Major Regrets

In June, your editors traveled to Albuquerque to attend the National Women's Studies Association Convention. There we were joined by West Texans Abby "World" Wilkerson and her brother, Chris -- people who know their Tex-Mex from their New Mex from their Mex in the food department. We knew we could trust them to ferret out the places to dine on New Mexican* cuisine during our stay in the city.

And indeed they did. Within minutes of arriving in town, Abby struck up a conversation with a friendly and knowledgeable bus driver, who told her that the best place for New Mexican food in all of Albuquerque was the M & J Sanitary Tortilla Factory. We filed away that information, promising ourselves to make a trip there soon.

Time passed. We had several swell meals at Little Anita's, a small chain of New Mexican restaurants with a branch in our hotel parking lot. I could be happy indeed if I ever heard that Little Anita's had decided to open a branch in St. Peter, Minnesota. We had a terrific meal at El Pinto, a giant restaurant where we dined al fresco and were serenaded by a really terrific band. We even made it to Santa Fe for one wonderful meal at the famed Café Pasqual. But always the Sanitary Tortilla Factory stood like a beacon before us, beckoning us hither. This was going to be the place that made all the rest of these places look like McMexican.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm going to tell you that we went there and it was terrible. Well you're wrong. We never made it. It just didn't happen. Abby and I (Lisa) were particularly crushed. We consoled ourselves by saying that probably this bus driver had a leatherette palate anyway, and didn't know beans about New Mexican food.

And then came the independent confirmation of his assessment, in the form of the July issue of Gourmet magazine. In the "Two for the Road" column authored by road food demigods Jane and Michael Stern. In a special article on the restaurants of Route 66 -- Southwest portion. You guessed it: "The best native New Mexican food in Albuquerque is made at M & J Sanitary Tortilla Factory, across from the bus station" (p.52). I knew it. And reader, we didn't eat there.**

*Jokes We Can No Longer Make Department: On a television sitcom popular in the 1970s the lead character remarked, "I just tried that new Mexican restaurant in town," to which another character replied, "Gee, I've never had New Mexican food before."

**Critical readers may be surprised to learn that I would even have considered eating in a restaurant that was not only called a factory, but a sanitary factory at that. Given my rule about avoiding shacks, huts and factories, this may seem just a tad two-faced. Sure, there was the recommendation from a genuine local, but that shouldn't matter. A rule is a rule, isn't it?

Well, yes it is. But a corollary is a corollary, too. And, in light of the M&J Sanitary Tortilla Factory incident-combined with an analysis of some ethnic cookbooks from earlier in this century, and a discussion with Abby about eating out in West Texas in the 60's -- I have produced a corollary to the No Sheds, Huts or Factories rule. Here it is: "Restaurants named 'factory' should not be ruled out of bounds, if it is suspected that the name was chosen to diminish white people's fears that the food in this restaurant is dirty because it is 'ethnic'."

So-called ethnic restaurants long battled the mistaken belief that they were dangerous, filthy sources of disease, because they were run by people of color. A cookbook from 1914, Bohemian San Francisco: Its Restaurants and Their Most Famous Recipes, offers us a fine cross-section of such views. It notes of a restaurant that, "the cooking was truly Mexican for it included the usual Mexican disregard for dirt." In a discussion on Chinatown, the author (Clarence Edwards) notes that any of the restaurants not frequented by "Americans" "are impossible because of the average Chinaman's disregard for dirt and the usual niceties of food preparation." (Clarence also has a prejudice against garlic, which "is offensive to sensitive nostrils and vitiates the taste when used." My kinda guy.) Abby confirms that similar attitudes about Mexican restaurants held sway among white folks in her acquaintance when she was growing up near Lubbock. One way to try to counteract such vicious generalizations was to present as many impressions to the contrary as possible -- starting right out with the name. How can you convey, with a name, that your restaurant is a clean, spanking place, the kind of place where you could eat off the floor, if you were so inclined? How about calling it a factory? After all, for a very long time, factories were regarded as paragons of cleanliness, full of shiny, sanitary stainless steel -- and modern to boot. Food made in a factory -- especially a sanitary factory-would just have to be clean and modern also.