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Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food
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About Planet Taco: A Global History Of Mexican Food
The Evolution of the Taco The Original Taco The origins of the taco are still disputed. Some attribute it to the ancient Aztecs; others say the term came from Spain. I have found evidence linking the word to the silver mines of eighteenth-century Mexico, where it referred to a stick of dynamite! Whatever the source, the taco shop first became common in working-class barrios of Mexico City at the end of the nineteenth century. The most popular versions then were barbacoa (pit-roasted beef or lamb), carnitas (fried pork), tripitas (tripe and assorted organ meats), and tacos de minero (miner’s tacos), which were filled simply with steamed potatoes and salsa and are now called tacos sudados (sweaty tacos). The Mexican Taco During the twentieth century, the taco traveled from Mexico City to the provinces, acquiring new flavors such as cochinito pibil (Yucatecan pit-roasted pork) and carne asada (Sonoran grilled beef). Other versions were invented by new immigrants to Mexico. In the 1960s, the children of Lebanese migrants created tacos al pastor by adapting their parents’ vertical rotisserie of shawarma or gyros (originally called tacos árabes or “Arab tacos”) to tasty Mexican pork. Tacos al pastor were part of a 1960s taco renaissance in trendy Mexico City neighborhoods such as Condesa. Fashionable young people ended a night on the town with tacos al carbon (grilled tacos), which replaced plebeian variety meats with more expensive cuts such as bifstek (beef steak) and chuletas (pork chops). Chefs of the nueva cocina mexicana (nouvelle Mexican cuisine), a gourmet movement that started in the 1980s, created their own tacos. Patricia Quintana, for example, served simple guacamole tacos not on corn tortillas but rather on thin rounds of jícama (an apple-flavored indigenous root). Thus, the Mexican taco co
