Image Courtesy of BevCooks.com

Being from Texas, I’ve always been surrounded by Mexican food.  Having family which hail from Harlingen, a small town in the Rio Grande Valley about 20 miles from the border to Mexico, I had the privilege of being exposed to good, authentic Mexican food at an early age.  However, growing up in Dallas, I have also experienced many traditionally “inauthentic” Mexican dishes, mostly of the Tex Mex variety.  Both varieties of “Mexican” food taste very good, but in our society, the “inauthentic” dishes are regarded as lesser.  Thus, I’ve been researching how people perceive authenticity of Mexican cuisine in the United States, and have found an interesting trend.  It appears that, in this context, people generally care more about whether the food is authentic than how the food tastes.

Read more here.