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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   2909 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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As I understand it, paella (which hails from Spain) is not even all that popular in Mexico, and certainly isn't "Mexican" per se. So I think there's an amusing double-layered inauthenticity going on here. In fact I don't think I've ever seen it in a Mexican restaurant, only in Spanish ones (although I live in the Northeast, so neither of us is really getting an authentic picture of Mexican cuisine... the one time I went to Mexico we stayed at a resort, but for what it's worth, the resort had both a Mexican and a Spanish restaurant: the Spanish restaurant had paella, and the Mexican one did not).

Anyway, for me, it has to be American-style spaghetti and meatballs. How could the Italians come up with each of spaghetti, meatballs, and marinara sauce and then not combine them in one dish?

Rural Italy was quite poor. Making spaghetti was laborious. Meatballs were a rare treat to be savoured.

They didn't want to drown all that in tomato sauce.

Seafood pasta dishes are actually more traditional.

Once they started extruding pasta in the 19th century it became a lot cheaper.

Italian-Americans could afford meat and had access to extruded pasta and canned tomato sauce. So they experimented with traditional ideas and new ingredients.

Seafood pasta dishes are actually more traditional.

To be fair, that's also true in Japan- instant noodles (just add water and boil for a while) are convergent evolution.

Thank you, I was wondering for a while whether I was actually wrong and that that's just how Mexican paella is. I wish I could drag someone who would know to my favorite spots and ask them about everything on the menu. Are nacho fajitas authentic? What about all these quesadillas? Notable Mexican dish omissions from American-Mexican cuisine includes pozole, which is insanely common in Mexico apparently but nowhere around here makes it. I asked a waiter if they had it once, and he laughed and said "my mom makes it just about every night" but admitted the restaurant does not make it.

I had no idea spaghetti and meatballs was a falsehood. I have to wonder what they do with their spaghetti.

  • Nacho fajitas are not authentic Mexican-Mexican but they are authentic American - Tejano/Tex-Mex to be specific.
  • Quesadillas, if on corn tortillas with an appropriate cheese, are authentic. Fun note, in Mexico City you have to explicitly ask for queso in your quesadilla otherwise you'll get a tortilla with fillings but no cheese. This makes Mexicans from other parts of Mexico angry.

Thanks. I'll have to take some photos of a menu and send them to you sometime.

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