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wonderandwanderinginmexicocity · 1 year ago

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Spinning Cones of Meat: A Cultural Convergence

“I've seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.”

-Anthony Bourdain

If there is one thing people in Mexico are proud of, it’s their food. Many people here see it as their national gift to the world. Whether it is a Michelin star restaurant or eating cheap tacos on the street, local cuisine is such a crucial part of Mexican culture and history.

Perhaps the most iconic culinary symbol is the trompo, the spinning cone of meat that is a staple at street side taquerías. Trompo is the term for a children’s spinning top, which makes sense given the shape of the spinning roasted carne. A vertical spit, with large chunks of meat stacked on top of it, is slowly turned in front of a flame so that it cooks for hours. If that doesn’t sound wildly appetizing to you, people here live for tacos al pastor (shepherd's tacos), perhaps the official dish of Mexico City. Usually at the top there is a chunk of pineapple that is sliced off and placed on the tacos. The trompo is so ubiquitous here that they are a popular costume for Halloween. Where did the trompo come from and how did it become such a symbol for street food and Mexico City?

With the increased mobility afforded by technology and the high number of interstate and ethnic conflicts, the twentieth century was one of the great periods of human movement in the history of the world. Mexico was not left out of these global changes. In fact, Mexico is a unique country where movement is concerned: It is one of the few countries that experiences both high levels of emigration (Mexicans moving to the United States and other places) and immigration (people moving to Mexico, primarily from Central America, looking for a better life). Migrants from the Middle East began coming to Latin America in the nineteenth century, but this accelerated in the twentieth century when the Ottoman Empire began to collapse after World War I. Lebanese immigrants reshaped many parts of Latin America, giving us the gifts of Shakira in Colombia and bringing delicious street food such as kipe to the Dominican Republic. By some estimates there are 800,000 Lebanese people and their descendants living in Mexico today.

In the nineteen thirties, these newly arrived Lebanese immigrants began opening restaurants in places like Mexico City and Puebla, offering Arab tacos (tacos arabes). They carefully cooked their meat in a style similar to that of a shawarma or kebab. They used a bread more similar to a pita than a tortilla. The tacos were originally filled with lamb (hence the name shepherd’s taco), a meat popular in the Middle East, but not a common part of culinary practice in Mexico. "People didn't like it so they tried it with beef and it didn't work out,” said Alejandro Escalante, the author of TACOPEDIA, an encyclopedia on tacos. “Finally pork got on this vertical grill and it turned out to be great." Pork is taboo for Muslims and thus is expensive and hard to find in places like Lebanon. But in Mexico it is everywhere.

After finally finding the right meat for trompos, eventually the Arab style bread was replaced with traditional corn tortillas. What was once foreign and unpopular, had become so intrinsic to street food culture it was hard to remember Mexico without it.

Food can be thought of as our cultural DNA. It tells us who we are, where we are, and where we come from. Tacos al pastor, with meat cooked in the style of the Levant wrapped in a tortilla, the staple food of Mesoamerica, is a perfect metaphor for modern Mexico. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

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