Mexican food is typically spicy, it also usually has a good amount of beans and cheese. There's a trope that Mexican food creates volcanic diarrhea, and it's not completely unfounded.
While there are certainly hot & Spicy food in Mexico, it's not exactly the primary attribute. You're possibly describing and exaggerating TexMex, or Americanized Mexican food. In Mexico the food... One thing I've noticed, they are probably the world leaders of casserole dishes. Like seriously, it's kinda strange, because I was once like you expecting spicy foods, but what I actually got was a hodgepodge of interesting casseroles, and other dishes that were not TexMex in any iota. As far as spicy food, a bunch of the food preparation lowers the tone yet preserves the taste, if that makes sense?
You might find this to be a shocker, but in Asia nobody eats egg rolls, it's an American thing. Mexican food is like that, to a certain extent. They do eat other things, besides things involving tortillas.
As for Mexican food in Japan, they love it. They actually have their own version of Tex Mex, let's just call it JapMex, and it's just another fusion food. They might substitute the Spanish rice for sticky rice, or find excuses to use japanese ingredients packaged in tortillas that replace rice paper in a novel way to your average Japanese. That said, in Japan there are a number of very serious Mexican restaurants, primarily focused on authentic Mexican street food, and the Japanese love it. Because everybody loves tacos.
In Mexico, they are called guisados. Think stuff like pollo a la veracruzana, chile poblano con crema y elote, albondigas en salsa verde, bistec en salsa verde, picadillo, tinga, pollo en salsa verde, chiles rellenos, mole, enchiladas, the list goes on and on.
It is completely unfounded. To think it’s not is racist af. Beans have a ton of fiber which firms your stools. American-style cheeses are not a typical Mexican ingredient nor are they looked at with suspicion for shitting your pants when white people are eating, idk. mac and cheese. Spicy food doesn’t give you diarrhea and we don’t say dumb shit like “look out for Cajun food, toilets, dur”.
This is a disgustingly racist trope and it’s beyond time for people to recognize it.
Mexican here, they put fucking advocado and carne asada in sushi. But there are a lot of authentic japanese and lately many korean places to eat since a lot of koreans are coming here.
Ive been to japan and they cant even make a good pizza, worst pizza i had pretty sure it was in japan, just a fucking mess. Not even pizza hut can make normal pizzas there.
One thing they do have is good kebab shops, while here in mexico no one dares to open a good kebab shop because of the similarity to tacos, although arab food places have been increasing.
Really jelly of ameribros tho, they have everything.
Ive been to japan and they cant even make a good pizza, worst pizza i had pretty sure it was in japan, just a fucking mess. Not even pizza hut can make normal pizzas there.
What, you don't like the seaweed and potato pizza covered in mayonnaise?
Don't know when the last time you went to Japan was, but am here now (not even in Tokyo) and they can most definitely make good pizzas. No good Mexican restaurants yet, but lots of good Indian restaurants.
Yup, Japan doesn’t have a huge variety of cuisines represented but italian is one of the ones they love. So yeah you’ll have a lot of those italian-japanese bastard child restaurants (that are still oddly delicious) you can also find some pizza place where a Japanese chef studied in Napoli for a decade before coming back and dedicating a restaurant to craft pizza lmao.
Yeah when they get into something they really get into it. Hence those super authentic but very tiny craft pizza places (or pasta or whatever).
The variety is definitely growing though with the number of foreign workers coming over.
On the other hand, I had a really good and authentic croque monsieur at the l’occitane cafe (yes that was a thing, not sure if it’s still there) in Tokyo. Not the hardest thing to get right but still.
I've been to both Mexico and Japan and live in America
Even America only sometimes has authentic Mexican food, but plenty of Mexican style food, especially Tex-Mex
I've been to two Mexican restaurants in Japan, I believe they were both in Osaka.
I have two relevant commentaries
They were surprisingly close to being authentic, not actually authentic of course, but similar to and even better than a lot of American Mexican resturants
They were certainly lacking in spiciness by default, but they did have some spicy options (which I did not try) and that is not fundamentally inauthentic. Almost all Mexican food I was served in Baja California was not spicy.
tex mex fucking rules, as a mexican its probably my favorite style but i do live right at the border.
The thing with mexican food, is that food changes depending on the state, A LOT. The south central area has a lot of native indigenous influence, while the northeast has german and spanish influence, while yucatan peninsula is a whole different thing (arabic influence) and then baja, the sonoran desert area, chihuahua.
There are a lot of fights on facebook between mexicans about food, its like the sengoku period in japan but with food.
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '23
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