#quecas

A quesadilla is a heated and folded tortilla with melted cheese and sometimes other fillings such as ham or meat or chicken or many of other options. Quesadillas NEED to have cheese. The name quite literally refers it. Quesadillas=Queso=Cheese.

A queca is the infamous “quesadilla without cheese”. People from the capital of Mexico (the City of Mexico or CDMX) are pretty infamous for this take. It is practically exclusive to this region of the country and its surrounding areas and the preparation it’s basically that same except a queca “does not already include cheese”; you have to ask for it if you wish for any. And that for some reason the tortilla may be fried. But people from there still technically regard it as a quesadilla. Even if they don’t use the word.

The difference between a queca and a taco, to my understanding, is the size and the fact that people fry quecas.

So PLEASE, stop saying that in quesadillas cheese is optional. The origin of the dish is quite literally indigenous people adding CHEESE to corn tortillas after Spanish colonizers introduced them to dairy. It is that simple.