Having eaten a lot of mass-produced breakfasts on a recent road trip, I appreciated your insights into improving scrambled eggs by adding red sauce and allowing chilaquiles to soak in the salsa for a while. I’m ready to experiment with both dishes in my kitchen--and a from-scratch, not-too-sweet margarita!
As an American you could be right on the sweet thing -- but then again, I think Margaritas are more of a Tex-Mex thing anyway. I don't drink tequila, but at an all-inclusive, I bet they're using one of those terrible slushy machines. My one friend who has spent a lot of time trading with indigenous Mexican potters abhors a margarita and insists on shots only. Sometimes at breakfast when he has a new moonshined one in a mason jar under the sink he wants us to taste.
Things are always too sweet here, and because the bacon is "streaky" as you all say, and buffet bacon is always the cheapest, most industrial bacon, you have to have it cooked hard and crunchy, because all it tastes of is salt and fat anyway.
It sounds like a lovely relaxing vacation though! I've never been on an all-inclusive (or a cruise for that matter) but 2 whole weeks reading by the pool sounds delightful.
Okay the idea that they might be a Tex-Mex thing has slightly thrown me as I've become such a margarita drinker because of London's brilliant Mexican restaurants where, unlike what I was used to in Los Angeles, Tex-Mex is very much eschewed in favour of trying to be as authentic as possible - except for one terrible chain Tex-Mex dishes only really exist in the home here, usually from an Old El Paso meal kit. I must say at the resort they did not go in for the slushie machines (eek!) but most drinks were blended to order in a high power blender. I watched them being made: the sugar yes was the main problem, but I think that trip has put sour mix on my evil foods list until someone proves me otherwise...
The shots thing is interesting. My brain going off on a tangent, I now feel the need to go down a research rabbit hole as to the origins of the lime wedge and salt licks we're all accustomed to a tequila shot being served with.
But yes, it was excellent! I'll always plan the food around trips (currently obsessively looking at places to eat in Pisa for next month) down to the letter but sometimes it is nice for someone else to take care of things - and to be able to try new things without worrying about the price of waste. Because of the too sweet thing, because the swim up bars served Aperol Spritz and they had a large collection of different vermouths and apero drinks behind them we worked our way testing them to find our new favourite Italian spritz which would have been very expensive to do otherwise!
But EVERYTHING in the US, especially when it comes to processed food, is very sweet. There are a ton of accounts online of people who decided to give up sugar, discovered it's in all the stuff they bought like spaghetti sauce, and eventually re-awakened their taste buds to what "real food" tastes like!
Painfully I knew about the Caesar salad's history so was served one that had gone full circle - started in Mexico, but had for sure travelled to America before returning to Mexico..!
I feel a deep dive post coming on all that margarita research - so many different stories in that Wikipedia article!
I'm aware I lived in a bit of a food bubble in Los Angeles with the amazing produce and the fact I don't eat processed food anyway, but the differences I think are pretty obvious tasting a British Chinese takeaway chicken in orange sauce and Panda Express orange chicken. Both are very processed and not very good for you, but I know which one has way more sugar and way more salt!
I also think there's a huge difference between even the old-school American Chinese orange chicken you can get here in my Montana small town, and Panda Express, which was developed in a food lab, tested on people, and commercialized. Same with all the other ethnic cuisines that have gotten popular. Home cooking and small restaurant cooking usually bears a relation to real food, but once you get into the industrial food landscape -- engineered food is so sweet and SO salty.
Our exposure to what "normal Americans" eat is usually via the things they leave behind in our vacation rental. And boy howdy. Industrial food is both fascinating (like a car crash) and terrifying (nope, not eating THAT).
And in the most lighthearted way possible -- while I know intellectually (or at least I keep hearing) that London has decent Mexican food now, as someone who grew up in Chicago with lots of Mexican people, I will never not be incredulous about it!
The whole idea of orange chicken I think is like the chicken tikka masala in British Indian takeaways - does not exist in China at all but has now become so much part of the cannon it becomes it's own thing in authenticity. You start to think our Chinese takeaway orange chicken is something closer to what you'd get in China as a general dish - a sliced breaded cutlet over stir fried veg - but then you get to a neon orange sauce that tastes like the orange drinks in the grocery store fridge I was never allowed as a child and then you see how it has been engineered towards us! I actually make it American-style at home with fresh oranges and you know the artificial ones fall down in comparison because they actually have orange colour: https://www.rachelphipps.com/2022/11/chinese-orange-chicken.html
We used to run rentals too and whilst we salvaged everything sealed and tried it I think the only things we actually kept and consumed were the bottles of vodka and white rum that were often forgotten in the freezers. So sweet, so much sugar as you said, but to be honest I joke about the freezer section in America but they scare me here too - ice cream, frozen veg and specific brands of frozen chips to throw in the air fryer and then I'm out of there because so much of it just does not look like food. But again, as I mentioned I come from the position where the most 'processed' food in my fridge is the barbecue sauce in the fridge door from a brand I wanted to try and the cook from frozen ciabatta in the freezer because whilst I make our loaves from scratch ciabatta is time consuming!
Oh and I totally get that, the London food evolution has been very rapid from the position we were in 15 years ago. Whilst so much of the brilliant immigrant-led authenticity in the city is Middle Eastern or from Asia I think Mexican food got lucky because as mentioned we never really dined out for non-authentic, low quality Mexican food. I think the independent restaurants that sat somewhere between casual and fine dining in price point came first; the bad chain that causes me shudders only came much later. There are not many good places though - there was a Twitter thread recently which was Californians in Los Angeles bitching they could not get what they perceived as a proper taco, and the London food establishment piling on both telling them that they did not know where to look, and what made tacos in Los Angeles more authentic anyway!
We also didn't find any great margaritas even after spending a cumulative of over six months in the Yucatan. However, for us, the problem wasn't that the Margaritas was too sweet. It was more like they were like dirty water. The limes were over-squeezed, and the margaritas didn't seem to be made with much care.
We found this to be the case in a number of different restaurants, even when the food was good. It was puzzling.
I'm pondering if the lime does not matter as much as we think it does outside of Mexico - I was given a few made with lemon juice (terrible) before I eventually gave up. I also wonder if we put the perfect margarita on a pedestal too much (and me in particular because it is my favourite cocktail) and it is treated akin to us Brits and our gin and tonics. Yes you *can* get perfectly crafted ones with garnishes, a measured ratio of ice to gin to tonic, and careful pairings of gin to tonic water, but usually in the pub or at home it is filling a glass with ice (or how many cubes are left in the tray if you don't own an American fridge freezer), sloshing in some gin or overfilling a jigger, and topping up with whatever tonic was on special offer that weel.
I just returned from two weeks in Mexico City. I wonder if the sweetness that bothered you stems from the fact that Mexican soft drinks are often made with real cane sugar, as opposed to the corn syrup that American manufacturers use? To me (an American), Mexican Coca-Cola tastes better than American bottled Coke. Jamaica in Mexico tastes purely (as opposed to muddily) sweet-tart. Completely agree with you about the delights of Mexican chilaquiles.
Ha! I was just about to say this--you’ve nailed it. I’m an Arizona reader whose margarita-fueled days are long behind me (I certainly was not savoring them long enough to even notice the sweetness factor). My husband and I vacation in Cancun often and can’t get enough of the Mexican Cokes.
And, Rachel: a beautifully captured food travelogue! I
I always knew it was different as a non-coke drinker, but now I'm actually waiting for J to wake up (I'm a very early riser!) so I can question him about the coke he drank whilst we were out there!
You see, that was 100% the case with the palomas, which I'm used to made with fresh grapefruit juice and they served with Jarritos soda which was way sweeter than I'm used to (but I should also point out I only drink soda when I'm very tired or very sick so I'm not a regular drinker) but that does now have me thinking of the flavoured syrups that went into a lot of the drinks too.
Part of me has always wished I liked cola so I could taste the difference between American and Mexican coke as it has always fascinated me - bizarre fact, every time our Prime Minister goes to America or South America he flies some back with him he's so obsessed with Mexican coke, which you just can't get here.
I'm also already missing my daily chilaquiles, of any quality! We can get stunning Mexican food in London, but sadly, I've never seen them on a menu!
Thanks for this lovely piece of writing!
Having eaten a lot of mass-produced breakfasts on a recent road trip, I appreciated your insights into improving scrambled eggs by adding red sauce and allowing chilaquiles to soak in the salsa for a while. I’m ready to experiment with both dishes in my kitchen--and a from-scratch, not-too-sweet margarita!
I loved reading about your road trip! And let me know how all go if you indeed get to experimenting with them!
I definitely will! Thanks, Rachel!
As an American you could be right on the sweet thing -- but then again, I think Margaritas are more of a Tex-Mex thing anyway. I don't drink tequila, but at an all-inclusive, I bet they're using one of those terrible slushy machines. My one friend who has spent a lot of time trading with indigenous Mexican potters abhors a margarita and insists on shots only. Sometimes at breakfast when he has a new moonshined one in a mason jar under the sink he wants us to taste.
Things are always too sweet here, and because the bacon is "streaky" as you all say, and buffet bacon is always the cheapest, most industrial bacon, you have to have it cooked hard and crunchy, because all it tastes of is salt and fat anyway.
It sounds like a lovely relaxing vacation though! I've never been on an all-inclusive (or a cruise for that matter) but 2 whole weeks reading by the pool sounds delightful.
Okay the idea that they might be a Tex-Mex thing has slightly thrown me as I've become such a margarita drinker because of London's brilliant Mexican restaurants where, unlike what I was used to in Los Angeles, Tex-Mex is very much eschewed in favour of trying to be as authentic as possible - except for one terrible chain Tex-Mex dishes only really exist in the home here, usually from an Old El Paso meal kit. I must say at the resort they did not go in for the slushie machines (eek!) but most drinks were blended to order in a high power blender. I watched them being made: the sugar yes was the main problem, but I think that trip has put sour mix on my evil foods list until someone proves me otherwise...
The shots thing is interesting. My brain going off on a tangent, I now feel the need to go down a research rabbit hole as to the origins of the lime wedge and salt licks we're all accustomed to a tequila shot being served with.
But yes, it was excellent! I'll always plan the food around trips (currently obsessively looking at places to eat in Pisa for next month) down to the letter but sometimes it is nice for someone else to take care of things - and to be able to try new things without worrying about the price of waste. Because of the too sweet thing, because the swim up bars served Aperol Spritz and they had a large collection of different vermouths and apero drinks behind them we worked our way testing them to find our new favourite Italian spritz which would have been very expensive to do otherwise!
Like the Cesar Salad, it seems to have a long history, deeply entwined with tourism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita
But EVERYTHING in the US, especially when it comes to processed food, is very sweet. There are a ton of accounts online of people who decided to give up sugar, discovered it's in all the stuff they bought like spaghetti sauce, and eventually re-awakened their taste buds to what "real food" tastes like!
Painfully I knew about the Caesar salad's history so was served one that had gone full circle - started in Mexico, but had for sure travelled to America before returning to Mexico..!
I feel a deep dive post coming on all that margarita research - so many different stories in that Wikipedia article!
I'm aware I lived in a bit of a food bubble in Los Angeles with the amazing produce and the fact I don't eat processed food anyway, but the differences I think are pretty obvious tasting a British Chinese takeaway chicken in orange sauce and Panda Express orange chicken. Both are very processed and not very good for you, but I know which one has way more sugar and way more salt!
I also think there's a huge difference between even the old-school American Chinese orange chicken you can get here in my Montana small town, and Panda Express, which was developed in a food lab, tested on people, and commercialized. Same with all the other ethnic cuisines that have gotten popular. Home cooking and small restaurant cooking usually bears a relation to real food, but once you get into the industrial food landscape -- engineered food is so sweet and SO salty.
Our exposure to what "normal Americans" eat is usually via the things they leave behind in our vacation rental. And boy howdy. Industrial food is both fascinating (like a car crash) and terrifying (nope, not eating THAT).
And in the most lighthearted way possible -- while I know intellectually (or at least I keep hearing) that London has decent Mexican food now, as someone who grew up in Chicago with lots of Mexican people, I will never not be incredulous about it!
The whole idea of orange chicken I think is like the chicken tikka masala in British Indian takeaways - does not exist in China at all but has now become so much part of the cannon it becomes it's own thing in authenticity. You start to think our Chinese takeaway orange chicken is something closer to what you'd get in China as a general dish - a sliced breaded cutlet over stir fried veg - but then you get to a neon orange sauce that tastes like the orange drinks in the grocery store fridge I was never allowed as a child and then you see how it has been engineered towards us! I actually make it American-style at home with fresh oranges and you know the artificial ones fall down in comparison because they actually have orange colour: https://www.rachelphipps.com/2022/11/chinese-orange-chicken.html
We used to run rentals too and whilst we salvaged everything sealed and tried it I think the only things we actually kept and consumed were the bottles of vodka and white rum that were often forgotten in the freezers. So sweet, so much sugar as you said, but to be honest I joke about the freezer section in America but they scare me here too - ice cream, frozen veg and specific brands of frozen chips to throw in the air fryer and then I'm out of there because so much of it just does not look like food. But again, as I mentioned I come from the position where the most 'processed' food in my fridge is the barbecue sauce in the fridge door from a brand I wanted to try and the cook from frozen ciabatta in the freezer because whilst I make our loaves from scratch ciabatta is time consuming!
Oh and I totally get that, the London food evolution has been very rapid from the position we were in 15 years ago. Whilst so much of the brilliant immigrant-led authenticity in the city is Middle Eastern or from Asia I think Mexican food got lucky because as mentioned we never really dined out for non-authentic, low quality Mexican food. I think the independent restaurants that sat somewhere between casual and fine dining in price point came first; the bad chain that causes me shudders only came much later. There are not many good places though - there was a Twitter thread recently which was Californians in Los Angeles bitching they could not get what they perceived as a proper taco, and the London food establishment piling on both telling them that they did not know where to look, and what made tacos in Los Angeles more authentic anyway!
We also didn't find any great margaritas even after spending a cumulative of over six months in the Yucatan. However, for us, the problem wasn't that the Margaritas was too sweet. It was more like they were like dirty water. The limes were over-squeezed, and the margaritas didn't seem to be made with much care.
We found this to be the case in a number of different restaurants, even when the food was good. It was puzzling.
I'm pondering if the lime does not matter as much as we think it does outside of Mexico - I was given a few made with lemon juice (terrible) before I eventually gave up. I also wonder if we put the perfect margarita on a pedestal too much (and me in particular because it is my favourite cocktail) and it is treated akin to us Brits and our gin and tonics. Yes you *can* get perfectly crafted ones with garnishes, a measured ratio of ice to gin to tonic, and careful pairings of gin to tonic water, but usually in the pub or at home it is filling a glass with ice (or how many cubes are left in the tray if you don't own an American fridge freezer), sloshing in some gin or overfilling a jigger, and topping up with whatever tonic was on special offer that weel.
It's great you took a time out and enjoyed yourself, Rachel. The onions will always be there waiting.
I honestly can't believe how much better we feel for it - we honestly should have done it much sooner!
I’m pretty sure that fruit is prickly pear!
I've Googled pictures and you're right! Thank you!!
I just returned from two weeks in Mexico City. I wonder if the sweetness that bothered you stems from the fact that Mexican soft drinks are often made with real cane sugar, as opposed to the corn syrup that American manufacturers use? To me (an American), Mexican Coca-Cola tastes better than American bottled Coke. Jamaica in Mexico tastes purely (as opposed to muddily) sweet-tart. Completely agree with you about the delights of Mexican chilaquiles.
Ha! I was just about to say this--you’ve nailed it. I’m an Arizona reader whose margarita-fueled days are long behind me (I certainly was not savoring them long enough to even notice the sweetness factor). My husband and I vacation in Cancun often and can’t get enough of the Mexican Cokes.
And, Rachel: a beautifully captured food travelogue! I
I always knew it was different as a non-coke drinker, but now I'm actually waiting for J to wake up (I'm a very early riser!) so I can question him about the coke he drank whilst we were out there!
And thank you! x
You see, that was 100% the case with the palomas, which I'm used to made with fresh grapefruit juice and they served with Jarritos soda which was way sweeter than I'm used to (but I should also point out I only drink soda when I'm very tired or very sick so I'm not a regular drinker) but that does now have me thinking of the flavoured syrups that went into a lot of the drinks too.
Part of me has always wished I liked cola so I could taste the difference between American and Mexican coke as it has always fascinated me - bizarre fact, every time our Prime Minister goes to America or South America he flies some back with him he's so obsessed with Mexican coke, which you just can't get here.
I'm also already missing my daily chilaquiles, of any quality! We can get stunning Mexican food in London, but sadly, I've never seen them on a menu!