Mexico Is Savoring Its Roots

Eddy Warman beams at the appetizer just placed before him at his restaurant, Girasoles, a trendy hangout for Mexican politicians.

Grabbing a spoon, the public relations executive stuffs the crunchy, brown morsels into a soft taco. “This is like caviar,” he gushes.

But the $11.50 dish, a favorite of senators and expense-account executives, is hardly an imported delicacy. It is a plate of worms--plump, scaly worms fried up in one of the most exotic hors d’oeuvres to thrill discerning Mexicans these days.

The worms represent a striking development in a cuisine better known for being hot than haute. Disdaining the chips-and-salsa Mexican menu familiar to many in the U.S., alta cocina (haute cuisine) restaurants are popping up in this giant capital, combining yuppie tastes with the cooking that has been a cornerstone of Mexican identity. What Wolfgang Puck did for pizza, these chefs are doing for tacos, cactus leaves and worms.

The trend reflects a surprising shift in the Mexican middle class, which since Spanish colonial days had snubbed local goods in favor of imports. These days, it’s the home-grown products--from food to furniture--that are trendy. Those who predicted the demise of Mexican culture with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement and globalization appear to be wrong. In fact, this country’s 3,000-year-old heritage is becoming almost hip.

“We were a country that had many complexes. We thought anything American or foreign was good. Now, we feel like our roots are important, our food is good,” says Gabriela Garcia, a 28-year-old art dealer dining at Isadora, another of the capital’s trendy Mexican restaurants.

The reasons vary. Many say that NAFTA’s policies may be a factor. As Mexicans gain more access to foreign goods, imports are losing the luster of forbidden fruit. Mexicans are finding that products from tortillas to tequila to Talavera pottery not only hold their own at home but are increasingly winning an international audience.

Americans whose idea of sophisticated Mexican food is blue taco chips would hardly recognize the fare at the new restaurants. Some turn traditional “pueblo foods” from the country, such as bugs or cactus leaves, into expensive dishes. Others mix traditional products with imports. Forget refried beans; try black-bean mousse.

A similar transformation has occurred for tequila. Once a macho liquor served in lowbrow cantinas, tequila has soared in popularity even as it has gone upscale in taste. In a sign of the times, the Jose Cuervo firm has just introduced the first $1,000 tequila, served up in a crystal bottle. Goodbye, campesino; hello, conspicuous consumption.

Of course, blue-cheese tostadas and $10-a-shot tequilas are hardly on the menu for most in a nation still struggling to recover from a devastating economic crisis. The new cuisine is aimed at middle- and upper-class Mexicans, perhaps one-quarter of the population.

But the success of alta cocina and designer tequilas suggests change in a country where, until recently, nearly all fancy restaurants were European and whiskey was the gentleman’s drink of choice.

“Mexican restaurants have become fashionable. Mexicans have discovered Mexican food,” food writer Jorge De’Angeli says as he nibbles on a quail leg dipped in a sherry, chocolate and chile sauce at El Tajin, a restaurant run by his wife, celebrated chef Alicia Gironella.

Rising Domestic Pride

Mexican food, of course, has never been forgotten here. But until recently, it didn’t equal chic. De’Angeli says that members of the middle class--which swelled with the country’s economic boom from the 1950s to the ‘80s--long remained too intimidated to request Mexican favorites when they went out for a nice dinner.

This was, after all, a country where foreign culture was historically regarded as superior to native Indian influences. In Mexico City, there is so much French architecture that visitors often remark on the capital’s European look. The preference for imports has been so strong that Mexicans have a word for it: malinchismo, from La Malinche, the Indian mistress of Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes.

These days, malinchismo appears to be diminishing.

“You see it in the decoration of houses, in the gifts you give. Before, you gave cut crystal or European prints. Now, you give Mexican handicrafts,” says Guadalupe Loaeza, a writer and popular taste-meister.

She tells of attending elegant dinners in which hostesses served meatballs in chipotle chile sauce--a dish that once enjoyed all the status of franks and beans.

Some say the boom in alta cocina and Mexican decor is somewhat of an import itself. They note that Mexican food, art and design have become celebrated in the United States and other countries in recent years, making them more acceptable back home.

At the same time, however, Mexicans have had far more opportunity to sample foreign goods, thanks in part to NAFTA, which broke down trade barriers across the continent. Some say that Mexicans have realized that imports aren’t much better than local goods.

“There’s a very human psychological reaction,” Loaeza says. “Before, what you couldn’t obtain seemed appetizing. Now, that’s not so true.”

Family Dining Evolves

Of course, Mexican cuisine has never been all beef tacos and guacamole. As is clear to anyone who has seen the movie “Like Water for Chocolate,” middle- and upper-class homes long enjoyed a subtle, complex Mexican cuisine that included rich cream sauces and complex hors d’oeuvres.

But such homes, with full-time moms, plentiful household help and a father who returned for the big midday meal, are growing increasingly rare. In this overwhelmingly urban society, more women are working. Commuting home for lunch in sprawling Mexico City has become nearly impossible. For many, elaborate home-cooked meals have become a thing of the past.

“People ask me what Mexicans eat at home. I tell them, ‘Campbell’s soup and sandwiches,’ ” says Pedro Luis de Aguinaga, a food writer.

Thus, Mexicans were receptive when restaurants began offering Mexican alta cocina, food experts say. Savvy marketers drew crowds by providing old favorites prepared in upscale ways.

Girasoles, for example, offers everything from duck tacos to tamarind-flavored mole--tradionally a thick chocolate-chile-and-nut sauce. But the biggest status symbols are country foods such as ant eggs, worms and grasshoppers. While the tasty critters were offered at a few restaurants in the past, they are now so difficult to acquire they’ve become more expensive than steak.

It may be no coincidence that several of the most popular alta cocina restaurants in the capital are owned by public relations experts, including Warman, who runs Girasoles. Their dishes are named after well-to-do Mexican families; the decor is faux hacienda. The snob appeal is clear.

“We don’t just dump mole on a plate,” Warman says. “It’s like French haute cuisine.”

Needless to say, the alta cocina proponents have few kind words for the stuff served up in many Mexican restaurants north of the border. In fact, their reaction is generally one of undisguised horror.

“This takes the poorest [cooking] of a small area on the border and mixes it with vulgar cooking from Texas,” food writer De’Angeli says, shuddering. “From a historical point of view, it’s interesting. From a gastronomic point of view, it’s a disaster.”

The economic crisis that sideswiped Mexico in 1995-97 didn’t kill the alta cocina trend, even though the middle class was especially hard hit. The recession may even have helped the restaurants. That’s because the price of imported goods skyrocketed after the peso was devalued.

“Chiles don’t cost the same as salmon or porcini mushrooms,” notes Esther Nakash, owner of the restaurant Agave Azul. Upscale Mexican not only became trendy; it was suddenly more affordable.

Tequila too has benefited from being cheaper than imported spirits. Price, however, is hardly the only factor in the revival of the stiff drink made from agave.

Odd as it may seem to Americans--the world’s biggest tequila consumers--the liquor used to be scorned in Mexico. But the harsh, cheap drink that was once gulped by machos in cantinas has now been elbowed aside by finer, more aged tequilas served in elegant bottles.

The changes in image and quality have contributed to a tequila boom. In 1992, 8 million gallons were sold in Mexico; last year, the figure was 19 million gallons, according to the Tequila Chamber of Commerce, based in Jalisco state, the heart of the industry.

Perhaps there is no more telling symbol of tequila’s new status than the bar at Hacienda de los Morales, one of the capital’s traditional fancy watering holes. Here, a waiter provides a visitor with a leather-bound list of 400 tequilas, ranging from $3.80 to $29 a shot, some served in brandy snifters. The drink, of course, is sipped--never slammed.

Like the sommeliers who suggest fine wines, the bar has waiters who help clients negotiate the tequila list, maitre d’ David Lampon says.

“They are not sommeliers,” he explains. “They’re tequiliers.”

Tequila Gains Respect

The bar’s manager, Victor Porras, rejects the idea that the upscale tequilas are part of a passing fad. They have become a staple in Mexican homes, he says.

“People have realized tequila is an excellent product. It’s as good and competitive as whiskey,” he says. The drink has broken all social barriers, he notes. “Even women drink tequila.”

A generation ago, serving tequila at the home of someone like Loaeza, the writer, would have raised eyebrows. But she offers a vivid example of how Mexican tastes have changed.

Her home, in the posh Mexico City neighborhood of Lomas de Chapultepec, features rattan rugs, rustic stick-and-leather chairs, and works by the painter Rodolfo Morales, who celebrates Indian themes. A pink chair in the elegant Napoleon III style, from her mother’s era, sits rather forlornly in a corner.

In the past, “the only people who ever dared to do this were Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. They received people with tequila and rustic chairs,” she says, referring to the early 20th century painters who exalted Mexico’s roots.

“Everyone said they were crazy. But they were the forerunners of what we’re doing now.”