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Don’t Call It Tex-Mex

A writer and chef is on a quest to tell the world about Texas Mexican food, the cooking of South Texas and northern Mexico that predates and spans the border.

By Rachel Wharton

HOUSTON — This city’s Second Ward is full of temptations for Adán Medrano, a writer and chef who lives just a few miles southeast.

The Mexican-American neighborhood is home to the perfect flaky tortillas at Doña María Mexican Cafe , scratch-made in flour or corn, and ready to be folded around eggs with the fine threads of dried beef called machacado. It has the off-menu roasted tamales at the Original Alamo Tamales , with blackened husks and caramelized edges of masa and meat. And there’s Taqueria Chabelita, where the owner, Isabel Henriquez Hernandez, makes pinto beans whose smoky intensity comes not from pork fat, but from a slow char in a hot pan.

For Mr. Medrano, who grew up in San Antonio with generations of relatives on both sides of the Rio Grande, this is all his comfort food, his culinary heritage, his comida casera, or Mexican home cooking.

Just don’t call it Tex-Mex, he said. He prefers to describe it as Texas Mexican, which is also how he describes himself.

Texas Mexican is the indigenous cooking of South Texas, according to Mr. Medrano, 71, whose second cookbook, “Don’t Count the Tortillas: The Art of Texas Mexican Cooking,” will be published in June by Texas Tech University Press. It’s the food that’s been made by families like his on this land since before the Rio Grande marked a border, when Texas was a part of Mexico, and long before then.

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Essay on Mexican Culture

Students are often asked to write an essay on Mexican Culture in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Mexican Culture

Introduction to mexican culture.

Mexican culture is rich with history and color. It comes from ancient civilizations like the Aztecs and Mayans. Today, it’s a mix of those traditions with influences from Spain and other countries. People in Mexico are known for their love of family, music, and food.

Festivals and Holidays

Mexico is famous for its lively festivals. One of the biggest is the Day of the Dead, where families remember loved ones who have passed away. They decorate altars and graves with bright flowers and offer favorite foods.

Traditional Mexican Food

Mexican food is known worldwide. Tacos, enchiladas, and guacamole come from here. Corn, beans, and chili peppers are important ingredients. Meals are often shared with family, making eating a social event.

Music and Dance

Music and dance are key parts of Mexican culture. Mariachi bands play guitars, violins, and trumpets. Folk dances tell stories of Mexico’s history. The colorful costumes and lively rhythms are enjoyed by people of all ages.

Art and Craft

Mexican culture is a tapestry of traditions that celebrate life. It’s a blend of history, art, food, and music that brings joy to people and makes Mexico unique.

250 Words Essay on Mexican Culture

Mexican culture is a rich blend of native traditions and Spanish influence. It is known for its colorful art, lively music, and strong family values. Mexico’s history shapes its culture, from ancient civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs to the Spanish conquest.

Traditional Food

Mexican food is famous worldwide. Tacos, enchiladas, and tamales are just a few examples of the tasty dishes. Ingredients like corn, beans, and chili peppers are common. Families often gather to enjoy meals together, making food a central part of social life.

Festivals and Celebrations

Mexicans love to celebrate. One of the most famous events is the Day of the Dead, when people honor their loved ones who have passed away. There are also colorful parades, dances, and music. Christmas and Cinco de Mayo are other big celebrations full of joy and traditions.

Music and dance are vital in Mexican culture. Mariachi bands play lively tunes with violins, trumpets, and guitars. Folk dances tell stories of Mexico’s history and people. Young and old enjoy the rhythms and movements that make up Mexico’s musical heritage.

Family Values

Mexican culture is a tapestry woven from history, food, celebrations, music, and family. It is a culture full of warmth, color, and life, inviting everyone to experience its beauty and traditions.

500 Words Essay on Mexican Culture

Mexican culture is a rich and colorful tapestry woven from a history that goes back thousands of years. It includes the traditions of the ancient Maya and Aztec civilizations, as well as influences from Spanish colonists who came to Mexico over 500 years ago. Today, Mexican culture is known around the world for its vibrant music, delicious food, and festive celebrations.

Mexicans love to celebrate, and they have many festivals throughout the year. One of the most famous is the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos, which is a time when people remember and honor their loved ones who have passed away. During this festival, families create altars with photos, candles, and flowers, and they might also visit the graves of their relatives. Another important celebration is Mexican Independence Day on September 16th, which marks the day Mexico began its fight for freedom from Spain.

Music and dance are at the heart of Mexican social life. Mariachi bands, with their trumpets, violins, and guitars, are a common sight at parties and celebrations. Folk dances, such as the Jarabe Tapatío, often known as the Mexican Hat Dance, tell stories through movement and are performed wearing traditional costumes. These art forms not only provide entertainment but also help to pass down history and traditions from one generation to the next.

Art and Handicrafts

Family is a very important part of life in Mexico. Many generations often live in the same house or neighborhood, and they support each other in daily life. Respect for elders is a key value, and children are taught to listen to and learn from their parents and grandparents. Family members celebrate important events together, such as birthdays and religious ceremonies, which helps to strengthen their bonds.

Mexican culture is a beautiful blend of history, art, food, and family. It is a culture that is both ancient and ever-changing, as new generations add their own stories to the rich tapestry that has been created over thousands of years. Understanding Mexican culture can help people from all over the world appreciate the diversity and depth of human traditions.

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The unexpected lessons of Mexican food

Nachos and burritos helped me understand my immigrant father and make sense of my strange biracial existence, by armando montano.

I first discovered cooking at age 5, when the earthy smell of boiling pinto beans lured me into the kitchen. It was my dad. He dripped them into an oily skillet and smashed them into a lumpy paste. I started pulling on his apron straps, begging to know the name of the concoction.

“Your grandmother always made this,” he said, stirring the bubbling brown stew and pinching in cumin. “I’ll teach you how to make it. Here, try it.” He raised the dripping spoon to my mouth. The mild tingle of cumin and the soft squish of beans lingered on my pallet, like a spicy fingerprint.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt the push and pull of growing up biracial in America. In the Mexican side of my family I was known as the white one. Even though I spoke Spanish, it was the formal kind learned from classrooms and reading, rather than the one you pick up by bartering with local shop owners over the price of firm avocados, or arguing with parents over a ridiculous curfew. On the other side, my cousins called me a “Wexican,” a white Mexican despite my similarly toned skin.

Cooking, however, taught me to channel my frustrations by creating foods through the addition of sour cream, cilantro, cayenne pepper and tender meat. I could make a food that doesn’t have to be Mexican or American.

- - - - - -

Since I was 6, my cultural anthropologist father took me on his research projects along the border in South Texas. He wanted to show me the tiny corner in his hometown that birthed the iconic Latino food: the nacho.

We ended our 14-hour drive from Colorado as the sun began to set behind the sandy wasteland known as West Texas. We pulled into the Best Western for refuge, the only hotel for almost a hundred miles. The Anglo man gawked at my dark-skinned father and his freckled child, and answered our unasked question: “We’re out of rooms.” He shuffled his papers to avoid eye contact. As my father dragged me closer to the counter, he strengthened his grip on my tiny hand and asked why the parking lot was empty if they were out of rooms.

“Conference,” the man said, glaring at my father and me without blinking.

We spent the night on a ratty mattress supported by cinder blocks at another motel a few miles away. When dawn came, we started our trip again as if nothing happened.

“I hate white people,” I muttered as we approached the sign welcoming us to my dad’s hometown, Eagle Pass. He jerked the car off the road and pounded the brake. He sighed, wiped the sweat from his forehead and glasses, and demanded that I never utter those words again. “How would your mother feel if she heard you say that?” he said.

We arrived at our destination, Eagle Pass, Texas. We weaved through the bustling streets of downtown, lined with banks, money exchanges and a line outside of the local meat market and bakery that snaked past a convenience store where people bought icy Cokes while they waited. From here, we saw the concrete bridge connecting Mexico and the United States over the Rio Grande River. During the '60s, my dad crafted lures on both sides when he fished for catfish, carp, turtles and alligator. Now, the heat sensors and armed guards stop him from crossing as freely. We parked in front of an old hotel and began to wander around town.

Inside the Mancha Meat Market and Bakery, a sharp, sweet smell of caramelized sugar filled the room, emerging from the side ovens cooking sweet bread glazed in a strawberry coat. On Saturdays, however, the stench of bloody, uncooked cow head lurks toward the empanadas and sweet bread.

Barbacoa, slow-cooked beef, had served as the Mancha family's specialty for 70 years. Every week they divide up several beef heads, place its remains in thigh-high containers, lower it into a hot pit, lined with mesquite coals, behind the bakery, and wake up at 6 a.m. the next morning to find the juicy aroma of tender meat, inviting you for a breakfast treat. On Sunday they used to sell well over a hundred pounds of meat for $3 a pound. Hordes of Mexican and Anglo mothers wait patiently to get their bounty for dinner that evening. There were only two weekends when Eagle Pass was left without barbacoa: once when elder Mancha died in the early '90s from heart disease, and the other when his wife joined him several years later.

Being one of the first Hispanics to get a Ph.D. in his program at the University of Pennsylvania weighed down my father whenever he returned to Texas. He liked to keep his accomplishments tucked away from most people. When he stopped by his friends’ bakeries, banks and law offices in Eagle Pass they always greeted him with endearing shouts and playful insults. But underneath the handful of dinner invites and barbecues, he felt a gradual separation with his past.

Sometimes, I think my dad tries to repair his link back to Texas through his students, especially the minority ones. He directed the ethnic studies and chaired the anthropology departments, and in his spare time takes on a mentor role for the first generation and students of color. At lunch he sketches their life plans on ketchup-stained napkins and tells them not to take any crap from losers. Most of those students go to grad school or work as a professional in a high-powered “something.” Not once during these meetings did I ever hear him tell students how to go back to their old lives, Santa Fe, Detroit or Los Angeles, after college. Likely, he was trying to figure it out for himself.

We trekked along the international bridge against a stationary line of cars waiting to enter the United States. Our two-hour wait in customs seemed like nothing compared to their four-hour wait in the unforgiving Texas heat. The sound of nearby dogs barking and angry shouting in Spanish caused me to jump, but before I could turn around, my dad tugged at my shirt, a signal for me to keep going.

The dim glow from the Moderno’s antique lamps and wooden tables made it feel like a speakeasy, rather than a restaurant. During the 1950s it served Mexican as the hangout for Mexican and Texas politicians, including President Lyndon Johnson and Maverick County Judge Roberto Bibb, conniving the different ways the Mexican vote would be delivered. As in those days, people still spent their dollars on beer, milanesa and, according to folk legend, the famous nachos, invented in this restaurant.

The waiter brought our mountain of freshly hot tortilla chips, each with some refried pinto beans, topped with a small slice of cheddar cheese and crowned with a deep green slice of jalapeno. We scarfed down the nachos like a horde of hungry javelinas. For the next 10 minutes we communicated in grunts and moans, only aware of the explosion of flavor in our mouths and the flow of dense cheese bubbling in our stomach.

The nacho, according to my father’s stories, represents the fusion between the Spanish colonizers’ new-world dairy and the Aztecs’ corn and chile. Throughout the centuries, the recipe morphed, first with the independence of Texas and California from Mexico, and then the immigration boom in the 20thcentury. By the 1980s, even though Cortez and Montezuma had withered into the pages of history, their spirits live on in the hot plates of these fried delicacies.

In my junior year of college, I decided go on my own adventure south of the border. But this time, I flew past Piedras Negras and landed in Buenos Aires, where the Mexican restaurants left my mouth bitter and my wallet dry. The Argentine diet consists of rich cheese, juicy steak and fluffy bread, carried over by the millions of Western European immigrants at the beginning of the 20thcentury. The country’s distance and lack of immigrants from Mexico left Argentines confused over the simplest of Mexican dishes. The huevos rancheros scraped against my mouth, and the weak margarita left me thirsty. I missed spicy food so much, that my biweekly trip to the Bolivian vendor for jalapeños resembled a drug deal more than a produce purchase. Something needed to change.

So I started cooking. I spent the day before my feast assembling the ingredients from all over town. The Bolivian woman from down the street sold me the jalapeños, a 10-minute subway ride took me to the dietary shop where I bought dried black beans, and a long bus ride brought me to the only Mexican restaurant that hustled individual tortillas for a dollar apiece.

I made Guillermo cook the black beans, while I diced the tomatoes into fine cubes. Even though he claimed vegetarianism, he rarely ate beans and pulverized them in the skillet with childlike curiosity and enthusiasm. He never knew Mexican food beyond the posh restaurants in the gentrified neighborhood of the city, and saw this as an authentic way to learn about Mexican culture from a real live Mexican.

“I’m technically American, Guillermo,” I told him as I started slicing the avocados. “My dad is first generation and my mom is white. I’m considered Hispanic.”

“Well, you’re the only Mexican I know,” he said. “If you speak Spanish, cook Mexican food, and have Montaño as a last name, I don’t see how you could be anything else.”

The waterfall of beaten eggs I poured into the sizzling skillet engulfed the fried tortilla cubes, until the batter thickened.

“It’s a Mexican peasant dish,” I said sprinkling in the peppers. “When the ingredients in your house were just about to go bad, you threw them all in a pan and ate it.”

Guillermo and his friends took hearty spoonfuls from the skillet, and before I could stab a piece of egg for myself, they wanted more. I slathered the beans Guillermo flattened into a rough paste over a fried tortilla chip, topped it off with a thick piece of cheddar and a single jalapeño slice, and offered it to Guillermo. He ate it all in one greedy bite. After a few seconds of hurried chewing, he stopped, opened his mouth and screamed,

“IT’S TOO HOT! IT FEELS LIKE HELL ON MY TONGUE!” he said right before he gulped down two glasses of strong margaritas. Several hours later, and a bottle of tequila later, he passed out on his bed finally knowing what “real” Mexican food tasted like.

For the next couple of months in Argentina, I cooked regularly for my Argentine friends and told stories about cooking with my dad. The entire time, they noticed how my syntax and vocabulary differed from theirs. Even though I spoke Spanish as a second language, they always referred to me as their “Mexican friend.”

My dad and I eat at Chipotle when we don’t feel like cooking or want to get out of the house. I order a veggie burrito stuffed with grilled peppers, wet black beans, sticky white rice and cheese. My dad usually orders the same, but tortilla-less, because of his doctor-mandated hypoglycemic diet. Even though he likes to call Chipotle “the Mexican PF Chang , ” he likes the taste and befriended everyone who works there. We know the Mexican women behind the counter and we always tell stories about Piedras Negras, while they lament Mexico City and brag about their children winning college scholarships.

Armando Montano is a senior Spanish and Latin American Studies major at Grinnell College. He's an aspiring journalist with a passion for cheeseburgers and travel.

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Column: ‘Slop on a tortilla:’ Why the defense of Mexican and other cultural food is personal

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If there’s one thing I’m going to do, it’s talk about people talking about food . This week, I’m venturing into even choppier waters to dive into #slopgate, an unfortunate trending topic on X, formerly known as Twitter, that started when a French user described Mexican food as “slop on a tortilla.”

This sparked heated conversation online about the quality of various national culinary traditions, a seemingly silly topic that, if looked at a bit closer, has a lot to say about why people get so precious about their culture’s cuisine.

I could come in here and white-knight for Mexican food, but I don’t believe Mexican food needs defending. It speaks for itself. Mexican food is delicious. It is recognized around the world for its rich history, its eclectic ingredients and its inventive techniques.

I’m more interested in digging into why food, specifically, reliably engenders such passionate discourse in public forums. On this front, #slopgate is a useful case study. Shortly after the original post went viral, the conversation became a toxic wasteland of people venting ethnic resentments and hitting below the belt.

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But the more I thought about it, and after pushing through some truly horrendous opinions, some of which were flatly racist, I found at least one aspect of the whole ordeal quite touching. It reminded me that a culture’s cuisine is a tender, vulnerable thing. In some ways, it’s an open love letter to a way of life that is crucially available for an international audience to enjoy.

Language, holidays, death rites, these are beautiful things, and there are many aspects about them that can be shared. But there are walls in place that make them a bit more “our business.” Language, for those who weren’t born into it, can take many years to learn. Holidays, the way we celebrate births, the way we mourn our deaths — these are more intimate, family affairs. Guests are welcome, no doubt, but no cultural institution is quite as pervasive and accessible as food.

Cuisine, for a country, is really “putting yourself out there.” Unlike other cultural institutions, which have at least a few protective veils between them and outsiders, just about anyone can track down a highly recommended restaurant and get a taste of what a faraway land is all about.

Yes, some countries have more ambassadors than others. For example, I think of the wealth of delicious Thai, Indian and, of course, Mexican restaurants around the world, all countries that rightfully take pride in their culinary arts, and who take their reputation on that front very seriously.

Most cultures also put a lot of stock in making sure the house is in order before inviting guests over. At least in my experience, you want to put your best foot forward, and anyone from a Chicano household will likely understand how the opinions of absolute strangers can hold more weight than those of your blood relatives.

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To dismiss a culture’s cuisine, to deem it inferior, is like walking into someone’s house and tipping over a funerary urn.

It’s aiming right for the heart!

To bring it back to the French for a second, you know what movie really understood this? “Ratatouille .” In the scene where the food critic eats the titular dish, he is transported to his childhood, to his mother’s kitchen. Food conjures the ancestors. A family recipe is a manifesto, one that can tell a story long after the person who wrote it down has left this Earth, and anyone, absolutely anyone (without dietary restrictions, of course) can have a taste.

It’s no wonder people get anxious and emotional.

This is also why, when people claim to not like a certain cuisine, people are quick to retort, “Well, you haven’t tried the real thing.” As a descendant of Tejanos, I’ve been in the trenches defending Tex-Mex as a legitimate culinary tradition for years.

Indeed, when deriding Mexican food as “slop,” it’s likely its detractors are thinking of Tex-Mex. On that level, they might actually find common ground with Mexicans who sneer at the mere existence of Tex-Mex, who see it as an attempted deception of some kind, like it’s trying to pass itself off as “real Mexican food,” thus besmirching the mother country’s good name.

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Not helping the case is my great-grandfather’s ad for his Mexican restaurant in Texas.

My point is cuisine is a matter of international “showing face.” People get emotional about it because, consciously or not, they see it as extensions of themselves, of the place they grew up, of their families’ kitchens. I think there’s something really endearing about that.

Sure, it results in a lot of yelling and arguing, but it’s because people care, and it speaks to the power of food as a medium for storytelling. It invites a broad array of people from different walks of life to partake. It is both intimate and exposed. For all the fuss, that’s a beautiful thing.

Of course, in the case of #slopgate, it’s impossible to divorce it from the impact of colonization and from long-standing tropes about the global south, that such places are less sophisticated, less healthy and less worthy of being deemed fine dining.

But it’s also the case that British food is a common punching bag on social media, with “beans on toast” bearing the brunt of the bullying. Many of the most vile posts about Mexican food seem retaliatory in nature, coming from Europeans who are fed up with being told their food is unseasoned gruel.

While I can’t condone the nastiness, I get it. Feelings have been hurt. But as for me, I’m no longer interested in ranking national cuisines. Sure, there are some I like better than others, but I also believe that every wonderful meal is a private universe unto itself, offering its own unique delights and pleasures. The flavors and the ambiance all conspire to create something that can’t really be compared to anything else.

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These perfect experiences have arrived to me in the form of many different kinds of national dishes, in many different restaurants and in many different cities around the world. I don’t see why I should have to choose among them.

Or maybe I’m just hungry.

John Paul Brammer is a columnist, author, illustrator and content creator based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is the author of ”Hola Papi: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons” based on his successful advice column. He has written for outlets including the Guardian, NBC News and the Washington Post. He writes a weekly essay for De Los.

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Read the 1999 essay that made Anthony Bourdain famous

Bourdain’s first big essay shows off all the things that would make him a great food celebrity.

by Constance Grady

Before Anthony Bourdain was a TV host, he was a memoirist. And before he was a memoirist — before Kitchen Confidential , before Medium Raw — he was an essayist.

Actually, technically, Bourdain was first a novelist and a short-story writer. “My lust for print knows no bounds,” he wrote on a submission to the downtown literary journal Between C & D in 1985 . In 1995, he published Bone in the Throat , a crime novel set in the restaurant world, and in 1997 a follow-up, Gone Bamboo . Both novels disappeared quickly and quietly.

Bourdain’s writing career truly began to take off with a 1999 essay for the New Yorker. Titled “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” the piece forms the basis of what would later become Kitchen Confidential — and in its pages, you can see all the elements of Bourdain’s distinctive, charismatic persona already in place.

The essay is framed as advice to a restaurant-goer from someone who knows: Order fish on Tuesday, when it’s fresh and the chef is well-rested from his day off. Never order your food well done, because that’s where kitchen staffs get rid of the worst of their meat. (“The philistine who orders his food well-done is not likely to notice the difference between food and flotsam,” Bourdain explains.) Chicken is for people who can’t make up their minds, but pork is fantastic. At a good restaurant, there will be a stick of butter in every meal.

The savvy insider knowledge is fun, but what really makes the essay pop is Bourdain’s unmistakable voice. There’s lots of bad-boy posturing — Bourdain throws around Spanish obscenities with relish and boasts of the “powerful strain of criminality” in the restaurant industry — and it’s all mixed in with a sensualist’s genuine appreciation for and love of food.

“Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay,” Bourdain writes. “It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals.”

And that was the food world that Bourdain helped create and make wildly fashionable: one in which eaters could unabashedly celebrate their food, and the insistent physical fact of it.

• Anthony Bourdain, chef, memoirist, and TV host, is dead at 61 years old

You can read the entirety of “Don’t Eat Before Reading This” on the New Yorker’s website .

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