Border food and food on the border: meaning and practice in Mexican haute cuisine

Abstract

Restaurants and their attendant practices are high-profile sites at which regional and national cuisines are experienced, experimented with, and negotiated. In particular, they are important settings for the consumption and production of national identity—a crucial space through which to understand the coalescing of the material and representational. This article focuses specifically on the production side of the pairing through an examination of restaurants that are part of a prominent culinary movement (alta cocina mexicana) in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. The central argument of the paper is that Tijuana's culinary scene is indicative of the reassertion of boundaries between Mexico and the USA through the intentional rejection of northern stereotypes of Mexican food. The emphasis on traditional Mexican cuisine, rather than an internationally hybrid cosmopolitan approach, suggests that chefs are adhering to a set of rules that reflect Mexicanness. Restaurants propagating alta cocina mexicana work to differentiate the border and act as social devices which both complicate conventional understandings of Mexican food and disrupt hegemonic discourses of the border as productive of hybridity.

Des restaurants et leurs pratiques correspondants sont des sites bien en vue où on entre en contact avec et la cuisine régionale et nationale et où elle est expérimentée et négociée. En particulière, ils sont des milieux importants pour la consommation et la production de l'identité nationale - un espace essentiel à travers lequel on comprend l'union du matériel et de la représentationnelle. Cet article se penche spécifiquement sur le côté producteur de ce jumelage à travers un examen des restaurants qui font partie d'un mouvement culinaire connu (alta cocina mexicana) dans la ville frontalière de Tijuana. Dans l'article l'argument central propose que la scène culinaire soit indicative de la réaffirmation, à la base d'un rejet intentionnel des stéréotypes du nord de la nourriture mexicaine, des frontières entre la Mexique et les Etats-Unis. L'accent mis sur la cuisine mexicaine traditionnelle, plutôt qu'une approche internationalement hybride et cosmopolite, suggère que les chefs adhèrent à des règles qui révèlent des racines mexicaines. Des restaurants qui propagent l'alta cocina mexicana font travailler la différentiation de la frontière et servent des dispositifs sociaux qui à la fois compliquent des compréhensions conventionnelles de la nourriture mexicaine et troublent des discours hégémoniques de la frontière qui la donnent comme productrice de la hybridité.

Los restaurantes así como las prácticas vinculadas a ellos son sitios notables en que se vivencian, experimentan y negocian la cocina nacional y regional. En particular, ellos son escenarios importantes para el consumo y la producción de la identidad nacional – un espacio clave por medio del cual se puede comprender la fusión de lo material con lo representacional. Este artículo específicamente se centra en lo que atañe a la producción de tal fusión. Para ello explora los restaurantes que son parte del prominente movimiento de alta cocina mexicana en la ciudad mexicana fronteriza de Tijuana. Este artículo sostiene que la escena culinaria en Tijuana es indicativa de la reafirmación de los límites entre México y Estados Unidos mediante el intencional rechazo de los estereotipos norteños de la comida mexicana. El énfasis que se le otorga a la cocina tradicional mexicana en detrimento de la versión internacional, híbrida y cosmopolita, sugiere que los chefs adhieren a una serie de reglas que reflejan mexicanidad. Los restaurantes que propagan la alta cocina mexicana funcionan como diferenciadores de la frontera y actúan como mecanismos sociales que, a la vez que complejizan las acepciones convencionales de la comida mexicana, perturban los discursos hegemónicos que conciben a las fronteras como producto de la hibridez.

Keywords:

• borders
• national identity
• globalization
• food
• Mexico
• cultural production

Keywords:

• frontières
• identité nationale
• mondialisation
• nourriture
• Mexique
• production culturale

Keywords:

• fronteras
• identidad nacional
• globalización
• comida
• México
• producción cultural

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Jamie Winders, Jennie Burnett, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful commentary and guidance. I would also like to acknowledge the editors' commitment to a timely review process. Finally, I am indebted to the study participants and the city of Tijuana.

Notes

 1. See, for example, ‘Tijuana: Another Mexico’ Saveur, 2 May 2007 or ‘Master of a New Tijuana’ The New York Times, 8 March 2011.

 2. Both ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ are problematic concepts. Abarca (2004) distills the politics and privilege of claiming authenticity, arguing that appropriation of the label can stifle creative growth. Nevertheless, it is this author's observation that cookbooks, chefs, and popular food programs continue to reify both signifiers in spite of scholarly critique.

 3. For more on Tijuana's rise to prominence, see Walker (2011).

 4. For a full review of border scholarship in Geography, see Agnew (2008) and Newman (2006).

 5. Traditional cowboy attire.

 6. Examples of influential authors and their associated works: Bonfíl Batalla (1996), Carrión (1951), Monsivaís (1992), and Paz (1950).

 7. It is worthy of attention that in addition to what is mentioned here, the expropriation of the cookbooks of marginalized cultures by middle- and upper-class writers is a long-standing practice. See, for example, Zafar (1999) and Appuradai (1988).

 8. There is a large and relevant literature on the transmission of culture and values through food. See, for example, Berris and Sutton (2007), Duruz (2010), and Suen (2007).

 9. Mexican food is a constructed category (even though the chefs continue to endeavor to locate an ‘essence’ therein). Part of such projects is to police the boundaries of what falls inside and outside. Ideas around authentic and inauthentic are bound up with and foundational to the positioning of Mexican cuisine at these sites.

10. A prominent Mexican painter who celebrated the colors and setting of his home city, Puebla.

11. For literature on food and memory, see a special issue of The Journal of American History 95(2).