaleon and another one I can’t remember. 90 percent of them are
made in Jalisco which is the birthplace Jalisco, or, the birthplace of Tequila. Tequila is
great, don’t get me wrong, I love it, but as you know, that came at the expense of so
many other Mexican alcohols. It’s interesting that you mention Mescal cause if you go to
the more popular hipster bars right now, you’re starting to see this influx of Mezcal. Mezcal,
Mezcal is basically the angrier cousin of Tequila. It’s made the exact same way except
Mezcal’s distilled once and Tequila’s distilled at least twice. So Mezcal’s much
smokier, I think it’s better than Tequila, frankly. So that’s just taking off but Mezcal,
the first famous Mexican restaurant in the United States was a rest--, was a pop up restaurant
operated by Buffalo Bill of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and on his menu he was serving
Mezcal in 1886 in New York City. So hipsters who think, “Oh I created something.” Uh
oh, Buffalo Bill beat you more than a century ago. But other great, other great alcohols;
Sotol. Sotol is this, oh my God I can’t even describe it but it’s this amazing liquor,
or not liquor but it’s amazing alcohol from Chihuahua made from, basically made from this
dry shrub from the desert of Chihuahua. There’s one I think that’ll never take off, Pulque,
Pulque is the oldest, one of the oldest alcohols known to man that’s made from fermenting
the sap of the maguey plant where Tequila comes from and I don’t think it’ll ever
take off cause it’s basically like drinking alcoholic spit.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: It’s very frothy. It’s
really good, it’s an acquired taste. It’s very frothy but it’s never gonna take off,
then again, I guarantee you if not next, if not this year but next you’ll start seeing
Pulquerias or some Pulque up here in the United States in the hipster bars.
>>Michael Brown: That’s amazing. I, you know, hand in hand with drinking Tequila,
like you mentioned, is mariachi music. And growing up in kitchens myself, you know, listening
to La Nueva [Laughter]
>>Michael Brown: And K-Love and going home and watching Novelas, that’s how I learned
Spanish and I learned it in a very kind of rude way. And when I married into the Mexican
family I was very, very timid about speaking Spanish to my mother-in-law, my father-in-law,
but they were just happy I was trying.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, yeah.
>>Michael Brown: And you touch in your book, and mention how a big attitude of Americans
is like, “How come they’re not learning how to speak English?” To where back in
the day the immigrants would definitely learn how to speak English and try to get the accent
down. And now it seems to be almost the opposite like we wanna know how to speak Spanish the
right way. [Laughter]
>>Michael Brown: All the cool words and stuff like that. What’s your thoughts on that?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, I talk about that a lot in my 'Ask a Mexican'' book. This idea
of how Mexicans, they never simulate into the United States, that the only part, that
the only part that Mexicans, that simulate into the Mexi-, into the United States is
food because Americans love Mexican food. They might not like Mexicans all the time
but they love their Mexican food. But that’s false. I mean, that’s demonstrably false.
I’m the child of Mexican immigrants like in my bio, my Dad came to this country in
the trunk of a Chevy in 1968 and that was the first time he came here illegally. He
knows how to speak English but he lives his entire life in Spanish. I’d say 95 per,
95 percent of the time, he’s speaking in Spanish, although, he’ll only speak English
if he absolutely has to which most of the times he doesn’t have to. The first language
I spoke when I entered Kindergarten was Spanish. Now I’m bilingual but I prefer English over
Spanish and I’ll only speak Spanish if I have to. And I want my children, if I ever
have children, I want my children to speak Spanish but I know they’re all gonna speak
English and they’ll probably have a name like Brittany or Jonathon.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: or something like that.
But that’s the great thing about modern day America is that in the past you might
have had that nasty, that really xenophobia where people would be made fun of if they
can’t speak one language or another. But nowadays at least people, our generation,
we’re cool. Like, if your parents don’t speak English that’s fine. In fact, you
wanna learn other languages. Like me, I’m in Orange County, I’ve learned just cobbling
together bits and pieces a little bit of Vietnamese, I’ve learned how to read Korean, I don’t
know what I understand, what it means but I know how to read the Hungul, the Hungul
script. I wanna learn Arabic, I think it’s perfectly fine and so more and more people
are starting to become like that. We’re, you guys know this at Google, especially,
we’re in a global society, this day of like borders, of cultural borders just closing
and never opening, they’re done and we’re for the better.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah. And in the news recently they’ve come out with some stats saying
that now the Asian population is now the largest immigrant movement more than the Latino movement.
I find that very interesting.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh yeah, that’s awesome. The great thing with immigrant culture in
this country is you have all these hybrids. Today we had Dos Chinos. Dos Chinos was created
by two Vietnamese guys, they’re not Chinos but they grew up in Santa Anna which is a
very Mexican city. So they grew up their entire lives with Mexicans calling them Chinitos.
Because, of course, for Mexicans, no other Asians existed except Chinese, doesn’t matter
if you’re Laotian , Hmong, Thai, you’re Chinito. So, instead of being all bitter about
that they’re like, “Hey, we’re Vietnamese but we’re also Mexican and we’re also
American so we’re gonna create this food truck and we’re just gonna put all those
combos together.” And, so, you see their menu, there’s tacos and burritos but it
has like Thai fillings, Korean fillings, they just create, and the great thing about them,
they name it, they check, basically check off all the Asian enclaves of Orange County
so when they’re talking about the Bolsa Pork, they’re referring to Bolsa Avenue,
the heart of little Saigon where they’re talking about Irvine, no it’s their Irvine
Chipotle Pork. Irvine, we have a huge Chinese population there so they’re referring to
Chinese style roast pork, Korean taco, Garden Grove tacos, that’s the huge Korean population
Garden Grove and when they have their taco, their lunch truck set up you have everyone
going in there. Asians and Mexicans and everyone’s getting along and under the auspices of great
Mexican food.
>>Michael Brown: How do you think the gourmet taco truck scene has really affected the original
luncherias and, you know, have they brought more of a spotlight to them or have they kind
of pushed them out of the way?
>>Gustavo Arellano: What’s happened, I mean, I have my own criticisms of what some people
call the gourmet food truck, what I call the lux luncheria scenes, some people might criticize
them but I think it’s actually been the opposite. What these trucks have done is legitimize
the traditional luncherias. It’s unfortunate that sometimes it has to be that way but at
the same time it’s great. So, of course, here in Southern California we’ve had food
trucks, in one way or another, since the 1880s, Mexican food trucks. The first food trucks
they were tamale carts, they would be these tamale vendors who would get their horse on
a wagon, go all across Southern California, set up their shop at the end of the day and
just start selling tamales. If you read the news accounts from like the 1890s and 1900s
in Los Angeles Times, it reads exactly like the news accounts of these news accounts of
these food trucks today. “Wow, there’s all these food trucks and the lines are long!
But don’t eat at some of them because they’re really nasty and they’re roach coaches and
so forth.” So we’ve always had a, Americans just in general, but specifically in Southern
California, there’s always been that bifurcated response where one part of the populati--,
historically, one part of the population didn’t wanna eat at them but they always were popular
cause eventually people realized this is really great food. So what’s happened with these
gourmet food trucks is that they’ve, they’ve told, they basically showed Americans, “Look,
you can have great Mexi, great food out of a food truck and it’ll be perfectly fine.”
So those traditional luncherias, they’re not losing their customers at all, if anything
they’re getting more customers now. There’s this amazing food truck in Santa Ana, on the
corner of Main and Cubbon, it’s called Alebrije’s, just use your Google Maps of course, just
go Main and Cubbon, Santa Ana California. When you get there you’ll see this humongous
pink food truck, it’s pink, pink, pink, pink, like Cadillac pink. And now, half of
the customers is traditional Mexican working class space, the other half is everyone else
who over the years have discovered this is an amazing food truck. He’s become so, and
this guy’s an immigrant from Guanajuato in Mexico and he’s become so successful
that now he has three of these food trucks coming along. Again, eventually, what happened
with American, with Mexican food in this country, it eventually gets mainstream and then people,
once they realize, “Hey, this is great food. My neighbors are eating it, why shouldn’t
I?” Then they go and start digging in for more.
>>Michael Brown: Right. You know, like you mentioned, the tamale that was the original
food from the history of Mexican cuisine that instead of tortillas and stuff, it could travel.
So that’s why a lot of people carried it with them and it was a very popular food source.
One of my favorite books is called, 'The Food History in Mexico', and it talks about the
staples, the food staples of the pre Hispanic era and it was basically corn, beans, squash
and
>>Gustavo Arellano: Cactus.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah, and cactus. And then, you know, the Spanish came in and introduced
dairy and cows and sheep and goats and stuff like that. What is your take on like how that’s
evolved and more specifically about Mole
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh, yeah.
>>Michael Brown: And how Mole came in through the mores in Spain and then brought all those
spices and everything and kind of made this hodge podge of flavors which is now one of
the most famous dishes in upper Mexico.
>>Gustavo Arellano: What we consider to be, quote unquote, Mexican food, even, quote unquote,
authentic Mexican food by definition is inauthentic. That’s, so talking about, talking about
Mexican food that’s just another bullet in the arguments of people who have this authenticity
debate because what we know as Mexican food, it’s a combination of everything. As you,
you know, as you pointed out, corn, squash, beans, cactus, that’s been part of, and
chili peppers and tomatoes, that’s been part of Mexican food since the Aztecs, since
the Mayans, since the Olmecs. But everything else that we consider Mexican food, carne
asada, al pastor, Tequila, that only came into being cause the Spaniards came in and
brought the sheep and the pork and the chickens and the dairy and the distillation that created
all those dishes. All those great Mexican beers, Corona, well, maybe not Corona
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: Tecate, Bohemia, for instance,
you see those labels and you read the names and you wonder, “Hmm, Bohemia beer, I wonder
who made that?” It was Czech, German and Austrian immigrants who came in during the,
after the 1880s, 1890s, and they created the Mexican brews. For the Middle East, you have
the Moors who introduced to the Spaniards rice who then brought it to the new world.
Al Pastor came from Lebanese immigrants who were sheep herders, Al Pastor refers to sheep
herders style, or shepherds style, and they brought it to central Mexico during the turn
of the 20th century. So all these traditions all get mixed up into what’s Mexican food.
One of the great ones, of course Mole. Mole being this impossibly rich, I guess technically
you would call it at stew, I think?
>>Michael Brown: Yeah the cooking method would be
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, like a cooking method, it’s an impossibly rich sauce and every
state in Mexico has their own traditions and that, of course, depending on what the tradition
is, it’s gonna have other influences. Some of the best Moles, they have pomegranate,
pomegranate, which we call Granada, that came, again, from Spain from the Middle East. Oranges
come from the Middle East. So, I think it’s wonderful. I think that’s why Mexican food
has been able to travel as far as it has because it morphs into whatever the regional traditions
are. Here in Southern California, right now, we’re all gaga over the Korean taco as Kogi
Korean Barbecue famously made. But, before that, the big ethnic fusion was the, was something
called the Kosher burrito which we now know as the pastrami burrito. The pastrami burrito
came from East Los Angeles in Boyle Heights during the 1950s because then Jews lived alongside
Latinos, which Jews like Pastrami, Latinos like burritos, they both like each other’s
food, voilà, the pastrami burrito. So it’s that mezclar, you know, we called it in Mexico
mestizaje, that mixing and matching of all that. That’s what makes food as great as
it is. And you know, as a chef, you know that if you make, if you cook the same dish again
and again and again people are gonna get bored of it. Humans when it comes to food, yeah
we wanna be satiated, we wanna be well off nutritionally but we also want our palates
to dance and Mexican food, it’s a perfect way to do it.
>>Michael Brown: What is the street food scene like in Mexico City?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Mexico City is one of the great cuisine, great food destinations
in the world, Mexico City and Tijuana. Mexico City you basically have all these stalls and
a million, what do you call it, a million manifestations of Masa. Yeah, I’m trying
to be alliterative here. So, basically you have, not just tacos, you’re gonna have,
not just sopas which you better get after this talk you better get the sopas at the
kitchen right now, but also you have Huaraches and Mulitas which is half gordita, half quesadilla.
You have something called the tlacoyos which is basically an elongated gordita with fava
beans inside of it. You have these; you have quesadillas that are as long as my forearm,
absolutely magnificent. But since you guys are here in Southern California, the place
to go eat right now is Tijuana. Don’t believe what the media says about all these narco
wars happening in Tijuana, right now the Tijuana food scene is one of the best food scenes
in the world. In fact, for the, shameless plug, for the OC Weekly, we have a column
called Tijuana Sí, every Thursday we review a new place in Baja California where you have
to go eat Mexican food. According to my food critic, they have the best olive oil in the
world right now in Baja California, they have amazing seafood, you have amazing tacos going
all over the place, it’s a place where, consider it a day trip. Go down there, it’s
a two hour, well from here two and a half hour drive, spend the day there just gorging
yourself. That’s a place where you can go on a winery estate and get a ten course meal
for 50 du, for 50 dollars, that’s the place to go right now.
>>Michael Brown: Does it get your hide when people pronounce it “Tiawana?”
>>Gustavo Arellano: “Tiawana?” [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: Just like here in Long Beach you call it what? Juan Perro? Instead
of Junipero or whatever? You know, as long as people try it’s okay. People sometimes
mispronounce my name, like Arellano or whatever, it’s okay, I tell them like this is how
you pronounce it but that’s fine. As long as it’s done with no malice, that’s fine.
But if you’re doing it on purpose then the fist.
[Laughter]
>>Michael Brown: Talking about Masa and how important was corn, originally, in Mexican
society? I mean, it was cultivated from something that looked like a wheat and then they grew
and cultivated it, you know, dedicated, I mean they had Xilonen which is the goddess
of corn. I actually have a holy corn tattoo on my hand.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh, that’s awesome. Right on his thumb.
>>Michael Brown: you know, how important is corn?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Corn
>>Michael Brown: In Mexican culture?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Next to the *** of Guadalupe, corn is the most important thing
in Mexican society. You wouldn’t have Mexico or a Mexican people without corn. More specifically
than corn, though, is masa. And the invention that connects corn, when you harvest corn,
turning into masa is something called Nixtamalización which is essentially, you get these corn kernels,
you let it sit in a live foundation along with ash and then all this, you know, and
then you let it ferment. Some of the most important food discoveries have come from
people just letting food rot. Because if you eat corn that’s not processed again and
again and again, you’re gonna get poisoned, you’re gonna get poisoned with something
called Pellagra. But the process of Nixtamalización, what that does it takes out the poisons from
the corn kernels and also it releases from each corn kernel, niacin and all these other
nutritious, all this other nutritional value that was locked there before. So next time
[inaudible] and then from there you can mix up the corn and make masa and from masa, of
course, you get tortillas and tamales. Corn and the *** of Guadalupe that is Mexico,
without those two you would not have Mexico.
>>Michael Brown: Right. I’ve noticed, not only in Mexico, but in other countries, India,
for example, that a lot of the population who live in the South are, they have less
money than people who live in the North. So the food is very, very different from the
South to the North and like in Mexico it’s a very, in the North like in Chihuahua and
the Charros and everything it’s basically a protein based meal, you know, lots of protein.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah.
>>Michael Brown: And in the South there’s not a lot of money for proteins and stuff,
you know, they’re using nuts and chilies and spices and other things to kind of make
these meals. I’ve noticed that, do you have any
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh yeah, yeah, this, a lot of Americans, historically, they thought
Mexican food is tacos, burritos, enchiladas, you know, just very limited. But Mexico, like
the United States, each region has its own tradition. If you go down South all the way
to Oaxaca, one of the Southern most states in Mexico, there they’re eating grasshoppers.
They dry grasshoppers, they put some salt, chili and lime and they pop them like popcorn,
it’s really good, they’re really, really good. And there their tortillas, they’re
as big as basketball hoops and they’re called tlayudas but then you go up to Northern Mexico
and yeah, it’s very, it's beef. Beef is king there. Cheese, not yellow cheese, not
processed cheese but Queso Menonita made by Mennonites, Mennonite colonies in Chihuahua.
Seafood in Baja California, of course, cause you’re right next to the Sea of Cortez.
Mexico City, you have all this great street food. My parents were from Zacatecas so there
we like the stew called birria. Birria's a goat stew except we make it with beef, we
call it birria de res and we love gorditas and we love cactus, you know, one question
I always get in Ask a Mexican, “How can Mexicans eat cactus, don’t the spines prick
them?” [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: And I tell them, “No, we take them off.” But cactus is really,
really good. So, yeah, that’s the great thing with Mexican food right now in the United
States, you have Mexican immigrants for all over Mexico, now, historically most of them,
historically most Mexican migration came from central Mexico, from Michoacán, Guanajuato,
Jalisco, Mexico City, Sonora also, so what we considered Mexican food, those are really
the traditions of those regions, tacos, burritos from Northern Mexico,carne asada from Northern
Mexico, Manchaca, Sonora, those are the traditions that historically came to the United States
cause those were the Mexicans that were coming. Now that we have Mexicans from everywhere,
we can taste all these different traditions, especially here in Los Angeles you have such
a great food scene here with Mexico.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah. I know in Chicago is probably the second largest Mexican population
in the country and then Los Angeles and it seems that, like in Chicago, a lot of Mexicans
from Michoacán have settled up there and a lot of the Mexicans here in Southern California
are from Oaxaca.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah.
>>Michael Brown: And I work with a ton of Oaxacan guys in the kitchen and, by far, they
are the hardest, most dedicated working group of people from Mexico and yet they get ridiculed
a lot because of their stature and stuff. Have you noticed any kind of, uh, has anyone
ever asked you about that in your column?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh sure. And, actually, in the book I talk about this famous restaurant
here in Los Angeles called Guelaguetza, they’re the most famous Oaxacan restaurant in the
United States. And Oaxacan cuisine is acknowledged as the best Mexican food from Mexico. That,
restaurants, I think next year they’re gonna cele--, no '94, they’re gonna celebrate
their 20th anniversary. When they first opened here in Los Angeles no one would eat at this
place except two types of people; Oaxacan who wanted a taste of home and their bosses
who worked here and, you know, lived here in Santa Monica on the Westside cause a lot
of these Oaxacans, they worked in the kitchen, they worked as nannies, they worked as janitors,
they worked as gardeners and so, they would bring their food to their bosses and say,
“Hey, there’s this great Oaxacan restaurant you can eat the food of my home, of my homeland
down in Korea town. So the founder of Guelaguetza, or the owner of Guelaguetza, Fernando Lopez,
he would tell me, he told me the story for my book that he would see, he would just bewildered,
his tiny little restaurant was in Korea Town when it was sketchier than it was today and
he would just see this parade of BMWs and Audis and Mercedes and I wondered, “Why
are these people coming to my restaurant?” And they were the bosses. So those are the
only two people who wanted to eat there. Americans weren’t gonna eat at Guelaguetza because
they still didn’t know what Oaxaca, what Oaxacan food was. And Mexicans weren’t gonna
eat at Guelaguetza because, for them, Oaxacans were just dirty Indians because Oaxacans,
the state of Oaxaca’s always been different from the rest of Mexico number one because
their mount--, there’s a mountain range that basically isolates them from the rest
of Mexico and as a result they’ve kept on to their indigenous traditions. So a lot of
Oaxacans have darker skin, they’re of shorter stature, a lot of them, their first language
isn’t even Spanish, it’s whatever their indigenous language is.
>>Michael Brown: Zapotec
>>Gustavo Arellano: Zapotec or Trique or Mixtec or whatever so they get made fun of in the
rest of Mexico. So, again, this authenticity debate, these Mexicans, they didn’t think
Oaxacan food was authentically Mexican which is such bull and to me that just shows that
a God does exist and he has a great sense of humor because now Oaxacan food, everyone
knows Oaxacan food is the best Mexican food in Mexico and in the rest of the world. And,
yeah, Oaxacans are some of the hardest working people and greatest people you’ll ever meet.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah and I really regret it, guys like, chefs like Diana Kennedy and
Rick Bayless, and, you know, Two Hot Tamales
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah.
>>Michael Brown: And they really took Oaxacan cuisine because I think it was so different
from what they originally understood and brought it to the forefront and put it in their books
and put it on their television stations. What do you think of chefs like that or like Rick
Bayless who, you know, is a white boy from Oklahoma, worked in his parent’s barbecue
spot and then really just fell in love with Mexico and everything Mexican and now he is
basically the leader forefront of Mexican cuisine.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, he just got an award from the Mexican government for his contributions
to Mexican food, or to the promotion of Mexican food. I have my problems with Rick Bayless
but only because of an incident that happened between me, him and Jonathon Gold the pulitz--,
the Pulitzer Prize winning food critic where he essentially called Jonathan Gold a liar
because we both criticized him for him insisting that there was, you know, he was coming into
this, he was gonna create this restaurant or he was gonna consult on a restaurant here
in Southern California called Red O where he was gonna say, “I’m gonna bring the
real flavors of Mexico to Southern California.” And we’re like, “Really, Rick? You’re
really gonna introduce Mexican food to Southern California? Come on, you’re a little bit
full of yourself.” All that said, I’ve been to Frontera and Topolobampo, they’re
great foods, or they’re great restaurants. He is a great promoter of Mexico. I’m not,
you know, I’m never gonna hold it against him because he’s a white man who’s promoting
Mexican food. A lot of people do have that problem against him, that’s not my problem
at all. And same thing, you know, with the other great ambassadors, Diana Kennedy who
also believes in this authenticity thing, the Two Hot Tamales Mary Sue Milliken and
Susan Feniger, you know, they’re all promoters, they’re all very strong promoters of Mexican
food. America needs those ambassadors, I mean, really this is sad to say but it’s true,
Americans are more likely to pay attention to what a white person’s gonna say about
Mexican food then they would a Mexican chef who doesn’t know how to speak English, it’s
just the reality. Are you gonna hold it against Kennedy and Bayless and the Two Hot Tamales?
I’m not. And, frankly, it’s racist to hold that against them. I mean, you can have
your criticisms of people for, say there business practices or their pronunciations, like Diana
Kennedy, for instance, despises Tex Mex food, she basically calls it glop, which I think
it’s elitist in its own way. I’ll criticize her on that but the fact that she’s a British
woman who loves Mexico and has done more to, you know, promote these regional traditions
and other folks, I’m not gonna hold that against her at all. And, again, more importantly
for me it boils down to the food. Kennedy never opened her own restaurant but Bayless
did, great food, never ate at Red O, though. Frontera Grill, uh, Border Grill, I love that
place. Too crowded for me most of the times but I love it.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah. You know, Diana Kennedy was, is very specific on, you know, you eat
this on this day and you serve it like this and really, like you said, it’s a great
educational tool because otherwise I would’ve never known those traditions unless she wrote
about them.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Exactly.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah, well I thank you very, very much. I would like to open the floor
up to anyone who has a question for Gustavo.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Don’t be shy. Yeah, and if you could go up to the mic so the people
at home could listen.
>>male #1: How has the availability of produce and other ingredients and, actually, particularly
food regulations, how has that affected Mexican food in America?
>>Gustavo Arellano: A lot of, only until very recently, a lot of Mexican food in this country
was made in a certain way cause you didn’t have all the ingredients that you had in Mexico.
So, for instance, chili powder, chili powder was actually created by a German immigrant
by the name of William Gebhardt who wanted to, he wanted to make, he wanted to make his
chili with Mexican chil, uh, chili peppers but he’d have to go all the way down to,
uh, Mexico in the 1880s. So, instead of doing that he’s like, “Instead, I’ll just
buy all those chilies and they’ll rot on the way, instead I’ll just create chili
powder. It’s not gonna be the same flavor, it’s not gonna be the exact same flavor
but I’ll still get those instances.” Same thing with yellow cheese, you know, a lot
of people hate yellow cheese, they’re like, “That’s not real Mexican food if it’s
covered with yellow cheese. Mexicans don’t eat yellow cheese.” Historically, no, but
I wasn’t the one that did this research it was actually Robb Walsh who’s the dean
of Tex-Mex or the dean of Texan Cooking of food historians and so he interviewed these
chefs in Texas who go back to the '40 and '30 and he asked them, “Why do you use yellow
cheese? Why do you guys use yellow cheese instead of white cheese?” And he said, “Well,
because we followed what our customers wanted. They didn’t want white cheese they wanted
something that melted and yellow cheese has a faster burning, melting point than white
cheese does.” And as a result that changed the food. Again, that said, though, anyone
who thinks that food should stay in a bubble they’re deluded because that’s not how
food has ever operated. Why do we eat a lot of cactus in Zacatecas? Because there’s
a lot of cactus, if we were in, say, Mexico City, you’re not gonna find as many cactuses,
cacti there as you would in Zacatecas. So food is always evolving. In the present day
nowadays, though, everything has changed because now you have Mexican produce within a day
if you went, “Hm, I want this really exotic herb from Veracruz, well then, I’ll just
go to my local Mexican market who’s getting it now. Like, now there are no borders, now
you can cook just like Mexicans do in Mexico using their ingredients, anyone can do that
now. I mean, some people still say, “Oh, well you didn’t make it in Mexico so it’s
the water.” [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: But it’s like that debate that Guinness tastes different in Ireland
than it does here in the United States and you do a blind taste test and no one could
tell the difference. Myths, a lot of myths.
>>Michael Brown: Yeah. New York Pizza.
>>Gustavo Arellano: New York Pizza, too.
>>male #1: And you wouldn’t say that regulation has affected much?
>>Gustavo Arellano: No, regulation has historically played a big role, also, in Mexican food.
In a bad way in the sense that you can’t get some food stuff like, for instance, if
you try to, you can only take over so many wheels of Mexican cheese right now across
the border, I think. I think you have to declare three and then after that you can only take
like 10 and then you have to pay a tariff on it. So it does limit some of the food stuffs
but, again, what do Mexicans do? You get a whole bunch of them, hundreds of these wheels
and then you pay people, “Hey, be my cheese smuggler across the border.”
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: We do that so, sh.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: Or what happens is we
have all this regulation then an underground economy starts up. I actually just wrote about
this for the OC Weekly how in California, food is so regulated that you can’t have
what’s called, you know, cottage food. In other words, the small, small batch chefs
or producers of food who want to say, like they wanna make jams and jellies and they’re
not gonna make a huge, huge profit off of it but they do wanna sell it like at a craft
fair or whatever, under California law you cannot do that, you have to cook in a commercially
licensed kitchen, you have to get these permits this and that. Mexicans, we’ve never paid
attention to that. So we’ve been buying food and chorizo from people who make it out
of their own homes for decades. So people will say like, “Oh, can’t you get poisoned
off of it?” Well here I am and look at me I’m perfectly fine.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, so thank you.
>>male #2: Um, thanks for coming, so actually there’s a bill in committee on cottage industry
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yes.
>>male #2: You know about it?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Absolutely.
>>male #2: I don’t know the number. So I was gonna say I’m a native Californian and
other than several episodes with Chilies, Mexican food has really only brought tears
to my eyes twice. [Laughter]
>>male #2: Once was when I left in the late '90 to go to the Midwest to go to graduate
school and I went to Chi-Chi’s.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Ugh.
>>male #2: That brought tears to my eyes. [Laughter]
>>male #2: And I thought it’s gonna be a long dark time away from good quality fresh
food.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah.
>>male #2: The other was when I came back to California and went to a Oaxacan Restaurant
in Santa Monica. I don’t remember the name of it but it was amazing and I just thought,
“Wow!” It’s not just generic Mexican food but it’s really, really good Mexican
food.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah. Thank you. Really quickly Chi-Chi’s was a competitor to El
Torito during the 1970s and '80s and it came from a guy from Minnesota. And you might wonder
like what do Minnesotans know about Mexican food? Well, they know a little bit, but not
Chi-Chi’s. First of all, the name, which of course is Spanish slang for a woman’s
breast. Like, no way on earth could a Mexican restaurant succeed with a name like that in
California and it didn’t so that’s why it proliferated in the Midwest and the East
Coast. Now it no longer exists because the food was atrocious and yeah, it was absolutely
atrocious food. But that’s the great thing about Mexican food, some people love Chi-Chi’s,
some people love Taco Bell, I can’t stand Taco Bell, I’ve tried to, I’ve given it
so many chances in my life and it’s never worked. Del Taco, on the other hand, their
burritos, 99 cent burritos, absolutely amazing, for what they are. But Oaxacan food, oh, it’s
a whole other level. So you could have all this, all these different types of traditions
within the panoply of Mexican food.
>>male #2: For Chi-Chi’s, I’m glad that you put it in the book. I was trying to figure
out like the marketing concept behind it. I thought, “Okay, a guy went to Taco Bell
and he thought let’s serve alcohol and have people sit down and there you go.”
[Laughter] >>male #2: Right, like that’s it. It was
awful and there’s probably people that had really good times there and I feel bad kind
of like slamming on it but
>>Gustavo Arellano: No, no. [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: Chi-Chi’s will never be remembered for their food, where people
had the good time was because of all the margaritas that they drank. So in the 1970s you had Taco
Bell and Del Taco and all these other fast food taco chains gaining in popularity and
teaching people what Mexican food was or what Mexican food could offer. The next step was
the sit down Mexican restaurants like El Torito, El Coyote here, El Cholo Café, those types
of restaurants where you have a combo plate, you drink your margaritas and you eat out
on the patio, that was a type of Mexican restaurant, those restaurants have really gone, at least
that genres no longer as popular as, as, as they were. Chi-Chi’s no longer exists, El
Torito, their parent company declared bankruptcy last year and now there’s about 50 of those
left. I predict within 10 years they’ll be completely gone because people have evolved,
now you’re going to go eat that great Oaxacan food, now you’re going to those great food
trucks, now you’re going to these hole in walls or you’re going to these higher end
Mexican restaurants like Frontera Grill in Chicago or Rivera here in Los Angeles, there’s
different traditions and different experiences where people can get their Mexican food or
you can just cook it at home. Yeah, thank you.
>>male #2: Thank you.
>> Michael Brown: Do you think the frozen margarita’s gonna go anywhere?
[Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: The frozen margarita’s not gonna go anywhere cause in the book I
talk about the creation of the frozen margarita machine, so there’s always gonna be a market
for people who just wanna get drunk and, you know, drunk and frozen as fast as possible.
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: But what’s happened,
though, Americans, they haven’t gotten tired of the frozen margarita but they’ve realized
there’s better margaritas. Before, there only used to be two Tequila companies that
would serve, you know, sell Tequila here in the United States; Sauza and Jose Quervo.
In fact, the reason Tequila tastes the way it tastes today was because during the 1960s
you had all these Americans going on vacation to Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco and they would
drink the margaritas there and then go back home, bring bottles of Tequila as souvenir
gifts and then try to drink it and they’re like, “oh, it’s too harsh.” So these
companies, they changed their recipe of Tequila so it could be more palatable to the American
palate, now you have hundreds of Tequilas. My God, you have Michael Imperioli doing these
horrible commercials for 1800 Tequila like, you know, like Spider from Good Fellows knows
what good Tequila’s about. [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: So there’s always gonna be different, there’s always gonna be different
levels of Mexican food. And that’s, I think that’s a great thing.
>>male #3: Um, I really like Menudo and one time when I was in Mexico I had a white Menudo,
haven’t been able to find it here. [Laughter]
>>male #3: Do you know where I could find that?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, I laugh because it’s amazing the fights people will get
in over food. And so here I’m thinking of Mexican food, so in Arizona, white Menudo,
that’s actually, that’s a tradition, you have white Menudo Posoles. So Andrew Zimmer
in a Bizarre Foods, he went to Tuscon and he didn’t like the white Menudo. He basically
nearly started a riot for telling people like, “I don’t like white menudo.” “Oh my
gosh, how can you not like it?” Where can you find white menudo? Um, you are gonna have
to find regional restaurants. One example, oh God, I wonder if you guys have them here
in Los Angeles, I don’t think you do, but you would try to go to restaurants that serve
the cuisine Guerrero, the Mexican state of Guerrero. In Santa Ana there’s a place called
El Fogon which is basically, yeah El Fogon, F-O-G-O-N, it’s off of Edinger and Standard,
Edinger? Yes, Edinger and Standard in Santa Ana, El Fogon is really good. So there they
serve red Menudo, white menudo and green menudo. Green menudo is the best menudo of them all,
it’s absolutely amazing. So, but, yeah, white menudo, you’ll find it at household
but in terms of restaurants, there are few and far in between because that’s, the red
menudo that’s much more popular. The reason being because that’s more of a tradition
of Jalisco which, again, govern most of what we know as Mexican food and still does, to
a certain extent, in this country. But go to Tuscon, white menudo all over the place.
>>female presenter: Um, Gustavo, so you talk about, I think, I agree with you about food
and cultural borders there should, there are no borders. It’s very, we mix a lot and
it’s a great thing. So what do you think about our country’s constant efforts to
actually build a border?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Uh-huh.
>>female presenter: And then the recent legislation, especially in states like Arizona, or Louisiana,
or Alabama where it’s actually quite scary to be a Mexican in those states. And then
President Obama just signing the Dream Act last week.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh, so political and so many questions. Starting off with Obama, Obama,
what Obama did in terms of basically allowing undocumented youth, in other words people
who came to this country illegally when they were children and not making them citizens
but making sure that they don’t get deported, it was a political ploy. I mean kudos to him
for doing that but it’s all politics cause he was getting criticized so much by Latino
activists on it and he’s gonna be in a very tough election, so he decided okay I’m gonna
say this, they’re not gonna be citizens but, you know, Latinos will support me now.
But it was purely political, whatever, I’m still voting for Alfred E Newman in the fall
election. [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: That’s number one. When it comes to all this proposed, or all this
anti legislation, this country, it’s an amazing country, I love this country, but
we’ve always had this xenophobic streak in our minds that gets disproven again and
again and again. One of my all time favorite questions for 'Ask a Mexican', somebody asked
me, and actually, 'why don’t Mexicans learn how to speak English? Why don’t they assimilate',
blah, blah, blah. So then I said, “You know what, the United States government shares
your concern, they just created this new study that’s showing that this new wave of immigrants,
that they’re absolutely dumb, that they don’t assimilate, that all they wanna do
is make money and send it back home, and we should really just clamp down on these borders
and not allow these immigrants in. They’re not like the immigrants in the past that were
absolutely awesome and did it the right way. The problem with that study is that it was
written in 1911, it was called the Dillingham report and the idiot immigrants at the time
were all Southern and Eastern Europeans; Italians, Jews, Czechs, Poles, Greeks, Bulgarians and
the lionized immigrants, the immigrants that did it the right way were the Swedes, the
Germans, the Irish, all those, you know, all those immigrants and, of course, those immigrants
were also trashed on. You had Ben Franklin, before there was even a United States, Ben
Franklin railing against German immigrants and going to Pennsylvania saying, he used
this really nas--, it’s not, it’s not a curse word now, but it’s like this really
nasty ethnic epithet against these Germans and saying, you know, within a generation
were all gonna speak German because all these Germans, they’re not assimilating. So, of
course, Mexicans, all immigrants, they all immigrate or they all assimilate and yet,
at the same time we always have part of our culture. That’s why China Towns have been
around for, gosh now, a hundred and fifty years or Little Italys and all that. So whenever
you try to build borders, whenever you try to keep a country static, when you don’t
allow a country to breathe freely and just allow people to mingle, you’re really spelling
your demise. And, again, in this country we always get proven wrong so I’m an optimist,
we’ll get proven wrong all these, all this anti immigrant legislation, it’ll be defeated
one way or another and then we’ll move on and then in 20 years we’ll do the same thing
again. So, we always forget but we’re, our better angels always win, eventually, it takes
time but eventually we do.
>>female presenter: Well, hopefully food will help us all get along.
>>Gustavo Arellano: And, again, what’s the one, what’s the one language we all speak
here in Southern California? Mexican food. What’s the one part of Mexican soci, Mexican
society that Americans accepted? Mexican food. And that’s really the great, that’s a
great indicator that yes Mexicans will eventually be fully considered Americans or blah, blah,
blah. Because Americans already love their Mexican food, they always have and they always
will and that’s a good thing. That is absolutely a good thing.
>>female presenter : Last comment, I just read your most recent 'Ask a Mexican' question
and the question is, you know, are a lot of Mexicans going to Canada now?
>>Gustavo Arellano: Oh. Yeah. [Laughter]
>>female presenter: And I just wanted say No! Stay here! We love your food and we love
the people. [Laughter]
>>Gustavo Arellano: Yeah. More Mexicans are starting to go to Canada because of that,
first of all there’s no jobs here, in Canada it’s boom time and Canadians are so damn
nice of course we wanna go up to Canada. One of the weird things in my column, it has a
big Canadian audience and so I get a lot of questions from Canadians and one question
that I’ve been asked more than anything from those Canadians, they always go, “Us
Canadians, we’re nice. You Mexicans, you’re nice. Those Americans are a bunch of jerks.”
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: “Why don’t we get
our countries together and take over the United States?”
[Laughter] >>Gustavo Arellano: And these aren’t just
random people. It’s a question that, or a concerted effort by these Canadians. This
has been asked of me again and again and again. And Americans are nice, again, we go through
our fits and fits, our growing pains but we do grow out of it so I’m always an optimist,
again, when it comes to food, that shows the path, that shows the way, everyone will love
us one way or another. And no, we’re not going anywhere, trust me. We’re not going
anywhere.
>>Michael Brown: Gustavo thank you very much.
>>Gustavo Arellano: Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you all.
[Applause] >>Gustavo Arellano: And then, I guess, yeah
I’ll be over at that table if you guys want me to sign your books I’m more than happy
to and, again, thank you so much for being able to be here and I hope you guys like the
Dos Chinos cause they’re one of my favorite food.