Talk:New Mexican cuisine

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[edit] Bias

could this article be made a little less biased? Chris

Well, we don't HAVE to say that it's delicious, filling, and a cultural tradition... but that would just be a lie. ;) --BlueNight (talk) 02:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stubbed

I don't think a single template could cover everything that was wrong with it, so I excised most of the article and made it a stub again. You can see the old version here. Maybe that's overreacting, but I'm hoping an expert on the subject can see if ANY of it was accurate and worth saving. You might get a laugh out of it, at least. It was a mess of contradictory point-of-view statements, unencyclopedic banter (including restaurant recommendations) etc. I do know that the Anaheim, Serrano, and New Mexico Chile peppers are three different things (there's no such thing as an "anaheim serrano"), but that's the limit of my knowledge on the subject. Indium 02:41, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

no, I think it needed a lot of help.
Darthjavaljs 05:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Definitely needs a lot of expansion and help. Tex-Mex is linked from the Southwestern United States page, and I'd love to get this article to point where it's of similar length and informational content. I'm gonna spend some time on it in the next few weeks here... --ABQCat 06:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
Read the old article and the new article, I affirm the position of removing much of the old information. The bias seems to try and make New Mexican cuisine very unique and almost non-Mexican. The food, from personal experience, has more in common with that of northern Mexico. Yes there are some dishes that are prepared differently, but this happens everywhere.
I got a laugh form the restaurant recommendations. Many of those restaurants identify themselves as "Mexican" and not "New Mexican", which further exemplifies the blurring of the two. For example, the restaurant "Garduño's" has the word Mexican (with the "new" omitted) in its name.
I did a little research on my own with some friends from different Spanish-speaking countries about the dish commonly known was "Spanish Rice" in New Mexico. It's rice prepared with tomato sauce, peas and some onion and sometimes other minor ingredients like garlic. The results were interesting. The Spanaird said he had never seen that type of rice before; the Mexican from Sonora called it "Arroz a la mexicana" (Rice Mexican style), the Uruguyan simply called it "arroz con tomate" (rice with tomato) and the Salvadoran called it "arroz guisano" (pead rice).
Perhaps a list of common dishes with proper Spanish spelling could be added? I say prfjkfoper Spanish spelling because some foods are written as "posole" and "biscochito" when in actuality their correct Spanish spellings are "pozole" and "bizcochitos", respectively. Ironically, you find those in northern Mexico, too.
[— anon]
What does "pead" mean? Never encountered that word before. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I know they spell "posole" with a "z" in Mexico, but in New Mexico I've always seen it spelled with an "s", e.g., in cookbooks and restaurant menus. It seems it should be spelled the New Mexican way in this article. The same goes for "biscochito" (which incidentally is a different thing in Spain).
--ESimpson 10:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
These sounds like very good edits to me. Just be bold and go for it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 03:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move

All the other articles in the Cuisine series are titled "(insert country here) cuisine". So maybe we should move this article to New Mexican cuisine?--Rockero 18:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

A week without objections. I'm executing the move.--Rockero 21:53, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Good move. Frankly, I wouldn't have even waited the week, since the move was clearly indicated by the extisting naming convention. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What?

And New Mexican cuisine is different from *real* Mexican cuisine, how??? Deepstratagem 16:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I mean, besides the fact that it's not Mexican. Deepstratagem 16:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Um, actually read the article. :-) Unless it's been wiped again, the question is self-answering by reading the article. There are numerous differences between Mexico Mexican (not to mention internal northern, southern and coastal differences south of the border, which are sometimes quite considerable), California Mexican, Tex-Mex, and New Mexican cuisine. Even things as simple as the definition, ingredients and preparation of a taco vary widely. I would concur with the idea that the article needs to explain this better, and would go further and say that entries in the list should be replaced with cross-references to the same entries in a list of Mexican food terms, where the New Mexican usage cannot be reliably sourced as being consistently different. Keeping the list clean in this way would require some dedicated regular watching of this list, as noobs will certainly come in an add all kinds of junk (which happens with all articles of this sort.) Anyway, if any one thing can be said to be defining of New Mexican cuisine vs. Mexican, Tex-Mex, etc., it is the use of a specific cultivar of chile pepper, exemplified by those grown in Hatch, New Mexico. While they are closely related to Anaheim peppers, they are very different in character, and are prepared and used differently in many cases. But there are other differences, in the spicing specifics, how tortillas are used, typical ingredients in posole, etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The same can be said of food in Mexico City and Cuernavaca, or between two adjacent villages anywhere in Mexico. If someone made chilaquiles with tomato sauce, chipotle sauce, Indian curry, or Thai peppers, it is still inherently Mexican food. This page pretends New Mexican food is some novel concept, while in content it presents nothing of the sort. Deepstratagem 01:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Improve the article then. NB: There is no particular reason that documentable stylistic differences between the cuisine of Mexico City and Cuernavaca could not be enclopedized at Mexican cuisine or even in separate articles, so your initial point seems off-base. As I've already said, I would agree with the criticism that the article needs to better explain the differences between New Mexican and Mexican food, and to be better sourced, so I don't see that there's anything we're actually debating about other than your personal belief that there is no difference, despite already having had some of the differences explained to you. That's a conversation I doubt anyone here is interested in continuing with you. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
What I mean by different is original. I'm sure there are some differences in style and ingredients, but the article gives the impression that tamales, for example, are very different and original because a different sauce is used. Well, a different sauce might be used in two taco stands a block apart, but that doesn't mean the tamales from one of those blocks are some sort of new invention. In Mexico there are 300 different types of chiles, and hundreds of ways to prepare them, so I find it unlikely that New Mexican food is profoundly original. A hybridized subset of Mexican food, maybe, but the article makes it sound as if Mexican food originated in New Mexico with a quasi-elitist tone. Deepstratagem 09:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
There's no policy/guideline basis for this article needing to go away on the basis of "originality". If you can gain enough consensus that the material is not "different" enough to propose a merge, you could try that, though I think you'll meet well-backed resistance (but cf. my other proposal, to merge the non-different entries into Mexican cuisine and watch the article to prevent re-additions of redundant material. Re: your across-the-street example - Apples and oranges; the article posits (and yes, does need to be better sourced in this regard) that the differences are definitional of a widespread identifiable sub-national cuisine, which would not apply to two variant versions of tacos prepared across the street from each other. Re: loads of chile variants in Mexico - again, they are not definitional of Mexican food in the way that NM chile is definition of NM food. By way of analogy, if it were the case that the vast majority of chiles used in Oaxaca were of one particular distinctive cultivar, then it would be entirely appropriate for an article on Oaxacan cuisine to go into that. Re: "makes it sound as if Mexican food originated in New Mexico" - I don't detect that in the article myself; can you explain more clearly? NB: New Mexican food did originate in New Mexico. Many people living here have families that pre-date the Spanish conquest, and the contribution of the Navajo, Zuñi, etc., native cultures are different from those of the Mayan, Aztec, etc., cultures from south of the border. NM food is not imported Mexican food locally Americanized, which I think may be the misapprehension you are laboring under; it is a native cuisine closely related to that of modern-day Mexico, but distinguishable from it in may ways (and crosspolinated with it modernly in other ways, of course). Re: "quasi-elitist" - that sounds like a WP:NPOV issue that should be definitely addressed. be bold and fix it. PS: I apologize for any apparent incivility above; I was in a hurry and I think I came off as more "short" with you that was actually intended! The point was that the issues raised here need to be something cognizable under WP policy/guidelines somewhere, not just personal feelings about an article or its ultimate value, or they won't really go anywhere. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 03:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
PS: Your recent deletion edits do nothing to improve the article, and just weaken it, while also doing nothing to support your claim that there are no salient differences between Mexican and New Mexican cuisine. I'm liable to revert all of them, though with source citations this time. Stripping the article of differencing information without justifying the content deletions does not demonstrate that there aren't differences, it is simply borderline vandalism. This time I am not engaging in any civility lapses, but mean what I am saying precisely. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 03:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
In particular, I removed redundant descriptions, cleaned up the spelling and anything that sounded *exactly* like the original Mexican version of a particular food item, unless the description included notable differences. Deepstratagem 05:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I was speaking of your removal of what may well be the majority of the material about the background of NM cuisine and its differencing from Mexican, i.e. a sizeable portion of the red text in the left-hand column here. The minor twiddles weren't of concern. If you have issues with some of those sections you should have flagged them with {{citation needed}} and/or discussed them here in detail rather than deleted them as if they were patent nonsense. To be clear, I'm in support of removing redundant descriptions, and think that that sort of edit could go even further; in most cases, the link to the food item is actually sufficient where there isn't anything consistently different about the NM vs. MX version. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 06:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I probably went overboard there, but the paragraph was a little speculative. Deepstratagem 11:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
There's a diff. between speculative and unsourced, and it was multiple paragraphs, throughout the article. I'm too busy dealing with a massive spamlink attack in the billiards & snooker related articlespace to deal with this sourcing and restoring stuff here right now, but will come back to it eventually. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It's like saying China-town Chinese food is just like food in China. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.126.75.181 (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm intrigued/shocked by the level of emotion in this debate. New Mexico cuisine developed contemporaneously with cuisines of Sonora and Chihuahua, incorporating very different ingredients due to very different climates and influences. That's it, basically. In Mexico there are regional cuisines as there are in Italy (Cuisine of Sicily), India (Cuisine of Chennai) or China (Szechuan cuisine), and so it for the Southwestern United States. What's the problem? DaveDixon (talk) 23:34, 10 February 2008 (UTC)


The problem is that you could have titled this article "Mexican Cuisine" and it would have been entirely accurate. I'm sure the sawdust in New Mexico is different than the sawdust in Texas, but do we really need an article about the both of them? Some of these assertions are just silly. New Mexican cuisine is different than the Mexican cuisine you find in California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Texas and Nevada because New Mexican restaurants use green and red chilis? So does Mexican cooking! Its the same thing. Using less frijoles y arroz and mas papas doesn't mean its an entirely different cuisine. Using a few different spices in a few different ways doesn't mean its an entirely different cuisine. My father and I use different amounts of spices in our marinara sauce and its still Italian cuisine.

Furthermore, why is there no mention of the many other types of New Mexican cuisine? Both times I was in Albequrque I didn't eat anything on your list! I spotted dozens of McDonalds and Burger Kings as well as a lot of KFCs. Why is there no mention of this in the article? This article is obviously the pet project of someone on here and it needs to be removed. If you really find the need to have your little list posted on the internet somewhere, you should put it on your own webpage. Then you could at least have something to reference this to because nothing exists online so far. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FreddyPickle (talk • contribs) 05:47, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure there are many people that would commonly attack New Mexican Cuisine as not being sufficiently different from Mexican food to warrant a distinct difference. First, that you ate at fast food places all over Albuquerque is a matter of American culture, and in fact western culture as a whole. While I was in Munich, Germany I ate as much, if not more fast food (McDonald's and Burger King) than I typically do in the United States. The existence of Fast Food in an area does not diminish the existence of foods originally from that area. That Munich has more restaurants where you can order a Big Mac than Schweinshaxen doesn't mean that Schweinshaxen isn't Bavarian food, or that the Big Mac is somehow Bavarian food.
Speaking as a person who grew up in New Mexico until the age of 25, I had no idea that there was any significant difference between New Mexican, and Mexican food. However, after leaving New Mexico and coming to Seattle, I've learned that there are a lot of differences. New Mexico food is on the whole hotter than Mexican food, as well there is a significant lack of sea food, focusing primarily upon on trout and dried shrimp as the only forms of seafood during lent (since most of New Mexico Hispanic culture has heavy Catholic influences). When preparing Enchiladas for my boyfriend, he's always confused initially because I make flat enchiladas. The idea of rolling enchiladas (unless you're making a casserole) just seems totally weird and foreign to me. Other Americanized Mexican foods mostly focus on red chiles and jalapeños, while New Mexican food focuses on the Anaheim or New Mexico pepper almost exclusively (at least to the point that moving outside of New Mexico, I was all "wth? What is all this stuff? and where are the 'just chiles'?" In New Mexico there are simply "chiles", needing no other disambiguation, as the only other chile pepper ever used are jalapeños and then so rarely as to be almost never) The size of tortillas is another thing. In New Mexico, tortillas are sold simply as "tortillas", while in other Americanized Mexican foods there are "burrito-sized" and "soft taco-sized" the former being much larger, and the latter being a bit smaller.
You talk about how variation in cooking and such doesn't make a cooking form distinct, as you say, both you and your Father cook "Italian food"... however, with New Mexican cuisine vs "old" Mexican cuisine, there are numerous differences that make it so that both sides feel that the other just isn't quite right. After moving away from New Mexico, I must cook my own New Mexican food to have it feel "normal", at any Mexican restaurant or Mexican grill, or whatever, it's like a curious arrangement of stuff that doesn't quite look right, or doesn't quite taste right. Going from the heavy-spicy chile-flavored foods of New Mexico, to the heavily-spiced with cilantro foods outside of New Mexico, it just tastes wrong.
There are a number of articles on Wikipedia that deal with very subtle differences, such that if you're not familiar with them, then you won't quite understand the difference between them. If you need to, think about this article this way. But have no doubt in your mind, that Mexicans in New Mexico find the cuisine as an unusual and non-normal variation, and New Mexicans eating "authentic" Mexican food find it unusual and non-normal as well. When the fundamental ingredient of a recipe changes from rice to potatoes, that's a significant difference in cuisine, and if you can't recognize that... I'm sorry. --Puellanivis (talk) 09:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Its not that do not think there's a difference between "Mexican" and "New Mexican" food. Its that there is no difference between New Mexican food and the American-Mexican food you get in the other 49 states. Why is making beans and rice to the east of Arizona and west of Texas so different than making beans and rice in, say, Vermont? There is no difference and you can get authentic variations on Mexican and Mexican-American food all over the country. You need to subjectively prove that there is something different in "New Mexican" cooking than in Mexican or Mexican-American cooking to justify this article. You have not.

This article is very obviously the pet project of someone from New Mexico who's mother told him how much different her cooking was from Mexicans. It should be removed immediately until proper sources can be obtained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.144.73.92 (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


http://www.albuquerque-tortilla.com/catalog/

This proves that Mexican and New Mexican food is the same. The above posters assert that in New Mexico, they simply have tortillas. No one ever names the tortillas by size, as they do in the other 49 states and Mexico. But since New Mexican cooking is so much different, they don't differentiate their tortillas on size.

What a load of it. This, like every other cockmaimie idea in this article is 100% fabricated nonsense. In 1000s of words, it fails to even shed light on WHY its so much different from the Mexican cooking found in the other 49 states and Mexico, let alone HOW. Remove this article immediately.

Instead of fabricating lies and nonsense to keep this article afloat, why not add substantive truthful posts to already existing articles on Mexican food? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.144.73.92 (talk) 00:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Oye jesus... do I need to go down to the local supermarket here and take a picture for you of all the different types of tortillas they have. They're all pretty much the same size and just say "flour tortillas", on the sides (read: out of the way), they still make "burrito sized" for those making Californian-style burritos. In Washington, then, when I get to Washington, I can photograph the various styles of tortillas sold there, they're all either slightly smaller than New Mexican tortillas and labeled "soft taco" or huge and labeled "burrito".
As a native-New Mexican living abroad in the rest of the United States, I can't possibly seem to come to grips with comments here that New Mexican cuisine isn't sufficiently notably different from other Americanized Mexican cuisines, like California, Arizona, and Texas. If you do not think that New Mexico cuisine is different from other Mexican food, go up to a native-New Mexican in the northern states and ask them, "Where is the closest place you can get Mexican food which is done just like its made back home?" and they'll tell you "back home." New Mexico cultivar chiles are nearly as hot as jalapeños, (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale) in the range of about 4,500-5,000 Scoville heat units. Anaheim peppers available that are not from New Mexico cultivars are in the 500-2,500 Scoville heat unit range. If it isn't clear to you by now that New Mexico food is 2-10 times hotter than other Mexican foods, then you're absolutely lost, and this is the single most defining characteristic of New Mexican food over Mexican food. Next, I'm giving you a particular food item cooked solidly in New Mexico, and fundamentally nowhere else in Mexican food cuisines: biscochitos. Talk even to other Hispanics, they stare at me and ask "What are biscochitos?" or even outright say "You mean biscochos right?" The answer is, "No, I mean biscochitos, which are a distinctly New Mexican thing." Now quiet down now before I have to cook you a flat blue-corn enchilada with a fried egg on top. --Puellanivis (talk) 05:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Beans

With regard to the the beans that are used being primarily of the kidney or black variety, nothing could be further from the truth! New Mexican food uses PINTO beans. Period. [The previous unsigned comment was posted by 129.82.213.141 (talk · contribs), 16:28, 1 April 2007 (UTC)]

[edit] Cleanup

To reiterate something that I think Deepstratagem first brought up, this article needs to be cleaned up, and I think doing so should be one of WP:WPNM's first major article tasks. The things to do from my perspective 1) introduce and explain the nature of NM cuisine, its history, and its differences from other related styles, and do so with sources"; 2) Eliminate any prose from the list that is redunant with the list at Mexican cuisine or which doesn't expand in any way on what is at articles like taco and enchilada, just wikilink to those entries; 3) sourcedly explain how the NM food items in question differ from the equivalents in other styles where they do traditionally differ. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Reversion, and the redundancy of this article.

[[1]] My edit just got reverted.

Honestly, what is the point of plagiarizing the Mexican cuisine page, and pretending this food is "New Mexican"? That is, half of the food here comes from Mexico and is intended to be just like Mexico's. So why do we repeat this stuff over and over? What's so notable about Chalupa's in New Mexico, that just needs to be mentioned here? In my opinion this entire article could be reduced to half as of the aforementioned edit if we remove redundancies.

Not to say there aren't differences worth noting. But if we don't note the real differences this article is misleading and hard to read. Deepstratagem 10:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Seeing your reversion is what made me bring this up again. I agreed with your version more, but I think the editwarring (slow moving as it has been, it has still been editwarring for many months) needs to stop and some consensus discussion started in its stead. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving forward

Anyone else here have some input? Consensus is kind of hard to be sure of when only two or three parties are involved... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 11:40, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

As an old New Mexican, I would like to see the article focus on features unique to the cuisine of New Mexico. I just added some notes on some unique dishes that were missing (caldillo/green chile stew, and blue-corn enchiladas, for example) and deleted fajitas, which were invented in Texas in the 1970s and got to California before they came to New Mexico a decade later. I disagree with a few points about the unique features of New Mexican cuisine (when I was a child, for example, cilantro was common in California but I never saw/tasted it in New Mexico) but we should be debating that, not whether variations in the size of a burrito constitutes a novel cuisine. DaveDixon (talk) 23:19, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cheese?

What cheeses are authentic to Mexican food? I've heard that cheddar is not authentic, for example, and that feta is a close approximation. 72.74.204.205 19:36, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

New Mexican food usually uses Asadero cheese, but the best varieties of this cheese are made by the Mennonites south of the border. It's crumbly like Feta but tastes like Muenster. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.180.185.10 (talk) 23:18, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] North Vs. South

Does anyone see reason to have a discussion of the difference between northern and southern cuisines? It's a hot topic when you actually live here, but I don't know if it warrants wiki-discussion. Gtorell 18:02, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pozole de Nixtamal

The article says that "using red chile is not traditional New Mexican" however, in "The Good Life: New Mexico Traditions and Food" by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert, the recipe specifically calls for "4 dried red chile pods", and no mention of green chile. As this is something that would likely stir up an edit-war, I'm looking to talk about this first before I run in and change it under the auspice of "Hey! How can it not be traditional? That's how my mom made it and her mom before her!" --Puellanivis (talk) 10:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

As I've received no input on this, I will be making the change to the mainspace article, as red chile is just as common a part of authentic New Mexican posole/pozole as green chile. (And in some parts, possibly even more "standard" than green chile) --Puellanivis (talk) 09:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Proposal for deletion

How do we set in motion the process to remove this article? You've had years of posts to prove that New Mexican cuisine is different than the Mexican cuisine found in the other 49 states and you cannot. We need to get this removed so we can focus on the main Mexican food article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by FreddyPickle (talk • contribs) 01:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Sigh... What is bothering you so bad about the very existence of this article? Do me a favor, take any random native-New Mexican, take them to a Mexican restaurant in any other state and sit them down and ask them what they think of the food. The answer? "It's mild, it's tasteless, and it's nothing like back home." That's not to say that there are similarities, and this article should focus on the differences, not the similarities. If you want to know some differences, Fish Tacos, common in other Mexican cuisines, entirely absent from New Mexican cuisine. The very idea of Fish Tacos are unusual, and odd. Frankly, I'm hardly concerned at all about if you believe that there is a difference or not, fact is, that every single expatriate New Mexican will tell you that they can't get good Mexican food outside of New Mexico (depending on where you were raised, it's even more tightly bound to the Rio Grande river). You want the biggest difference? It's primarily in spiciness. When I walk into any Mexican restaurant outside of New Mexico and order salsa, I could literally drink the stuff. Come to New Mexico, and I dip the corners of my chip in the salsa, because it's that hot. New Mexico cultivars of the Anaheim pepper are some 2-10 times hotter than other cultivars of the same chile elsewhere (ref: Scoville Scale). If this doesn't give you some sort of indication as to something being quite notably different, then... *shrug* I don't know what to tell you. --Puellanivis (talk) 05:47, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
I do not support deletion. New Mexican cuisine is quite distinct from most Mexican cuisine, though parts of Sonora eat similarly. I eat at Anita's New Mexican Style Mexican Restaurant here in the DC area often. The New Mexican food is quite distinct from the various Mexican restaurants in the region, all owned and operated by people from Mexico, including Anita's, as she is from New Mexico. The New Mexican food is spicier, uses very different sauces, including their salsa picante. I'm sorry you don't see a difference between Mexican regional cooking and New Mexican, but i firmly belive there is a difference. Indian and Mexican use similar spices and herbs to radically different end results, just as New Mexican gets a very different end result from other Mexican and Mexican-derived cuisines. séain (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


The only thing the TC has said convincingly to support his/her argument is that New Mexicans like a special kind of butter cookie. Thats it. One little cookie does not define a cuisine.

What are the different spices? What are the different herbs and vegetables? Simply using these ingrediants in varying degrees to make the type of food does not define a cuisine. Puellnivis, have you no perspective? You're arguing ad nauseum for your pet project. Except for the butter cookies there is absolutely nothing significantly different about this supposed "New Mexican" cuisine. You're just describing Mexican cuisine like any Mexican or Mexican-American would describe it.

What is so different about the Mexican food in New Mexico thats different from the Mexican food found in the other 49 states and in Mexico? Why are Mainer tacos and California tacos the same thing, but they're so fundamentally and drastically different in New Mexico? Until you can take a step back and ground yourself and answer these questions honestly, we need to remove this ridiculously childish article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.144.73.92 (talk) 18:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Tacos are a bad example... those are the same all over... it's not that New Mexican cuisine doesn't have the same stuff as Tex-Mex, or Californian mexican food. In some ways it does. Here's the only really big thing for tacos: in New Mexico, they don't EVER come with fish in them. As to doing things actually different, enchiladas are the most important difference I can think of. Primarily, because they are done ENTIRELY different from every other Americanized Mexican food. They are served flat, and when I make enchiladas for someone, typically the first thing they do when I start preparing them is freak out and go "what are you doing? I thought you were making enchiladas." Now, New Mexican food, is more like the Cuisine of Sicily as a variation from a popular style, but it's distinctly different.
“ It's so funny to me (and sad) how close minded people in SEATTLE are! Seriously! First off, it's NOT Mexican food- no where does it claim to be Mexican food. It is NEW MEXICAN food. There is a difference, people. Do your homework. If you go to New Mexico you will find the same sort of fare that makes the state so famous for it's cuisine. To the people who were complaining about the spice of the food- that's what makes it so unique! The chilis! Again, it is NOT your run of the mill, we cater to Americans who can't take the heat, Mexican restaurant. Also, for the people who were complaining that the green chilis were not from Hatch...keep in mind that you can't even get fresh green chilis from Hatch in New Mexico this time of year, therefor they are most likely canned but are still HATCH green chilis. I have been to many New Mexican restaurants, and am married to a New Mexican, and this restaurant is very authentic, The drinks, food, atmosphere, and service are excellent. If you're open mided, like chilis, and realize that this is not a mexican restaurant but an authentic new mexican restaurant...you will be in for a treat! Delicious![2] ”