Let's play a game.
Imagine that a freelance food writer from New York or LA is coming to town to do a piece on Chicago cuisine. This writer will likely sell this story to a national food magazine, major newspaper, or national cable television channel. You have been hired to accompany this writer around town to some great examples of restaurants in specific categories. The list of categories is provided to you in advance.
What would be on this list?
If you said "deep-dish pizza", "hot dogs", "Italian beefs", "flaming Greek cheese", and maybe "molecular cuisine" (think moto/Alinea), you've hit the nail on the head.
Coverage of Chicago food in the national media has reached a nadir of creativity. With the exception of recent coverage of the new "molecular" movement in Chicago, we have become a caricature of gastronomy. We are drawn as a city that piles tons of meat on bread and eats as much cheese as possible. How many more Food Network shows do we need that show how deep-dish pizza is made?
What's most troubling about this is the outright dismissal of the large and varied ethnic populations that have exploded in Chicago in the past 25 years. What was once a town defined by the German-influenced hot dog and the Italian-influenced pizza is now a town defined by the authentic Mexican antojito and bowl of birria. From post-barhopping taco and burrito joints in Lakeview to authentic pozolerias in La Villita to Bayless and his upscale offspring that dot the North Side, Mexican food covers Chicago like a blanket.
Still, if you suggest "Mexican food" to a food enthusiast visiting Chicago they'll laugh and remind you that this isn't L.A. or Houston. Nothing illustrated this point for me better than Mark Bittman's column about cooking tacos at home in the NY Times (7/26/06):
You may never have had a really terrific taco, especially if you live on the East Coast. There are a lot of tacos around, certainly, and many of them can be satisfying enough. But the genuine article is often hard to come by — except in Mexico, on the West Coast and in the Southwest, where taco passion runs deep. And when the Westerners travel east, they frequently fall into despair.
After he wrote this, I emailed Mr. Bittman and invited him to spend a couple days in Chicago. I bet it would take him a week just to eat at every authentic taqueria located within a half-mile of my house.
Unfortunately, this habit of overlooking Chicago's authentic Mexican cuisine does not live solely beyond the city limits. When I meet people who find out that I write a food blog, a common statement I hear is "I can't find any good, authentic Mexican food in Chicago". Nothing shocks me more.
Thankfully, we have some local food writers who know the score.
Local food writer and Gorilla Gourmet David Hammond has spent a good portion of the last few years eating and researching authentic Mexican food in Chicago. He has shared many of his experiences through various outlets including Gorilla Gourmet, an excellent DVD that takes the viewer on a tour of the amazing array of Mexican street food available at the Maxwell Street Market. One of his most recent efforts is a multi-part series for The Reader entitled "Beyond the Burrito". This series of pieces has been running for a year now and has six installments. In each of these pieces David breaks down the culinary offerings of a specific region of Mexico and tells you a couple of places in Chicago where you can find a good example of each. The series breaks down like this:- Part 1, Jalisco (PDF link): Describes some of the finest bowls of brothy food to come out of Mexico: birra, carne en su jugo, and pozole.
- Part 2, Michoacan (PDF link): Includes my favorite antojito, huaraches.
- Part 3, Oaxaca (PDF link): Who doesn't love mole?
- Part 4, Veracruz: Outlines some of the joys of Mexican seafood.
- Part 5, Guerrero: Cecina, a cured meat preparation, is another one of my favorites.
- Part 6, Yucatan, Nayarit, Nuevo Leon, and others Released in today's Reader.
Taken as a whole, this series paints an exciting picture of the variety and authenticity of Mexican cuisine in Chicago. If you missed it the first time in print, I hope you take the time to read the pieces. Hopefully you'll discover some interesting aspects of Mexican food that live well beyond the burrito.
I hope that the work that David is doing in promoting this authentic flavor of Chicago is a bell-weather for the future of food writing about Chicago. It's time that the rest of the country took notice of this important aspect of eating in Chicago.
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