The term “Tex-Mex” can be a loaded word for some folks when talking about the rich tradition of the state’s cross-border cuisine. And yet, under that term are nuances which those outside of Texas could hardly understand without firsthand experience.
Take the multigeographical, yet hyper-regional, culinary world of El Paso. The city sits at the nexus of New Mexican, Texan, indigenous, U.S. and Mexican cultural traditions. So of course the food will taste like no where else on the globe.
Meredith Abarca, a professor of food studies and literature in the Department of English at the University of Texas at El Paso and founder, editor, and curator of the “El Paso Food Voices” project, joined the Standard to discuss what makes El Paso cuisine so unique.
Abarca says that even beyond the borders we can see, the influence of other cultures and histories is what makes El Paso’s culinary landscape just as beautiful and rich as it’s geographical one. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: So we’ve all thought about how would you define this, but you’re the person to answer that question. How do you define the food of this region?
Meredith Abarca: Unique. Kind of hard to define the food, given one word.
You mentioned Texas. What we need to remember about El Paso is that it has always been, before it was El Paso, it’s always been a place of intersections, of crossing, of different communities, different indigenous communities going from what is now New Mexico to Santa Fe to Mexico City.
So this being a region of intersections, every group of people that has come here, comes through here, leaves its signature, its little flavor. Its sazón.
You know, I came to El Paso. I’m not native of El Paso. I’ve been here 23 years/24 years, and I had to come to El Paso to go to a Celtic festival. I had come to the festival to go to a chuckwagon cooking event.
So what I want people to think about food in El Paso is that yes, we are predominantly Mexican, Mexican-American, Hispanic, Latinx, whatever the word you wanna use, but we’re not only that. Here you can find sausages made with pico de gallo. You can find sausages made with asadero cheese.
The mixture… We need to remember that the Lebanese community has been here for a very long time. We need to the remember the Chinese influence. We need remember that with the 1990s with maquiladoras, we had a lot of Japanese influence. So Juárez started developing, having all these sushi places. We have Korean barbecue.
With Fort Bliss, we have an incredible flux of people from all over the United States and the world. With the development of the medical centers, we have a huge population of people from India and that changes the flavors of food.
I want to ask you about your podcast, [El Paso Food Voices]. It looks into a lot of this history that you’re describing here through the lives… It’s sort of an oral history in a sense. Why do you feel capturing those stories is so important?
El Paso Food Voices is a couple of things. It’s more than a podcast. A podcast is part of it. We also have a website where there are oral stories and there are recipes and resources. So I invite everybody to just Google “El Paso Food Voices” and listen to the intimate history that people carry with their foods.
One of the persons who shares her story, she refers to the intimate history that we carry. When I was invited to participate here, I had to make it clear that I’m not a historian. I gather stories, and it is through the stories that we hear the history.
We remember restaurants that no longer exist, and we keep them alive. Recipes that no long exist, but we keep em alive. So food is about that intimate history.
I also want to say that one of the reasons about this enterprise, El Paso Food Voices, that I’m very committed to, is that – and in this show we’ve been talking about the challenges that we have, the devices that we have – I want to talk about food because it’s one thing that unites us. So keep thinking about food and how it brings us together.
