He tells us he wants a decent Mexican meal cooked to the highest USDA
standards in a brick and mortar restaurant under full Sanitation control

OK, go for it.

My note has more to do with his disparaging remarks about tacos and
traditional antojitos that made Mexican food so popular, not only in the US,
but in the world.

A three taco plate with a dab of rice and beans in Tokyo goes for $18.00 US.
There must be a reason.

A bit of history, not to be argumentative, but to reflect on what I saw as
the history of Mexican food becoming so popular in the US... and the world
later on. Just as Tequila today is being sold at a higher price than
designer cognacs and brandies... not to mention the onslaught of Mexican
beer!

I was born in Utah, taken to Mexico when my mother remarried a Mexican
pilot. Ricardo, my step-dad, paid me twenty centavos (worth a great
chocolate candy bar in those days) to eat a Serrano chile seeing as how I
was so reluctant to consume chiles in any way shape or form. I eventually
came to love them, but made ugly faces in order to keep getting the bribe.
(Which did not last long as Ricardo caught on pretty quick that I was
lying).

That was my introduction to the delights of Mexican cooking and it has never
stopped. So... when I came back to the US to continue my studies at Denver
University, pre-med. to go into veterinary medicine to eventually return to
our hacienda in Veracruz and assume the role of Don Wayne... I looked all
over Denver for a Mexican restaurant.

Only flour tortilla burritos with salsa verde down on Larimer St, like
Holstead St. in Chicago.

If I wanted a corn tortilla taco, I had to buy canned tortillas by mail from
the El Paso Taco Factory.

Then one day I saw Fritos in a potato chip look-alike bag in a store and
bought one! Now. what? There were no salsas, no chile Serrano, no cilantro,
no jalapenos, no tomatillos.... so improvise with what we had. Tomatoes,
onions Tabasco sauce, and an occasional avocado. Occasional, because in most
of the US they were still unknown. It wasn't until superbowl that the
avocado got it's start.

Then one day I sat down at a burrito place in a bowling alley on Colfax,
down there by Gates Rubber, across from the veterinary clinic I worked as
kennel boy... and they put a cooked green chile verde with chunks of pork
and I had found my paradise in Denver.

Like millions others, I grew to love American/Mexican food because there
simply was no alternative in those before 1954 days in my part of the world.

How things have changed! And I love a street taco, gordita, elote, piscado,
chalupa and whatever else they can make. I know from experience that you
only buy from the stands with waiting lines and never, never, never from a
stand with no customers. Why? Because the word spreads when somebody gets
sick, faster than any government agency could even write the infraction,
least of all close the place due to the legal process.

Give me a roach coach or corner taco stand any day! I'm 71 and never sick a
single day for eating at the thousands of such places over my lifetime.

Wayne