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Adán Medrano, left, with Ramon Vazquez and Andrew Zimmern at Land Heritage Institute
Editor’s Note: Adán Medrano is a chef, film maker and author who has championed the unique cuisine served in home kitchens across south Texas crafted by cooks of Mexican descent. This cuisine is Texas Mexican, and Medrano has written books and produced a documentary – Truly Texas Mexican – on the topic. el Restaurante publisher Ed Avis interviewed Medrano on August 5, 2024. This is the first of three parts of that interview, edited slightly for clarity. Click here to read the second part, in which Medrano discusses the indigenous roots of Mexican cuisine. Click here to read the third part, in which he describes the true meaning of "enchilada."
Ed Avis: Early in your movie Truly Texas Mexican you mention the concept of making beauty out of differences. I think that you were discussing this when you were making something in the molcajete. When you said that, what were you thinking?
Adán Medrano: Well, if you think of the molcajete, which is a metaphor for our community and for our food, it really is about taking differences and when you crush them, there's always a little bit of shock involved in encountering differences. You have to come to terms with the other, to understand the other. When you go out of yourself and you look at the other, whether it be a person or a different way of preparing beans or tacos, you come out of yourself and you become stronger because we learn from one another.
And when did you first perceive this concept?
Well, I've always known this, I've lived it. When I was in high school was the first time that I ever went to taste Tex-Mex food at a restaurant that called it Tex-Mex. Before that, all I knew was comida casera, the home cooking of Mexican-American families in South Texas, Northeastern Mexico. That's Texas Mexican cuisine, it's a regional expression of the larger Mexican gastronomy.
And when I went to the restaurant, I saw what they were calling Tex-Mex, and it was very, very heavily laden cheese enchiladas, lots of fried, lots of fat. And I knew that this was not my food because this is not what I ate at home. And so as time went on, I realized that everyone was calling my food Tex-Mex, and I could think, "It's not, it's so different."
I realized that the writers who in the '70s and '80s were writing about food were seeing me and my food as different, but they didn't understand it. And so the closest thing to our food was Tex-Mex. Tex-Mex is a copy, an imitation of Texas Mexican food. It's their version of it, and it's very, very successful and many people love it, and that's great, but it is an imitation. It is an imitation, a version of the Mexican-American family's home cooking.
And that was the first instance that I realized that there are differences, but the differences don't have to be differences that separate you all the time. They can be differences that enrich you if you will give it a chance.
You have made a point in your writings that while Tex-Mex is not Texas Mexican, you don't disparage it. You say it's different, it's just something else.
And it is a very successful restaurant format. The fact that the owner of the Olive Garden is purchasing the Chuy's chain out of Austin, it speaks to its growth. You've got Darden Restaurants paying $605 million for the 101 restaurants, and they just want to grow. And Torchy's is doing so well and it's growing. So those types of successes I think speak to the strength of Texas Mexican, which I call comida casera. Deep, deep down, it's the home cooking that happens in every Mexican-American home in South Texas and also in northern Mexico.
Texas Mexican food is highly influential. If you look at Chuy's, you'll see that the way they cook the food and the way they present themselves as Mexican is a copy and an interpretation of Texas Mexican. For example, the cheese enchiladas. And the nachos. Nachos are Texas Mexican, and they've been appropriated by Tex-Mex. By appropriated, I mean that in a positive way. And if you go to London, they have nachos there.
The influence of Texas Mexican cuisine has been very underrated, but it's very present once you start looking for it. For example, one of the very big chains, I think it's Plaza Azteca, they're more of a high-end type of restaurant, even there they've got Tacos Laredo, they have a burrito that's called Tejano. Notice they don't use Tex-Mex, they use Tejano, which is our word.
And so the influence of Texas Mexican food, it has been very, very strong. It not only gave rise to Tex-Mex, but also is the way that Torchy's Tacos got its inspiration. Because Torchy's Tacos, which is out of Austin, the only really close inspiration that the founder could get is Texas Mexican because that's where he lived.
I think Texas Mexican cuisine is highly influential because the flavors are so, so good. They have direct flavors, they don't blend a lot of ingredients unnecessarily. They put the spices together so that you get to the point where you say, "Yeah, no necesita más. Don't touch it anymore." It just tastes really delicious. If you go to Torchy's, Lupe's Tortillas, Chuy's, they're imitating, they're relating to Texas Mexican styles of cooking.
Have you seen good Texas Mexican cuisine outside of Texas?
Yes, I have. It's in Chicago, it's in Washington D.C. When I was living in Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 1970s, '80s, there were a few Mexican restaurants, and they were definitely Texas Mexican types of cuisine. They were not from Oaxaca, they were not from those places. There are more Texas Mexican restaurants than there are Tex-Mex restaurants.
Just staying in Texas, everywhere in Houston and San Antonio, there's thousands of Mexican restaurants, and they're the Mexican iteration of this landscape. When I read reports and how strong Mexican food is, most of those restaurants are inspired by Texas Mexican food.
Even Taco Bell, if you look at the menu in Taco Bell, it's from this region. They're not serving iguana enchiladas, they're not serving those types of things. They're serving cuisine from our region.
I would say there are two differences between the success of Texas Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants. The first one is that Texas Mexican restaurants are in neighborhoods where the community lives, so they are direct expressions of that community's palette. And if you look at the line cooks, the line cooks mainly are women, and they're line cooks who are hired from that community because they know how to cook what their mothers cooked.
And they know the food, they know the flavors, and they're so successful because the community can trust them, they know that they can get a really good meal there. And they won't be going to Torchy's or they won't be going to these other places because they don't taste right to them. So that's one of the differences.
The other difference is that they're very closely tied to hospitality. And so the hospitality you get there is going to be very personal, very, very familial, “tu…yo,” those types of things. And that's, I think, what keeps people coming back.
But in some ways, it seems like that kind of personal service and that hiring of local women who learned how to cook at home maybe would limit the growth if one wanted to franchise or something like that.
Yes, if you're a business person in the food industry to make money, you will look at things a certain way. These big chains, they're sold on the stock market, they have to show a profit. They're a business, and the aim is to make money through food.
There are other types of restaurants – such as Sylvia's Enchilada Kitchen in Houston or Cochinita & Company in Houston. These types of restaurants are owned by foodies, food lovers who are in the business of restaurants. It's flipped. So they care first and foremost for the food. And the ultimate goal is, "Can I honor people by giving them pleasure, and can I make their moment a moment of beauty?"
Now, this exists also in the chains. They want people to have a good time, but in the design of the food, you want to design it so that it will make you money. All restaurants have to make money, of course. But the point is, how do you make money? And these others will not sacrifice, will not sacrifice the flavor profile or the taste of the palate.
And so what you get in these restaurants is you get a direct connection to the community, you get a direct connection to history, all of the stories of those families. Because anytime they taste your tortillas with carne guisada or whatnot, it will remind them of all the stories, all the times they've had this. And this is what food brings to the table and why these restaurants are not just food sites, they are cultural sites of memory.
Click here to read the second part of this interview, in which Medrano discusses the indigenous roots of Mexican cuisine. Click here to read the third part, in which he describes the true meaning of "enchilada." In the meantime, learn more about him at https://adanmedrano.com/
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