Comida mexicana en Nueva York Ciudad es malo

I don't speak Spanish, but that translates to 'Mexican food in New York City is bad'.
So very bad. Terrible with a capital Awful, bad.
I’m not going to pretend that’s super important. Considering it's been years since I had a job that paid me enough so that I could afford to eat in restaurants, it doesn't affect me that much. But it's baffling. And a little embarrassing.

Like most native New Yorkers, especially those of us old enough to recall the glory days of the '70's and '80's, I feel a great sense of pride in my city. It is a love/ hate thing. Most of us endure a positively pitifully low quality of life in order to live here. We get a lot back for that though.

New York is everything. It's alive. You can feel it. You leave you apartment and it's palpable, all there waiting for you, right in your face.
Despite being so collectively devoid of a sense of historical pride that we allow our precious irreplaceable structures to be torn down without protest, there remains stunning remnants of Manhattan from centuries past.

And where else in the country could a non-driver such as myself, walk everywhere they need to go, get everything they need to get and see a thousand different things every single day? No where.
I'm not saying I plan on living here forever, but it is the most extraordinarily horrible-wonderful place.

In many ways, we have the best culture and the best food our nation has to offer. Being a proud sybarite, food is a big deal for me. I love to cook. I love to eat. I've mastered both.

I'm a self-taught chef, but there are times I'd swear my kick-ass culinary skills are more in my blood, than learned. NYC is a multicultural bonanza. Each of my grandparents were a different nationality. I wonder if that has something to do with why I'm especially partial to ethnic food.

I don't recall any Mexican restaurants when I was a kid. There were tons of other ethnic eateries, - French, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, Polish, Chinese, Japanese. But the first time I had Mexican food was in an East Village Mexican restaurant in 1984.
It was o.k. Seeing as my favorite item quickly became their spinach fetticini with white clam sauce, and I had to stop patronizing the place once I became a vegetarian because there wasn't another good dish on the menu; I think that says it all. I figured Mexican food just wasn’t my thing.

Then I went to San Francisco in 1986. Mexican food in San Francisco is divine. There are Mexican places everywhere. They range from good to "I've died and gone to heaven".
I also went to Los Angeles for the first time that year, and if anything Mexican food in LA is even more amazing than in SF.

Over the last 2 decades I've eaten in many different Mexican places in SF and LA. They were all fantastic. And cheap. I chalked it up to geography. If New York were closer to Mexico the food would be better?

Several Mexican spots popped up in Manhattan in the '80's and '90's. There was one that was kind of, sort of, pretty good, -ish. The others, despite long wait times and significantly higher prices than anywhere in SF or LA, were bad. B-A-D.
At that point I wondered, why after all these years are Mexican restaurants in New York City still so terrible?

I know there a million higher priorities, but aren’t Mexican-Americans pissed off their cuisine is so poorly represented in NY? I know I’d be. As a long time vegetarian, bad vegan fare evokes a swell of disappointed/ annoyed/ 'how dare they pass this off as vegan' feelings in me.

I've worked in several restaurants in NY. Regardless of the type of food they served, they all had predominantly Mexican kitchen staffs. Cajun food, Italian food, Vegetarian food ... they all had Mexican cooks. So it's not as if Mexican cooks lose their food-mojo when they move to a colder climate. If Mexican-American chefs in NY can conjure up great non-Mexican food, why can’t they make great Mexican food?

Compared to complex, fancy kitchenware-dependent cuisine, Mexican food is relatively simple to make. Fresh ingredients and adept recipes are the core.
My theory is that none of NYC's Mexican establishments are owned by Mexican-Americans. Non-Mexicans must be penning these taste-bud travesties thinking New Yorkers are too unwitting to know the difference.

Regardless, I have no idea why we tolerate the bad food. I can't understand how these palate insulting restaurants manage to stay in business for more than a month.

The single best Mexican food I've ever in my life was a few years ago in Montreal, dispelling my 'it's geographical' hypothesis. It was a small, family owned place called Taqueria Mexicaine. The food was absolutely party-in-my-mouth scrumptious. It sounds silly, but I could taste that it was made by someone who loved the food, who loved to cook, and who knew their recipe was perfected.

I'd like to invite skilled Mexican-American cooks and restaurateurs to relocate to NYC and save us from our humiliating Mexican restaurant misery. I have a strong feeling the line for a table will be out the door.