The national gastronomic scene has undergone a transformation in its denominations, which undoubtedly respond to nomenclatures closely tied to matters of form and trend—but is there substance beneath?
Just open a gastronomic guide of Mexico’s main cities to notice a tendency that has now become common, repetitive, and sometimes even generates unanswered questions. After the name of the restaurant in question, comes a surname attempting to designate the type of cuisine offered. Not long ago, it was enough to classify the restaurant by menu style or supposed origin of the kitchens. Thus, one would find the Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese restaurant, and the complexity ended there. Delving deeper into classification, there was the number of stars or the style and level of formality, ranging from a fonda or street stall to what are now called fine dining restaurants.
In a compilation of real cases with types of classification observed in cities like Mexico City and Guadalajara, we find gems such as: grill cuisine, garden cuisine, signature cuisine, neighborhood cuisine, spice cuisine, urban cuisine, home cuisine, country cuisine, smoke cuisine, sensory cuisine, street cuisine, urban vegan cuisine, and the list continues as many types of cuisine as new or recycled restaurants open. The point with these denominations is that, regardless of the restaurant’s quality (it could be very good or very bad), the proliferation of classifications seems more a vacuous matter than a true designation of what is offered.
It would seem that classification obeys factors like the origin of foods (garden cuisine), the location of the dining room (urban cuisine, country cuisine), the use of ingredients (urban vegan cuisine, spice cuisine), or the techniques used to prepare food (grill cuisine, smoke cuisine). But concretely analyzing, what is the distinctive factor of an urban cuisine menu? What is eaten in the city to make it as specific as the urban cuisine denomination? Is the name appealing more to a prefabricated cosmopolitanism than to a specific cuisine? With cuisines referring to the location of the dining room or product origin, the sociological explanation is clearer: the origin of what we eat, where foods come from, who produces them, what they contain, are constant sources of concern. Thus, in the perception of potential diners, a garden is seen as more “natural and healthy” than mass production of fruits and vegetables. The same happens with denominations responding to technique. It is in technique, in the time spent in the kitchen, where food is valued in a society that has significantly reduced time spent cooking. The sophistication of a dish combines both ingredients and well-executed technique. In a world of serial production, technique gains greater value.
Cuisines appealing to the place of preparation undoubtedly evoke nostalgia, an invariant for diners regarding home food, grandma’s food, or mom’s food, which have mythical levels of seasoning incomparable to outside offerings. Conversely, street snacks never taste the same as when the frying is done at home.
To all these types of denomination, we add the trend of naming any business with the suffix “ría” for places selling something: taquería, tetería, donitería, chupitería, mezcalería, macaronería, baguetería, chilaquería, conchería, postrería, and a long etcetera that, in current perception, invariably responds to processes of gentrification and hipsterization. In the former neighborhood life, businesses ending in “ría” marked territorial belonging, a community life. Today, tlapalerías, papelerías, and other “rías” are rare pearls, recalling that life of small local businesses for which the captive public—mostly hipster—appeals to notions of nostalgia and empowerment of the supposedly local against the global. Thus, we see that behind each trend lies an interesting sociological explanation worth analyzing.
@Lilllie_ML
Originally published in El Economista
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— This article was originally published in Spanish by Liliana Martínez Lomelí. Translation generated with AI from the original text.