Home > Author > Gustavo Arellano
1 " Eating a burrito is like eating a living, breathing organism - you can feel the burrito's ingredients sigh inside with each bite, each squeeze. "
― Gustavo Arellano
2 " Your life depends on a random stranger who could kill you, will probably disrespect you, and will most likely pay you much less than you deserve. But even those prospects are better than the ones you used to have. This is the life of los jornaleros – the day laborers. "
― Gustavo Arellano , Ask a Mexican
3 " It was a mission of celebration: never had two Mexican-Americans flown up in space on the same mission, and never did burritos shine so brightly. "
― Gustavo Arellano , Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America
4 " gasps a little, blinks his eyes three or four times and indulges in a convulsive shiver "
5 " El Torito rescued the meals from the mythologizing amnesia of Southern California and introduced them to areas where customers didn't know how to pronounce the meals they waited for in hour-long lines. "
6 " The wide and strange land shaped and reshaped human institutions to its own purposes, and one either learned to live with the blazing sun, the scarcity of water, the dust and interminable distances, and the whispering quiet of empty canyons and mesas, or he admitted failure and moved elsewhere. "
7 " I've eaten it since I was wee high to a snail's butt, and ah, it has not only counteracted the destructive elements that I have imposed upon my beautiful God-given brain, but given me a genius that I cannot account for except for the chile seed." says Jimmy Santiago Baca, New Mexico's most famous Chicano poet. "
8 " It's like a taco aspired to become a sope mixed with a quesadilla but got scared by the grease bath and quit halfway. "
9 " And if your neighborhood still suffers under the tyranny of Taco Bell and combo plates? Fear not -- Mexican food is coming to wow you, to save you from a bland life, as it did for your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Again. Like last time -- and the time before that. "
10 " Ho didn't know how prescient those words were, as they fundamentally changed the course of Mexican food in the United States for like the thirtieth time ever. "
11 " But I can divine one thing: in Mexican food's rumble through this country, in the trail behind and the road ahead, I see us -- always evolving, never stagnant, continually striving for something better, constantly delicious. The American spirit manifested as a combo plate, heavy on the salsa. "
12 " Espero la cosecha de mi sueño sirva como inspiracion a todos!” he enthused via Twitter. “I hope the harvest of my dream serves as inspiration to all! "
13 " Across the street, Mitla Cafe's mascot stares directly at the former Bell's Burgers, stares with a smile, just next to the slogan "Real Mexican Food." Mitla might not have the riches, might never have capitalized on its tacos, but it gets the last laugh.The Taco Bell taco is dead. Long live the taco. "
