In the American food scene, the word "authentic" is touchy. Or maybe it's the people preparing the food? The owners of this place are originally from Mexico, so does that help? Does it matter if one of the cooks actually preparing the food was born in America to El Salvadoran parents? Do the ingredients need to all be sourced from Mexico? What about the restaurant itself? Is it disqualified because the tile patterns kind of look Andalusian? Or because I'm pretty sure the wood in the chairs isn't Oaxacan?Īnd what about me? Am I fucking up the authenticity of this beautiful mole by sitting here obsessing over its authenticity? By eating it while being an Irish-American lapsed Catholic from Boston? Oh, also: is this food even any good? Is eating European food originally created in Mexico while in California authentic?
But then again, legend has it that the first "mole" as we know it was created by Spanish nuns in Puebla who mixed together non-indigenous ingredients to serve on turkey when the archbishop came to visit, and they were colonizers coming in from Europe. I tried to break it down: mole's name comes from the Nahuatl word for "sauce," so that also seems to check out. I kept thinking: "What exactly made that mole authentically Mexican?" "Let it go, Kevin," I whispered gently to myself, but I couldn't. "The enchiladas," he said, "are prepared in an authentic Mexican mole." Here I was, minding my own business, sitting in a Mexican restaurant brainstorming staggered humblebrags for my next Instagram, when I overheard my server describe the dish I'd just ordered to another diner.
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