Gustavo Arellano was met with laughter and applause as he presented a discussion at Mesa on April 17, while promoting his new book “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.”
As Chicano Studies Department Chair Cesar Lopez said during his introduction, Arellano “has been the subject of press coverage in national and international newspapers, The Today Show, Hannity, and The Colbert Report, and his commentaries regularly appear on Marketplace and the Los Angeles Times.”
The award-winning author, who serves as editor of the OC Weekly and started the notorious “Ask a Mexican” column, said he wrote this book to explain “how Mexican food became a multi-billion dollar industry in America.”
Drawing laughter from the audience, Arellano remarked, “It took me three years to write this book and the research was really, really hard. I traveled all across the United States eating nothing but Mexican food for three years. So much hard work.”
Eliciting more laughs and amusement from the crowd, Arellano began to describe how Americans started absorbing Mexican food into their cuisine during the late 19th century. Arellano’s research found that the first Mexican dishes that gained popularity were tamales and chile con carne, or simply “chili” as it is commonly called today. “These dishes set the template for how Mexican dishes would be consumed in the 1890s all the way until today,” Arellano said.
As further explained in “Taco USA,” chili con carne first became popular in San Antonio in the 1870s, and thereafter became world famous. “What happened,” Arellano explained, “was the railroad got into San Antonio and they started getting tourists from all over the world who wanted to see the Alamo. So you had these newspaper correspondents who went there to report, and it was there that they discovered Mexican food.”
Chili con carne circa the late 1800s was a bit different than how it is known today. Arellano stated, “Chili con carne was served in a very specific way – by women who would set up these stalls in the plaza and they would put on a dress, get a guy to play guitar and maybe string up some lights. They would stay there from dusk until dawn.”
The media at the time called these women “chili queens”. According to Arellano, “[The media] would say, ‘Go to the Alamo, go be patriotic and get some chili from these chili queens’.”
After chili con carne was introduced to mainstream America at the 1893 World Fair in Chicago, its popularity quickly propelled it to being a staple all across the country. “Americans love chili con carne so much,” Arellano said, “that no one knows it’s Mexican food anymore. We think of it as quintessentially American as hotdogs and hamburgers. Now we have chiliburgers and chilidogs, but at one time, chili was actually Mexican food.”
From Roberto’s to Humberto’s, Arellano’s book also delves into the mysterious relationship between the many “-bertos” taco shops that are scattered throughout San Diego county. “By my count,” Arellano stated, “there’s at least 250 of those restaurants in San Diego county alone. That doesn’t count all those ‘bertos’ that went up to Orange County.” With these taco shops extending all the way into Nevada and Arizona, in total there are about 500 in the entire Southwest.
“When I came down to San Diego,” Arellano recalled, “I wondered, ‘Are they all related or something?’ Basically, they are.” Arellano tracked down the original Roberto’s, which was created by a San Ysidro man named Roberto Rebledo. Born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Rebledo came to the United States and began delivering tortillas all around San Diego during the 1950s and 1960s. He then decided to settle down and open up a restaurant instead.
After his first restaurant enjoyed success, he opened more and elicited the help of his two nephews to manage some of the restaurants; however, due to a falling out, Rebledo fired his nephews. “His nephews still had the restaurant so they had to change the name,” said Arellano. Thus, Alberto’s and its many incarnations were born.
There are many variations of Roberto’s taco shops, but if they were all united as a chain or franchise, they would be the third largest Mexican food chain in the United States, just trailing behind fast-food giants Taco Bell and Del Taco.
As Arellano opened the discussion to questions, Mesa student Karen Cota was impressed by his thoughts on immigration. “I really liked how he said that if these people are willing to risk their lives to come to our country, then we should give them a chance,” Cota said.
After concluding his discussion and addressing questions that ranged from career advice to the history of burritos, Arellano left the audience with this reminder: “If it’s good, whether it’s Mexican food or your career, go for it.”
