It was gratifiying to discover that Mexico City makes the elite six global cities which qualify as Culinary Backstreets. I've visited four of them, and in each city, I did actually eat from vendors carts, holes in the wall, and local greasy spoons.
Actually, eating at the tarp covered shed where I enjoy my comida corrida lunch nearly daily, I was lamenting the fact that there's no Yelp or Google Reviews for these kind of places. You never really know where the good ones are, what to order, how late they're open. Usually there is no phone number, and the addresses are always approximate.
It's interetsing that for an English language site (American?) there are no American or northern European cities. New Orleans should have probably made the list. Perhaps NY, LA, and Chicago are too mainstreet for culinary backstreets. Actually, come to think of it, in the US, typically the case is you either live somewhere with a great food culture which is mainstreeted or you live somewhere with really mediocre food in general, and the search for really good common food is a monumental undertaking.
In Mexico,
if someone invited me back to thier home village for a meal in near the
old village center, I bet it would be delicious and cheap enough for the
common campesino to also enjoy. In the US, if someone wanted to
take me back to thier small home town, I'm not going to be much
impressed with the fare, especially if its in the midwest. I've seen a
lot of small and big towns across the US, and good, cheap, or even reasonably priced, food is hard
to find. Here are the dining options in small town USA:
- McFranchize
- Loco Paco's Casa de Queso
- TGIFernBar (ritzy small town)
- Breadsticks!
- Greasy's All U Can Eat Cafeteria
- Spud's Burnt Chicken and 3.2 Beer
- Hit-N-Miss Local Fried Things
- Chang's Imperial Pu Pu Palace
- Diesel 'n Waffles
- The Sad Fish
- La Tratoria Ragu Spagetti-o
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