Mexican cooking is regarded as one of the tastiest cuisines in the world. It isn’t hard to see why when you consider the heavy emphasis placed upon simple yet fresh ingredients in Mexican cooking. There are many different Mexican dishes beyond the ones we all know and love, i.e., tacos and enchiladas.
If you are interested in diving into the delicious world of Mexican food and exploring its rich flavors, you need to find the best restaurants or bars you can. This post will help with that by offering some advice you can use to find the right spot.Prioritize Authenticity
If you have never tried Mexican food before, your main priority should be finding an authentic Mexican restaurant. Authenticity is important, because if you search for a Mexican bar near me and end up eating at an inauthentic one, traditional spices and cooking methods might not be used. Because of how popular Mexican food is, it is common to find restaurants that don’t serve the real thing advertising themselves as traditional Mexican restaurants, when in reality, they aren’t.
Try to find a restaurant that serves handmade tortillas, for example, instead of store-bought ones. A restaurant that serves handmade tortillas is basically guaranteed to be the real deal. If you are able to, find one that prepares food the traditional way, i.e., roasting or slow-cooking. Traditional cooking methods give Mexican dishes a smoky, authentic flavour.
As well as cooking methods, try to find a restaurant with a variety of different Mexican dishes on the menu.
Mexico is a big country–there is a lot more to the nation’s cuisine than American fast-food staples like tacos. If you want to try real Mexican food, look for dishes like chiles en nogada or pozole. Most restaurants’ menus are publicly available on their websites, so in order to determine your chosen restaurant’s authenticity, take a quick read through its menu, and call up to find out about cooking methods if you want to know more.Quality of Ingredients
The quality of the ingredients a restaurant uses to prepare dishes can tell you a lot about it. As mentioned in the previous section, authentic restaurants always make their own tortillas. The same is true for salsa and chips. You can tell if a restaurant’s salsa has been homemade by simply taste testing it. The same is true for its chips.
For an authentic experience, you should try and find a restaurant that uses high-quality meat, and slow cooks it. Meat is an important part of Mexican cuisine, which is why finding a place that serves high-quality meat is so important. As it is a staple in most dishes, the better quality it is, the better the food served will taste.
Avoid restaurants that serve beans out of cans or pre-shredded processed cheese. If you want to try Mexican seafood, then again, you need to prioritize finding a restaurant that serves fresh seafood. Do not hesitate to ask the restaurant’s owners where they get their seafood from, and how fresh it is. Not only can old seafood taste bad, but it can also have a negative impact on your health.
Atmosphere and Service
One of the best things about eating in an authentic Mexican restaurant is getting to experience a little slice of Mexican culture outside of Mexico. When you go to chain restaurants, however, they can seem a little gimmicky. More often than not, the servers working in chain restaurants are not Mexican, and the chefs aren’t either. Such venues typically exaggerate Mexican culture, which means that by visiting one, you aren’t going to have a proper experience.
Try to find a restaurant with a welcoming atmosphere. Restaurants in Mexico, especially in cities and towns, tend to be very lively. They are community hubs, where people of all walks of life converge to enjoy good food and friendly company. Because of this, you should try and find a restaurant that is as authentic and traditional as you can, so you get to meet new people and enjoy yourself.
Service is very important, too. The last thing you want to do is to go out for dinner and have a bad experience because you had to deal with unprofessional waiting staff. You can quickly and easily find out what a restaurant’s service is like by reading its reviews. Make sure that when you do read reviews, you read them across a number of platforms. Don’t just read the reviews on a restaurant’s website. This is because these are invariably always biased or exaggerated. Plus, negative ones are scrubbed from the site.
Pricing and Portion Size
When you visit a restaurant in Mexico, you tend to get a large number of small plates, rather than one giant dish. It is commonplace for people to eat a variety of small meals in Mexico, and in traditional Mexican restaurants. Bear this in mind when you visit a Mexican restaurant for the first time, because if you go to one expecting massive portion sizes like you would get at a chain restaurant, you are going to be disappointed.
If you want to try authentic Mexican food, you should also bear in mind that you aren’t guaranteed to pay cheap prices. High-quality Mexican food outside of Mexico tends to be very expensive, because skilled chefs have to be hired, and the freshest ingredients sourced, sometimes locally, and sometimes from Mexico. If you are on a budget, you can usually see how much a restaurant charges for its plates by visiting its website and looking at its menu. As long as the menu is up-to-date, you should be able to use it to come up with a budget.
If the restaurant you are planning on visiting charges very low prices, then this will usually mean that they are using low-quality ingredients. No restaurant can get away with charging low prices if it is using quality ingredients, because they cost a lot of money.
You don’t have to travel to Mexico to enjoy the rich flavors of Mexican cooking. No, all you need to do is shop around and find the most authentic Mexican restaurant you can. You can do that by following the guidance given here. Make sure that you always read reviews before choosing a restaurant, so you can be sure it is the right place for you to eat out.