Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Posts Tagged ‘Chipotle’

Ten years ago, most people couldn’t have told you what chipotle was. Shit, I’m not confident most Mexicans could have told you what it was. If you’d asked me, I probably would have guessed that Chipotle was an obscure brother of my favorite god in the Aztec pantheon—the mighty Huitzilopochtli.

The fierce Huitzilopochtli.

But these days, chipotle is everywhere. And, everyone most assuredly knows what it is. There’s chipotle spread. There’s chipotle salsa. Every sandwich, burrito, wrap, entree-sized salad has to have something chipotle. It seems that every restaurant throws a little of it into everything, just to be on the safe side. In fact, there’s even a whole bargain-bin Mexican food chain bearing the name of the pesky condiment.

For some time I’ve wondered what or, more importantly, who was responsible for polluting some of my favorite cuisines with this distracting, overpoweringly smoky taste. A little field reconnaissance, and attentive television watching, has revealed the obvious culprit.

Someone please pass the chipotle.

It’s no wonder White people love chipotle (the chili, I don’t know about the restaurant). It sounds exotic. I have an aching suspicion that they enjoy pronouncing the hard Nahuatl stop in the middle of p-t-l-e. (I mean, who doesn’t?) But above all, chipotle provides just the right amount of non-threatening ethnic zest to their food, without the inconvenient, and potentially embarrassing, “kick” of the Latino-er chilies.