As are radishes. I always have thin sliced radishes on the side for tacos.
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Absolutely! I find it kind of sad that so many USA Americans think of tacos as ground beef and crunchy tortillas. Our fellow Americans south of the border use so many vegetables in their cooking, often as fillings. I love enchiladas stuffed with a variety of squashes, onions, mushrooms, and peppers. Tacos topped with cabbage, radish, lime, and crumbly cheeses like cotija, wrapped in fresh corn tortillas, are wonderful. And radishes, as the French well know, are amazing with salt and butter on a baguette.
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I am generally in agreement on wraps, but a link of smoked jalapeƱo and cheddar sausage rolled in a flour tortilla is my preferred dessert after a big meal of smoked brisket, ribs, and butter beans.
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Iām not crazy about things like chicken Caesar wraps or club sandwich wraps using flour tortillas or other commercially baked wraps.
I am a fan of souvlaki or doner wrapped in a good pita, and Iām a fan of falafel, shawarma or schnitzel in a laffa-type or lavash type wrap, or wrapped in a good pita!
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I didnāt know about potato salads with pineapple before today
Here in California, I donāt think Iāve ever seen crisp taco shells, except in places like Taco Bell and Jack-in the-Box. Nor ground beef. Weāre a cultural island here.
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Ground beef wouldnāt be a problem but I donāt understand crispy taco shells - wrong texture and flavor for a taco
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The whole crispy taco shell is part of the āgringo tacoā or āwhite people tacoā, as exemplified in Taco Bell and supermarket taco kits. It is, however, an authentic Mexican style. Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell, copied/was inspired by a nearby Mexican restaurant called Mitla Cafe.
What a taco even is is a pretty fuzzy category, kind of like thereās no actual biological thing as a āfishā, because the things we think of as fish or are called some type of ā-fishā are so varied as to make the term meaningless in that context.
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Not sure about that - The closest in Mexico would be taco dorado and they are quite differently made and taste not at all like hard-shell tacos in the US
I wasnāt clear. I meant that crispy taco shells in and of themselves ARE, in fact a Mexican thing, as you point out: tacos dorado. They are certainly not in any way equivalent to gringo tacos. I was just pointing out that having a crispy shell is not a disqualifying feature for something to be called a taco.
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āI donāt really care too much about authenticity in the Melting Pot that is America.ā
I agree. A lot of our most beloved foods are not authentic in that they donāt use the same recipes and ingredients that inspired them, but they invariably are all about the heart. I watched Nonnas the other night. Cute food flick. It evoked a lot of memories of the Italian American cooking of my youth in the northeast. I think often about my stir fries of hot dogs, potatoes, bell peppers, onion, soy sauce, and (!) ketchup, a legacy of WW II internment that was a beloved favorite when I was in school. Manyās the night I have succumbed to the lure of Tex-Mex. I love pizza, but It has been ages since I had a slice like you get in Napoli. I even like the fancy faux French riffs of the 1950s and 1960s, like chicken Divan made with a sauce of canned cream of mushroom, cream of chicken, mayonnaise, lemon, and curry powder (a riff of its own). There is a lot of wonderful food that is inauthentic as heck, but it always has heart. And now I think Iāll turn leftover pork roast into something that resemble Yu-Shiang pork, but not much.
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You know, I love the wide variety of food we eat in USA because of immigrants from EVERYWHERE! In a lot of other countries I think the food can be a little monotonous. I havenāt eaten Ethiopian food but my daughter regularly eats in those restaurants.
My favorites: Italian and Chinese. Good āole American food like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, homemade chicken pot pie, short ribs made with red wine.
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My cousinās mother-in-law used Bisquick in her Feast of the 7 Fishes seafood fritturi. Pretty adorable. They captured it on YouTube about 15 years ago.
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I donāt really care too much about authenticity in the Melting Pot that is America.
āAuthenticā is too often jargon for āI donāt know what Iām talking about, but LISTEN UP PEOPLEā (while we turn deaf ears).
Back to tacos, Our (sort of) local go-to for eat there after placing order at counter never bats an eye when we order lengua, carnitas, carne asada, pollo whatever . . . one, two, three, four of each ā street style or just-fried-to-order hard shells here or to-go.
All that said, the point of the America we tried over a lifetime is to make a better place where all are free to succeed, free to fail at trying to succeed, while we all root for and celebrate a seriously well-played/intentioned effort.
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Lol I have been posting online about food since 2003. I avoid some debates these days, unless I take the bait. 
I remember being so angry about baklava around 2006, after a disagreement with another Toronto Chowhound. 
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https://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/popular-mexican-food-brand-poised-return
KC has been in a taco shell crisis since the maker of the most popular shells declared bankruptcy. The company just got sold so they should be back by July or so.
They are very good. And very thin and light.
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I love tacosā¦carnitas, pollo, squash, whateverā¦and I love all manner of tortillas. However, there is a woman here in Austin named Angie (just like her restaurant, Angieās) who has, in my opinion, perfected the tortilla for framing a taco. It is corn, but it is thick, maybe a tiny bit crumbly. It is not truly soft, but it isnāt crisp, either. It is in between. I have puzzled over it for years. It gets fried for tacos, but not to the point of being crisp.
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Yum
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The Amtrak station in El Paso has a long history with Juanita, the Amtrak Burrito Lady. The Amtrak employees are her best salespeople, announcing her presence and how good her food is. She only charged $2 a burrito a few years ago. Mildly spicey and fully delicious!
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