Certified Tacos
Some restaurants in the USA are serving what they call tacos, but they’re skipping the certification process, so … should they be allowed to call their tacos “tacos”? Or should they have to call them “tortilla-wrapped meals”? And if they also serve uncertified salsa, does that double-negative result in a positive? We speak to the CRT (Consejo Regulador del Taco) to try to better understand the dangers of uncertified tacos in this delicious episode of Agave Road Trip!
This episode of Agave Road Trip is brought to you by MezcalForLife.com. What you drink out of is just as important as what you drink. MezcalForLife.com can help you find the perfect drinking vessel for your perfect agave spirit. Head to MezcalForLife.com now and you can be set for next week’s episode of Agave Road Trip, sponsored by MezcalForLife.com!
Agave Road Trip is a podcast that helps gringo bartenders better understand agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico. It’s hosted by Lou Bank and Chava Periban.
The tacos in the episode “cover” are from Paoli Schoolhouse American Bistro in Wisconsin — truly among the best tacos I’ve ever eaten, due in no small part to the locally sourced tortillas from Tortilleria Zepeda.
I grew up in suburban Chicago eating Ortega hardshell tacos. Not exactly authentic, but they taste like childhood. Anyone who says you can’t go home again should visit…
I said “" in the episode, but I meant “neurocysticercosis”: brain worms you can contract by eating street tacos. No … really. Check out this Vice story.
The Consejo Regulador del Mezcal (CRM) is the body (or maybe a body — that’s another story) that certifies agave spirits as conforming to the regulations (the NOM) that define mezcal.
What are the regulations that define the different kinds of mezcal? How do they compare to the regulations that define tequila, raicilla, sotol, whiskey, and rum? All that and more…
Leonista is a brand of agave spirits made in South Africa.
Two bottles of mezcal, both made from an agave identified as “cuishe.” But the Banhez bottle is made from agave karwinskii, while the Lalocura bottle is made from agave rhodacantha. The CRM has changed the rules such that now a bottle cannot be labeled “mezcal” and identify agave rhodacantha as “cuishe,” which makes it easier for Joe Citizen to understand but I would suggest undermines the cultural heritage in the communities that use “cuishe” to refer to agave rhodacantha.
Episode transcript
Lou Bank (00:00):
This episode of Agave Road Trip is brought to you by MezcalForLife.com. What you drink out of is just as important as what you drink. Stick around after this episode to learn how MezcalForLife.com can help you find a proper vessel so you get the full experience of aromas and flavors from that outstanding agave spirit, but for now, strap yourself in for another episode of Agave Road Trip!
Lou Bank (00:38):
I am Lou Bank.
Chava Periban (00:39):
I am Chava Periban.
Lou Bank (00:40):
And this is Agave Road Trip, the podcast that attempts to teach gringo bartenders a little something about agave, agave spirits, and rural Mexico, and Chava, today we're going to start by talking about something that has nothing to do with agave or agave spirits, but does have something to do with rural Mexico, but we're going to bring it all back around. And that thing is tacos .t.
Chava Periban (01:07):
Tacos.
Lou Bank (01:07):
We're going to talk tacos.
Chava Periban (01:09):
You know, I haven't had breakfast. We're going to talk about tacos?
Lou Bank (01:13):
I had chocolate. That's all I had for breakfast so far. We're going to talk about tacos and, and we're going to talk about them because like, even the way you said that, there was love in your voice. I say, taco and you hear love. Is that accurate?
Chava Periban (01:27):
You know what I had yesterday for breakfast, I had barbacoa tacos. I was, I was with my business partner and we both touched our hearts. So we didn't even talk while we were eating them. We're just contemplating the barbacoa, putting it inside of our mouth and just being like ... it was a religious moment. It was awesome.
Lou Bank (01:47):
Perfect. That's exactly what I want to hear. Now, let me ask you, who certified those tacos as tacos?
Chava Periban (01:53):
The community that lives around the guy that sells the tacos.
Lou Bank (01:55):
You're saying certified, but what you really mean is they just kept buying tacos. So this guy can keep making tacos, right?
Chava Periban (02:04):
Yeah.
Lou Bank (02:05):
Well, so this is my point. You know, you and I will have had very, very different experiences in so many things, but in particular, growing up, learning what a taco is. And in Chicago growing up in the late 1960s and through the 1970s and then into the early 1980s, a taco to me was this hard-shell thing. That was a taco, with the ground beef. And here's your spice packet and maybe put some onions in it. That's a taco.
Chava Periban (02:41):
I remember the horror stories of the kids that used to go to America when we were like eight or nine, they will come back and they would be like, you have no idea what I saw. These people are sick. They don't know what a taco is -- they call it taco but it's like a tostada and it's like weird. No, no, no, no—.
Lou Bank (02:57):
But, but I loved those tacos, those tacos sang to me. When it was taco night, I was so excited for those tacos. And now obviously as a well-traveled adult male who has visited Mexico and understands the, uh, the beauty that is taco, I still love those cheap-ass tacos I got. And I love Taco Bell. And my point, I think, my point is, absent anybody regulating the word "taco," the market has defined a taco in a specific way. It hasn't killed the quality of tacos. And I would go so far as to say, would it be accurate to say, the people eating street tacos in Mexico 10 to 15 years ago might have come down with a case of brain worms and died as a result?
Chava Periban (03:59):
No, No. Well—.
Lou Bank (04:00):
Yes, it would! Trichinosis. That is what trichinosis is. [Editor note: Not really -- it's neurocysticercosis that Lou was thinking of.] And people would get [neurocysticercosis] from eating street food — often tacos — in Mexico, which is—.
Chava Periban (04:11):
okay, we'll there's that well.
Lou Bank (04:16):
But my point is this, like, even with something as devastating as having your brain eaten by worms, as a result of having a street taco, people still eat street tacos, and street tacos can still be delicious. And generally, by and large, 99.9% of the time, it will be safe. So given that, why do we have to have certification for anything?
Chava Periban (04:42):
Well, and I love that you're bringing this up because one of my more traumatizing moments when I travel to the first world is when I go for street food, when I want the true example, the pulse of a city and its food. And it's so hard to find — all these places have like very strict certification. So you want like a kebab or something that is just that you want it, greasy. You want it like handed to you by the hands of someone and have that palpitating culture in it. And it's hard to find it in places that are just very, very stiff.
Lou Bank (05:17):
Well, it is hard to find it, but I'll tell you even the stiffest of those places, the most stringent of those places, you're not going to have somebody who certifies every single kebab. It doesn't happen, which is the point, right? Like, there's certification and there's regulation, and regulation tends to be okay, In a place like the USA, we're going to check out your restaurant once every year or two, make sure it's kind of clean. And I'm going to assume if you're keeping it kind of clean, that it's going to generally be safe to eat here, that's it. Right? But certification is, Okay, I checked out every facet of this place, I ran the lab numbers, and now I will absolutely put my stamp of approval that what you are serving is this thing you claim to be serving, and it is safe.
Chava Periban (06:03):
How will you refer to the Michelin stars? For example, like when we're talking about restaurants, is that a certification?
Lou Bank (06:10):
That's an interesting point. It's not, you know, it's not a certification. It's like the Good hHousekeeping Seal of Approval. It's somebody went in there a handful of times and had a consistent experience. So they're saying, generally, we think it's safe to tell you that you are also going to have a good time if you go there.
Chava Periban (06:28):
Okay. So that being said, I guess your point is, why are we making such a fuss about certifying mezcal, rightr? And I think there's a number of reasons why they try to do that. I think (a) so someone in South Africa didn't realize that they had agave, too, and wanted to make agave spirits and call them mezcal. And then you have competition for this thing that is endemic to Mexico being made in South Africa, which is one of the big reasons why you do denomination of origins. Right. I shall protect the brand that is connected to my people's culture. Then there's the part about it being safe, which, uh, as we say, you know, most of times it's going to be safe. And then there's another part where it's just basically setting a set of rules that in essence are meant to protect cultural heritage. You think that's the...
Lou Bank (07:23):
Well, you know, it's funny. I actually kind of think your first point and your third point are the same point from different angles.
Chava Periban (07:30):
Yeah. Yeah. One it's like commercial competition. And the other one is like, trying to....
Lou Bank (07:35):
Well, commercial competition is, I don't want somebody in South Africa saying that they're doing this thing that is Mexican.
Chava Periban (07:40):
Yes.
Lou Bank (07:40):
And once you say that you're talking cultural heritage. Yes?
Chava Periban (07:43):
yes. Correct.
Lou Bank (07:44):
Because, okay. So like my frustration there is if, if, if certification actually did protect cultural heritage, I would be so in favor of it. But instead, what I'm seeing through this current certification process is, the existing process for certifying agave spirits as mezcal will tell you it is safe to drink this. You will not go blind unless you drink like a whole case in one sitting. So it says that, but in terms of the cultural heritage piece, it's doing the opposite. And I think this is why you're starting to see brands of mezcal leaving the CRM, leaving the certification process and calling themselves destilado de agave or agave spirits, because let's, for example, use cuishe — the word cuishe, which if you're using that word in most of Oaxaca, it means you're talking about a spirit that was made from a karwinskii varietal of agave. But if you are in Santa Catarina Minas, they use that word to refer to a rhodacantha, which would be called Mexicano in so many other places. So, so a producer in Santa Catarina Minas, Oaxaca, wants to call their spirit cuishe. And that is how they've been calling it for hundreds of years. And the CRM, the certifying body for mezcal, says, no, no, no, you have to call it Mexicano. That's taking away a piece of cultural heritage. It's not protecting it.
Chava Periban (09:16):
Well, no, it's flattening all that complexity for the sake of certification. It's saying all the tacos that do not have a soft tortilla shall not be called tacos. Right?
Lou Bank (09:28):
Right. Exactly. And do we, do we even get into flour versus corn? But before I take us down a rabbit hole we can't get ourselves out of....
Chava Periban (09:38):
Right.
Lou Bank (09:38):
So to go back to that, like, that's one problem with the certification of culture heritage, but the other one is it costs so much money to hire the staff to certify all of these people, to do all of the work to ensure that what is in that bottle is what the bottle says it is. It takes so much money to do that, that as a consequence, so many of the families whose fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers had been making these spirits for multiple generations that have, that have literally built this picture in the imaginations of the world — that have now caused the world to sit up and take notice of mezcal... The families who created that picture cannot afford to certify, and therefore cannot use this word that they actually helped to develop. That literally is the death of cultural heritage.
Chava Periban (10:32):
And not only that they helped develop but that they keep on developing, because I think that's the other real exciting part about agave spirits that we like, that they're not a static, frozen thing. They are still gonna evolve in amazing ways. And so this is not only halting.... Well, it's, it's not only going against the cultural heritage they already had. It's also flattening it in a way that it's not allowing it to evolve in the very interesting ways that it will, if it wasn't chopped down like that.
Lou Bank (11:04):
Boy, you know, I agree a hundred percent. And in fact, I'm going to take it a step further because when you say it's going to evolve, to me, that suggests grand experimentation. And absolutely there is experimentation, like when we talked about Felix, figuring out how to leave his agave out for 30 days, so that it didn't foam as much. Right? So there's that. But I think the other piece of it — and the piece that fascinates me even more than that — is when I taste an agave spirit that comes from the son of a, or the daughter of a mezcalero whose spirit I love, almost inevitably it is the child's spirit that I prefer over the father's, even when I love the father's spirit intensely. And, to me, it's an indication that the child started learning from a person who was more evolved than the teacher of the father, like ... the father learned from the grandfather who was at one level. And then the father added to the skills development, the sensory development, on top of that. And that's where that child is starting to learn at the age of eight. And so that child is going to have more developed skills and senses than the parent. And, to me, that's the evolution that's so exciting.
Chava Periban (12:20):
Absolutely. I mean, yes, yes, yes. And I don't know even what to say more on top of that. I think that's a wrap. I mean, I think that's it.
Lou Bank (12:32):
Actually, the thing to say is we should go get our tacos for breakfast. That's what we should do.
Chava Periban (12:36):
Yes. So, probably. Chido, I'm getting somebody barbacoa. Hope you all guys are eating something delicious.
Lou Bank (12:47):
And Road-trippers, we're not done yet. We've got an episode of Chava and Lou's Chat Fest coming up. But first...
Chava Periban (12:54):
Phew. That was a fun episode, Lou. And I think now my back hurts and I deserve a little mezcalito to chill out.
Lou Bank (13:00):
I will drink to that, Chava,
Chava Periban (13:02):
Oh, wait, Lou, what the hell are you doing? What's that you're pouring into?
Lou Bank (13:06):
It's, you know, it's an old mustard jar. Connie loves mustard. So we have a ton of these old jars sitting around,
Chava Periban (13:12):
Are you crazy? Well, it's shaped all wrong, Lou!
Lou Bank (13:15):
It's got a bottom and four sides, Chava. What more does it need?
Chava Periban (13:20):
We've talked about this more than once, Lou — the shape of what you drink out of significantly affects the flavors you experience from your mezcal or your agave spirit. Like, ah, how can you, how can you ruin this? Have you ever experienced it with jicaras?
Lou Bank (13:34):
Of course I have. I used to have a house full of copitas and jicaras, the problem, Chava, is I gave them all away. I've got so many friends and they couldn't find copitas where they lived. So I helped them out
Chava Periban (13:46):
Generous, but there's a solution for this Lou, for you and your friends — it's called MezcalForLife.com.
Lou Bank (13:52):
You can drink out of something called MezcalForLife.com?
Chava Periban (13:56):
Not yet, Lou — technology hasn't gone that far. But it's a website and they sell you copitas, vasos veladoras, traditional and fancy drinking vessels for traditional and fancy mezcal spirits. Or agave spirits.
Lou Bank (14:09):
So, so I can tell Connie to stop eating so much mustard?
Chava Periban (14:13):
Well, I don't know if that's actually a wise move, Lou.
Lou Bank (14:16):
I'm going to MezcalForLife.com and buying some new copitas, Chava.
Chava Periban (14:21):
Joven, that's the wise move.
Lou Bank (14:23):
MezcalForLife.com can help you find the perfect drinking vessel for your perfect agave spirit. Head to MezcalForLife.com and you can be set for next week's episode of Agave Road Trip, sponsored by MezcalForLife.com.
