Tag: Influence

The Trump administration has spent weeks threatening Chicago, trolling the Midwest colossus of 9 million with incendiary online posts. In the gut, even from far away, it has felt like early June in L.A. all over again.

That’s because Chicago is just like us: big, urban, vibrant, and brown. This summer I visited the city where I always feel the flutter of familiarity.

Let it be said: Chicago, like L.A., is Mexican as hell.

Los Angeles may have more Mexican residents in total numbers, but in terms of who makes up each city’s Latino population, Chicago is “as Mexican” as Los Angeles. Consider that about a third of Chicago is Hispanic or Latino, and roughly 73% of those people identify as Mexican. In Los Angeles, more than 45% are Latino, and about 71% of that population is Mexican, according to recent census data.

There is a Mexican essence in this tough, labor-leading Midwest town, and it’s transmitted in the foods that local people of all backgrounds revere. Tacos, birria and carnitas are as familiar as deep-dish pizza and pickle-topped Chicago dogs. This was solidified for me after crossing a threshold that some West Coast purists would blanch at breaching — going to a Rick Bayless restaurant.

Contemporary comforts

First, however, I fell for Mi Tocaya Antojería, a funky place with tall windows facing a patio in the dynamic neighborhood of Logan Square. a Chef Diana Dávila, a leader in values-led dining, established this pillar of modern Mexican American comfort cuisine in 2017.

Her well-loved peanut butter lengua, little squares of braised tongue topped with grilled radish and pickled onion, arrived on a plate streaked with spicy peanut sauce. This and more of Dávila’s dishes reminded me of the many confident, innovative female Mexican chefs I’ve admired over the years. Like others in her cohort, she did several stints in high-stakes kitchens and also grew up working at her family’s taquería.

Chicago’s Mexican-ness is not a recent demographic phenomenon.

“I think a lot of people don’t know,” said Ximena N. Beltrán Quan Kiu, a Chicago writer and consultant who specializes in Latino and Mexican American topics.

“California, Texas and Florida have the highest Latino populations, but Chicago has the highest Mexican population away from any border state,” Beltrán said. “The migration patterns are really huge — from Mexico to Chicago.”

The influence of Mexican Chicago on all of us may run deeper than we realize. At the 1893 World’s Fair, tamale cart vendors sparked a national obsession with tamales, writes Times columnist Gustavo Arellano in his book “Taco USA.” He also credits the early canning of Mexican comfort dishes — including chile con carne and even tortillas — to Chicago‘s canning industry.

Where it feels like home

In Los Angeles it is Boyle Heights or East L.A. In San Diego it is Barrio Logan or City Heights. In San Francisco it is the Mission District. And in Chicago it is Pilsen and Little Village. These are among the most well-known multiethnic Mexican American neighborhoods in the United States.

Pilsen, first populated by German, Polish and Czech immigrants, has been the central node of the city’s Mexican life going back to the 1910s, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.

Local legend Carnitas Uruapan, opened on 18th Street in 1975 by Inocencio Carbajal, has brought perfect Michoacán-style slow-braised pork to five decades of families who line up for carnitas to-go with all the necessary sides.

Recently, the family family added a new dine-in location in Little Village, characterized as the urban port-of-entry for more recent arrivals from Mexico and Latin America.

“We haven’t really changed our core menu in 50 years,” Marcos Carbajal, the founder’s son and co-operator, told me, “and if we did, people would revolt.”

Not this, not that

Mexican Chicago is shaped by dining traditions that reflect a range of inter-generational customs, like the lore of the Tamale Lady, a Pilsen street vendor whose tamales are considered a cut above any other in Cook County. Or for Birrieria Zaragoza, open since 2007 in nearby Archer Heights.

Pilsen is also home to Cantón Regio, a Monterrey-style antojería with particularly good refried beans and flour tortillas, and Pochos, an all-day restaurant that sits right next-door to the Carnitas Uruapan original storefront.

Pochos co-owner Irene Acosta grew up with her parents and siblings on the “Mexican side” of Chicago, part of a first- and second-generation thriving in the local restaurant industry.

“I identify as pocho and there wasn’t a home for us. It was all either the mom-and-pop shops, or places that were way too modern,” Acosta said during a quiet lull one weekday.

The restaurateur began watching Julia Child videos on PBS when she was 5. She and co-founder Miguel Hernandez opened their first Pochos location in 2019. “We’re not really Mexican, we’re not really American,” Acosta said, “we’re somewhere in between.”

We brunched on the restaurant’s chorizo omelet, braised beef empanadas and a towering lemon berry French toast. Paired with mimosas, it was a fun pocho brunch, Pilsen-made.

The Bayless effect

I had a Rick Bayless torta once. At O’Hare. It’s almost a requirement during stop at that airport. The torta was good.

Bayless, who first opened Frontera Grill with wife Deann Bayless in Chicago’s River North in 1987, helped train American diners to equate Mexican cuisines with high-quality ingredients and complex preparations — just as Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken did when they opened Los Angeles’ Border Grill on Melrose Avenue in 1985. It wasn’t until 2013 that the first Michelin star for a Mexican-born chef went to Carlos Gaytán for his restaurant Mexique, also in Chicago.

The Bayless trajectory meanwhile morphed into a successful empire involving books, a TV show, and four restaurants, all in the same River North building where Frontera Grill first started nearly 40 years ago. In 1989 he added upscale Topolobampo and eventually fast-casual Xoco and his “speakeasy” concept Bar Sótano, whose name means “basement.”

I was particularly curious about Bar Sótano because I had seen posts about how it offered a Mango Chamoy drink served in a small plastic bag with a straw tied into it, mimicking a practice deep in tianguis in Mexico, where you can drink a tepache like this for 10 or 15 pesos.

I wanted to see if the Bayless presentation would trigger delight or offense in me. Plus, I needed to see what makes a Bayless restaurant a Bayless restaurant.

I was truly in a neutral mindset. Sadly, the cocktail in the bag was no longer available, our server said. Something about the tariffs.

Otherwise, service was crisp and clean while we sampled sikil pak, a Yucatecan cream or dip that’s trending in Mexican restaurants this year, and a ceviche with too much tomato. Also had two tacos that I could only describe as incoherent.

When I looked up, the room was jammed.

I could see why this kind of dining is considered top-quality and worth its value in this city. Every kind of possible Chicagoan was there on the night I visited, all having a good time. Many of the employees were Latino or Mexican, or maneuvered like veteran hospitality people, flipping tortillas and preparing salsas, or furiously mixing drinks.

Mexican Chicagoans in the food industry usually acknowledge that Bayless restaurants have served as springboards for a veritable tree of future chef ventures, making him critical for the ecosystem of Midwestern Mexican fine dining.

“At a time when we need allies, Rick Bayless is not an enemy,” said Beltrán, the writer.

Bayless “opened a lane for Mexican food to be perceived as gourmet, something that has deep cultural connections,” Carbajal said. “And as a result of that, he’s opened doors for other people.”

I sent multiple emails and messages to Bayless requesting an interview. I especially wanted to know if the chef would like to say anything about the climate in Chicago’s Mexican dining scene under this ominous threat from Washington.

Sure, I would also want to ask about the withering criticism he’s received for his characterization of how we do things in California from writers like Gustavo Arellano and Bill Esparza, or the litany of public spats he’s had with prominent West Coast food voices including the late Jonathan Gold.

Bayless did not respond to any of my requests for comment.

Even so, I can recognize and admire the breadth of his influence on perceptions of Mexican food within the United States. It is similar to the like-it-or-not influence of Diana Kennedy on Mexican home-cooking in this country.

“He employs hundreds of people from the neighborhoods, and he’s had our food for a really long time,” Carbajal said. “There are Rick Bayless alumni all over town.”

Nightmare raids

Considering the context of the ICE raids in the summer of 2025, Bayless is a reminder that in the greater scheme of things, the focus right now should be on how alike we are — all of us Americans, regardless of ethnicity or political lean.

Those of us of who love Mexican American cuisine, in all its manifestations, can take heart in knowing it is still one of the most “American” aspects to whatever is left of the U.S. monoculture. Our nation is obsessed with tacos.

The ICE surge in the Chicago metropolitan has begun, and has already resulted in the first fatal shooting during an ICE-identified detention since the start of the second Trump administration.

Some Mexican Independence Day parties and festivities took place in recent days in Chicago, Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities, while many organizers also canceled events across the country, according to local media reports. Restaurants everywhere are already feeling the pinch of fear take hold in their communities, including Carbajal of Carnitas Uruapan, who said business has dipped.

“The crowds are much smaller this year. Those are just indicators that people are not wanting to go out,” said Serena Maria Daniels, a longtime Midwest food journalist and author of the newsletter Midwest Mexican. Daniels said she’s watched locals activating in anticipation of Trump’s threats. But the chilling effect is already here, she and other sources said.

“This situation really makes you pause and think about how our community has touched so many aspects of society, and how this is really threatening all of these threads that hold up the economy, that make cities function, that make governments function,” Daniels said. “It truly is a nightmare.”

So here we are. In the throes of what now feels like a systematic assault on our way of life in multiethnic American urban centers, not merely targeting the “the worst of the worst” but anyone with brown skin.

The operations also seem to disregard the sense of belonging and pride we all feel living in a wealthy multicultural megacity, fueled by immigrants, regardless of our background — the kind of place embodied by L.A. or Chicago. Our cities remain rich places, warts and all. We hold steadfast to community, to joy, to service, to open-mindedness, and we demonstrate it in our dining habits.

In truth, our cities show the beauty and promise of this idea, where people from all over the world can gather to seek prosperity, share their cultures, and make it work. And we can all also have delicious carnitas tacos while doing it.