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Comment by avelis | Hacker News Reader

Another good example not listed is the burrito. The burrito in the US isn't a thing in Latin America. However, it is pinned as being Latin food vs Latin-American food. I guess the disqualifying difference is most don't travel to Latin America looking for an amazing burrito.

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This is off the mark in a couple of ways, recognizable burritos are and have been common in Chihuahua and along the border in that region, where flour tortillas (another item often mistaken as being of US origin) are common.

And tacos and burritos are noticeably Mexican / North American, not Latin American things. Totally foreign in Buenos Aires or Havana whether it’s a Taco Bell or taqueria.

I'm from Chihuahua and I can confirm this, burritos are really common over here, but not so much in other parts of Mexico.

Burritos are the food you will get when you're in a hurry. You are late or you simply don't want to cook? if you have some leftovers and flour tortillas then you have burritos! You're on the road and you want something inexpensive and ready to eat? Just look for the old lady selling burritos on the street.

American burritos are kind of different though, we don't usually mix beans with rice, lettuce, cream and all that stuff. Instead we use traditional dishes like chile colorado, picadillo, chicharron en salsa verde, discada, barbacoa or whatever we have on the fridge ;)

> I'm from Chihuahua and I can confirm this, burritos are really common over here, but not so much in other parts of Mexico.

Similarly, I believe that pizza used to be regional Neapolitan cuisine.

True, but to the best of my knowledge the thing a Neopolitan pre-1900 would call pizza would have been described as a quick baked bread that was served with olive oil, basil, and a drizzling of crushed tomato sauce with maybe a chunk of mozzarella

Can you comment on the resemblance between a Burrito from Chihuahua and California?

I think a central part of the Pizza effect is not that Pizza didn't exist in Italy, but that it was radically changed by Italian Americans.

Not from Chihuahua, but I live in Baja California, and the last 2 decades saw a surge in popularity in Tex-mex style burritos, at least in my city, Mexicali. The US makes burritos really big with really crazy, heavily unhealthy fillings, stuff like boneless buffalo wings, rice and fries in the same burrito, smothered in creamy and hot sauces. For some it's delicious, for others it's disgusting. But they were definitely not this way originally. I would compare original burritos to tacos, in a rolled form. On the other hand, US style burritos are more akin to wraps, mainly because of size and ingredient variety inside and outside of the tortilla.

I think the main difference is the size, burritos in Chihuahua are not as wide and they are usually made of a single dish. I'm not an expert in Burritos from California but I've noticed they are filled with lots of things, different ingredients and dishes of what is considered Mexican food. Oh and also the way they're wrapped is kind of different, Chihuahua's Burritos are just a roll, they are not a wrap, if that makes sense.

In any case both look delicious to me and now I'm hungry.

Burrito from Chihuahua: https://images.app.goo.gl/wtVJjbk64WoiNsbi8

Burrito from California: https://images.app.goo.gl/PyfDbDbCkgqbupYA6

That's only really true because the areas of the USA where the Burrito is common were part of Mexico until very recently. Burritos are definitely a Mexican invention.

> That's only really true because the areas of the USA where the Burrito is common were part of Mexico until very recently.

Texas and California were made states over 150 years ago, and Arizona and New Mexico were made states over 100 years ago. In the scheme of American history, this is not "very recently" at all.

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/8525335/burrito-history-inventi...

In fact, it seems plausible (if not probable) the burrito was invented after all of those states became part of the US.

I'm no burrito expert, but any theory saying that the term burrito were invented in the 20th century is almost certainly wrong

This dictionary of Mexican slang/dialect from 1895 says that burrito is a term used in central Mexico for something fairly similar to a modern burrito (a rolled up tortilla with meat or other things inside of it)

https://archive.org/details/diccionariodemej00ramouoft/page/...

In the scheme of human history it’s very recently, doubly so for an isolated population distributed across massive swathes of land that are far away from DC and DF alike.

It's very recent in terms of human history, but we're talking about American and Mexican history. The American Southwest wasn't settled by Mexicans until ~400 years ago.

Another way of putting (part of) what you're saying is that New Mexico has been a part of America for roughly 1/4 of the time it's been settled by Europeans.

Nuevo México was established in 1598, New Mexico became a state in 1912.

As I understand it, the Pizza Effect refers to when the original culture adapts it back after it catches on elsewhere, so the burrito would only count if it did become a thing in Latin America.

“Latin America” is a big place.

Go to any city in Northern Mexico in Google Maps and type “burro” or “burrito”; you will find scores of restaurants (which do not obviously cater to Anglo tourists or expats).

Same principle applies to a lot of Americanized ethnic foods. Two other examples that come to mind are American Chinese and Japanese cuisine.

Same principle probably applies everywhere. There's an entire page of standard Chinese menu in Korea that you won't find in mainland.

Pad Thai being a favourite example: it's a Chinese-Thai dish, still often prepared in street stalls run by ethnically Chinese people whose ancestors have lived in Thailand for more than a century.

Maybe I’m wrong but I thought it was hard shell tacos that followed this example.

My understanding was that they both (hard shell tacos, burritos) basically existed, at least regionally - or something close enough. But neither had any sort of ubiquity, certainly nothing like their role in "american mexican" food.

Real-deal hard shell tacos were waiting on industrial food production.

Deep-frying a corn tortilla so that it holds its shape was part of northern Mexican cuisine, but it's a meaningfully different dish.

Also delicious, if somewhat fiddly to make at home. Worth doing once or twice, one lowers the tortilla into the oil with something like a disposable chopstick.

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