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| Not my usual kind of thing, I know, but this one from Taste caught my tongue. I mean, eye. Whatever. The Chain That Defined “Mexican” for 1990s America Wants Back In  Chi-Chi’s once filled dining rooms with fajitas and frozen margaritas. Will diners still buy what it’s selling? Send the immigrants back to Mexico but keep their food? Yeah, that's on brand for the US. When I was in college at California State University, Northridge, Monday nights meant sorority meetings that sometimes stretched late into the evening. You want me to make a joke about sororities here, but I'm not going to. Afterward, we’d usually end up at Denny’s for midnight mozzarella sticks, boneless Buffalo wings dipped in ranch, and water with lemon. Note the phrasing there: "end up at Denny's." That's because one doesn't choose to go to Denny's; one ends up at Denny's. For decades, Chi-Chi’s offered its own version of “Mexican” dining: chimichangas as big as your head to go with giant goblet-size margaritas and family celebrations staged in suburban strip malls. For the record, frozen margaritas are abominations. Founded in 1975 in the Twin Cities suburb of Richfield, Minnesota... I didn't make a joke about sororities up there, but I'm going to make a joke about Minnesota. Ready? What were they thinking? Minnesotans consider mayonnaise to be too spicy. Okay, I'm done. But the energy Alvarez remembers so vividly didn’t last. By the 1990s, the buzz that once made Chi-Chi’s a magnet for large gatherings had begun to fade as tastes shifted. Across the United States, taquerías and mom-and-pop Mexican restaurants gained traction, offering food that felt closer to home for Mexican Americans and newly arrived immigrant families and more enticing for diners searching for “authenticity.” I don't give a shit about "authenticity," and I don't believe in food as cultural appropriation, but, to be blunt, Chi-Chi's and its ilk were simply embarrassing. Not that I've never eaten at one. We had one here for a couple of years, before they went tetas-up. But they didn't last very long. See, we have a long-standing local restaurant here called Guadalajara, which is run by actual Mexican-Americans, and not Minnesotans in plastic sombreros. Now, after more than two decades, Chi-Chi’s is staging a comeback. Its first U.S. restaurant opened on October 6 at 1602 West End Boulevard in suburban St. Louis Park, Minnesota led by Michael McDermott, son of the chain’s co-founder. Wow. That's an ad. Dammit. I think I see what's going on here. Obviously, Chi-Chi's, while dormant, spent millions lobbying the US government to crack down on immigrants, and now they're hoping to recoup the cost by restarting their soulless fake-Mex chain. Arellano has long argued that chains like Chi-Chi’s mattered because they normalized Mexican food for mainstream America, even if in caricature, and primed the way for more authentic iterations of the cuisine down the line. Okay, I guess? Pretty sure that my town isn't the only one that had decent Mexican food before Chi-Chi's. I don't have much of a point here today except to rag on big chain restaurants. And maybe Minnesota, just a little bit. Okay, I'm kidding; last time I was there, I made it a point to eat at places that are generally known for spicy food, such as Indian and Thai. Neither one of them disappointed, and both were well-attended. But they weren't big soulless corporate chains. |
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