When people argue that food from Chinese and Mexican restaurants in the US are not 'real' representations of that culture's cuisine ignore the historical reality that these dishes were developed by diasporic communities striving to recreate the flavors of home with available resources. Such criticism frames adaptation as a loss of authenticity, rather than recognizing it as a sincere and evolving expression of culture by people separated from their homeland.
Also it just overlooks the fact that large parts of the United States literally used to be Mexico. Like yeah, chinese-american food is a diaspora cuisine and it's awesome.
But Mexican-american food is "regional cuisine that often began developing in what used to be part of Mexico/Mexican territory and continued to develop after the borders changed."
Some of it isn't "striving to recreate the flavors of home." Sure, maybe like, Mexican food in Chicago is about that. But I'm from Arizona. My family is from Tucson by way of (Tucson being annexed) and then Sonora & Chihuahua. We're not trying to recreate anything — because Tucson is still in the Sonoran desert.
This is a map of the Sonoran desert region:
I've helpfully marked Tucson.
Just to be clear, it takes an hour and 20 minutes nowadays to drive to the Mexican side of Nogales. You could walk the journey in a little over 27 hours. So obviously less than a week on horseback.
What I'm saying here is that the "diaspora" is maybe implying that Mexican-american cuisine largely developed with huge geographical distances or lack of access to Mexican cultivars or something but like.
Here's a map of New Spain in 1819:
Here's a map of the War:
I'm just saying that a lot of Mexican-American food is literally just food and culinary traditions that Mexicans were eating in northern parts of Mexico/New Spain.
It might shock people to learn, but there were Mexicans living in Mexico. And parts of Mexico are now the United States. And those Mexicans, if they stayed, are now Mexican Americans, and our culinary traditions have undergone normal growth and innovations over time. Mexico-mexicans also had normal innovations and growth in their regional cuisines as well! That's just how time and increased access with faster transport works. I have met a lot of people from Mexico who seem to think the second they're in San Diego instead of Tijuana, that the food is no longer authentic Mexican food and...it is baffling to me. It's an invisible line in the sand.
The border is not actually an impenetrable wall. The food doesn't become inauthentic at border patrol checkpoints. Those didn't even exist not that long ago.
It's authentic to something that isn't strictly about citizenship and documented nationality.
Of course! This is a great addition. It's crucial to remember that not all 'ethnic' food in a country comes from diaspora. Some of it is simply the native cuisine of land that was annexed.
