Blue Corn
Authenticity, Storefront Nationalism, and Transnational Economic Development in a South Philadelphia Mexican Restaurant
By Alexia Olguin, Anna Duan, and Luigie Febres for Urban Studies 248, The Urban Food Chain.
As children of immigrant families, all three of us grew up eating in the ethnic restaurants of Rockville, Maryland; Orlando, Florida; and Los Angeles, California; respectively.
In Rockville, Anna often visited Joe’s Noodle House, a Southern Chinese restaurant which was covered floor to ceiling in red and gold (auspicious colors in Chinese culture) and served the spiciest noodles she’s ever had. At the time, she didn’t register the irony of the restaurant being decorated with Beijing Opera masks despite specializing in Southern Chinese food, she just knew that the Chinese New Year decorations which hung year-round, the absence of dishes like orange chicken, and the ratio of Chinese to English speaking guests made it a real Chinese restaurant.
Down in Orlando Florida, Luigie grew up eating at La Lechonera El Barrio, one of the many restaurants by the name of “______ Lechonera” which specialize in Dominican food. To him, the quick-service restaurant epitomizes Latin Caribbean restaurants with its display of the Dominican flag and Latinx celebrities on the wall, its counter which is larger than its eating area, the old romantic bachatas playing in the background, and its lunch specials which never exceed $6.99.
And in the sunny streets of Los Angeles, Alexia’s favorite after-school activity was stopping by La Estrella, a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant no bigger than the size of a food truck one block away from home. With little to no seating areas available, it was typical for her to stand and eat the carne asada torta at the counter as she caught up with the owner Isabella and hummed along to the rancheras playing on the radio. The familiar taste of spicy red salsa made fresh each day, the sound of the carne asada on the grill, and pictures of La Virgen de Guadalupe posted on the menu were why she considered it to be her favorite Mexican restaurant.
Frequenting restaurants like these with our families, and ultimately alone, we developed a keen sixth sense for discerning the authenticity of a restaurant serving our respective cultures’ food. We learned early on that there are dishes that we order and those that less-versed outsiders order, that piñatas in Latinx restaurants and forks and knives in Chinese ones are a bad sign, and, crucially, to know better than to order in English from a waiter who speaks the same language as us.
Yet while we can easily say what is and isn’t authentic is when eating our cultures’ food, we also realized this can be rife with contradictions difficult to explain in words. Why, for example, do we expect ethnic restaurants to be plastered with stereotypical cultural symbols and nationalist paraphernalia even though we know the restaurants in our home countries often look like any regular restaurants in the US? And, stranger yet, why is it that the most authentic ethnic restaurants in the US are often those that subscribe to these expectations of almost aggressive cultural signaling?
Furthering the irony of our pursuit of gastronomic authenticity, in our view, is the fact that we (and many of our peers, it seems) have expectations for what authentic looks like for other cuisines and have developed a set of standards for discerning a foreign ethnic restaurant’s authenticity. Going into this project, we decided that these questions and contradictions would be at the center of our investigation.
While reading Perez and Audant’s Livin’ la Vida Sabrosa article during the restaurants and neighborhoods portion of this class, their construction of sabor, or the multi-sensory excess in Latinx food establishments, offered us a compelling framework for making sense of our experiences, namely with the je ne sais quoi that makes us consider certain ethnic restaurants authentic and others not. Perez and Audant’s description of “storefront nationalism” as a way for restaurants to signal authenticity to compatriot “insiders” and an exotic gastronomic experience to “outsiders” was especially insightful. It rationalizes the sometimes-overwhelming displays inside the restaurants we grew up visiting and provides a broader definition of authentic decor as something fluid.
Indeed, in their definition of sabor as a celebration of multiplicity, they propose that authenticity is “not an either/or but an and,” challenging our more rigid view of authenticity as adherent to tradition and history.
This intrigued us and prompted us to push further on the question of what makes a restaurant authentic and what it means that authenticity has become such an important factor in influencing where we eat.
Further inspired by our observations of the ‘foodie’ culture among our peers and the popularity of ethnic food on websites such as Yelp, Eater and Infatuation, we also wanted to learn more about how/whether ethnic restaurants cater and market themselves differently to their ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ clientele. We heard one take on this during our class visit to the Chinese restaurant Sang Kee in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, where we learned that they had to adjust their services to simultaneously cater to Chinese guests (who often expect to be able to come in and tell someone their Chinese barbecue takeout order), American guests (who typically expect to be served a sit-down meal of more common Chinese foods like fried rice), and everyone in between.
In addition to restaurants’ decoration and treatment of customers, we also agreed that ingredients are central to our ideas of authenticity. In many cases, ethnic restaurants and grocery stores have their own supply chains for specialty ingredients that aren’t typically found in the US. For example, in the Mother Jones article, “Fox News Could Learn a Thing or Two from Chinatown,” the author describes how venders in Chinatowns across the US work with small specialty farms in Florida, Mexico and Honduras to create supply chains for Chinese vegetables. Intrigued by the innovativeness and adaptive nature of this arrangement, we decided to investigate for ourselves the networks that ethnic restaurants in Philadelphia partake in to source uncommon ingredients.
With the themes of authenticity, aesthetic, mixed clientele, and sourcing in mind, we decided to study Blue Corn, a Mexican restaurant in the Italian Market in South Philadelphia, to answer our questions. We chose Blue Corn as the subject of our project because of its location in an area characterized by many ethnic restaurants and a strong Mexican community, its owners’ creative (re)interpretations of Mexican cuisine, and its close cultural and economic ties with San Mateo Ozolco, its owners’ hometown.
Background
Blue Corn is found at 940 S 9th St in South Philadelphia, a part of the city with many Italian, Mexican, Vietnamese, and other ethnic restaurants and stores. The area it’s in is the Italian Market, an area so-called for its historical ties with Philadelphia’s Italian Immigrant population. While the stretch of roughly ten city blocks used to consist predominantly of Italian restaurants and stores, starting after World War Two, many of its original Italian merchants and residents moved away from the city. As they sold some storefronts and rented out others, many Mexican and other ethnic establishments came to take their place.
Around the same period, the Mexican community in the Northeastern US was also growing. Mexican immigration steadily increased and peaked in the 1990s when the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) undercut much of the traditional agriculture sector. As Mexican immigrants arrived in Philadelphia, many met opportunities brought by the city’s new restaurant boom.
Of these immigrants, many were from the same part of Mexico, San Mateo Ozolco, a small town which saw roughly 1/3 of its residents immigrate to Philadelphia by 2000. And as more and more San Mateans heard of new opportunities from friends and relatives who made the move before them, they continued to come to Philadelphia, contributing to its 15,000+ citywide Mexican population. Here, they created a transnational community based in South Philadelphia, forming groups including an Aztec dance troupe and a Latino soccer league as well as many Mexican restaurants and establishments like paqueterias which bring packages to and from Mexico. (Kilpatrick, 2006)
Of special importance to our project is the Hometown Association founded by immigrant workers from San Mateo, Grupo Ozolco. This group and others like it consist of members who are immigrants from the same place and who use the money they earn to support economic development back home. For Grupo Ozolco specifically, this has meant building a new high school, improving houses, and helping start a maize co-op in San Mateo which produces Blue Corn’s pinole. Grupo Ozolco members and project participants in Mexico were trained in the production, transformation, and marketing of organic blue corn both locally and in Philadelphia.
This became a reliable source of employment for many families from San Mateo, and therefore contributed to reduced migration to the United States. Once the project took effect, the cooperative Alianza de Maiz Azul, composed of members from San Mateo Ozolco and other Mexican communities, received the cornmeal in Philadelphia. The Juntos organization then helped this cooperative market and sell San Mateo Ozolco organic pinole in the Philadelphia region. They did this through community activities such as a sales booth at the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration and organizing a dinner for chefs and journalists in the city.
Visiting Blue Corn
Seeing its unique history and its continued ties to San Mateo, we decided to visit Blue Corn in person in hopes of interviewing its owner and some staff members and trying their food for ourselves. While we were planning our visit, we created two sets of questions: one for the manager/owner and another for the employees. These questions were based on our initial questions as well as information from the texts we read on regional food hubs and how they vary across the nation and the “Livin’ la Vida Sabrosa” article. We planned to visit Blue Corn Saturday the 9th and already had our questions set but we tweaked them after our class visit to Sang Kee. Talking to the general manager, we learned about how their customers come in with different expectations of what authentic Chinese food looks like and that Sang Kee has had to continuously make changes to cater to these ever-changing expectations. We decided that this would be an important part of our conversation and this is the first question we asked Max, Blue Corn’s owner, in our interview.
Authenticity
Contrary to our expectations, he said that they do not sway under the influences of their customers. When we asked Max about the authenticity of the food he very adamantly stated that the food was as authentic as Mexican food can be in the US, noting that they use the same recipes they made back home and that the recipes are his family’s take on the meals they grew up on. However, he noted that the food could not be truly authentic because they were not in Mexico and emphasized that their goal is not to maximize authenticity but rather to make food in the ways that they know best.
Ironically, an American couple entered the restaurant in the middle of this interview and expressed frustration upon being offered the breakfast menu, exclaiming that they wanted a “traditional Mexican breakfast, not something [they] could get from iHop.” Although Max was very explicit on not trying to conform to customers’ ideals of “authentic” Mexican food, the customers had other ideas and came with their own expectations, much like what we heard at Sang Kee. The difference, according to Max, is that in his view, Blue Corn does not have any competition in the South Philly area. This may be another reason why they don’t feel the need to adapt themselves in order to attract customers.
Storefront Nationalism and Aesthetic
As we waited for our food to come, we looked around, taking the vibrant interior of Blue Corn. We were reminded of, and discussed, the idea set forth in “Livin’ la Vida Sabrosa” about the twofold purpose of storefront nationalism. As we observed, the decor had the dual effect of making Mexican customers feel at home and making other customers feel like they are temporarily transported to Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico for an authentic meal.
Curious to see if our perceptions were correct and whether Audant and Perez’ argument stands, we asked Max for his reasoning behind how they decorated the restaurant. As we learned, his family decorated the interior together, choosing items that reminded them of home and symbols of their culture: a large yellow frame with a blue corn husk, Spanish music on blast, and an ornate altar honoring God and past loved ones. By decorating the place as if it were their own house back home, Max’s family was able to create a space that simultaneously makes some customers feel they are enjoying a homely meal and others feel that they are having an authentic, exotic experience.
The Food
Shortly, our food came: a Mexican omelette, blue corn chicken flautas, and blue corn pastor tacos.
As we ate, Max returned to work. Shortly after, his brother Augustin agreed to sit down with us and answer some of our questions. Augustin is in charge of el frente, or the eating area. During our conversation, we learned that he got his start in food by working in restaurants from a young age in Mexico. From there he followed his brother Max to the U.S. where he, like the rest of his family, started out working in the back of high-end restaurants like Stephen Starr until his family established Blue Corn. In these restaurants, they gained knowledge of the city’s food industry and experience with cooking high-end food and running a restaurant business.
Who’s in the Kitchen?
We were also struck by the similarity between their experience and the stories of the people in the “Reform in the Back of the House” article. Just like how the article explains the different positions and types of cuisines that Mexican immigrants are recruited for, Augustin explains how his family members’ varied experiences in the food and service industry have given them the necessary skills and knowledge to operate Blue Corn.
Everyone that works in the restaurant is family (either by blood or marriage) and each of them bring different skills to the table, something that reflects in Blue Corn’s menu. Max has experience with seafood from his time in Mexico, so he helps create/cook those dishes while his brother and sister-in-law work in the kitchen helping the head chef, their nephew. They collectively decided that the nephew was to be in charge of the kitchen and that while they were in the restaurant, they were co-workers and not family.
This same professional attitude that Augustin spoke of is consistent with how he treats all of his customers. He told us he genuinely appreciates interacting with customers and seeing them enjoy the experience of dining in Blue Corn. When we asked him about his experience with working with different groups of customers, we were surprised to hear that he doesn’t change his service regardless of how a customer acts or whether they are Mexican. “You have to give good and consistent service to customers, no matter who they are,” he said. While the language barrier has made it challenging to work at the front of the restaurant, gaining the confidence to interact with people in a language unfamiliar to him has truly been a rewarding part of the job for him.
This consistency and professionalism has been an important part of Blue Corn’s success. From keeping this a family business, to creating respectful work boundaries, to providing the best service and product, this consistency is important in an industry like the restaurant industry which often gets a “bad rap as a transient industry.” (Gaestel, 6) Indeed, it was interesting to see where the experiences of Augustin’s family and those in the article connect and differ. Blue Corn provides a stable space and staff compared to the rest of the industry that is in constant flux. As a result, they have been able to grow and support their family in the US as well as their community back in Mexico.
San Mateo Ozolco: Transnational Development through Blue Corn
Augustin continued, telling us how Blue Corn itself maintains continues ties with their hometown, San Mateo, which go beyond sending back money. Blue Corn derives their namesake ingredient from the mountains of San Mateo Ozolco, a rural indigenous town near the city of Puebla, Mexico. In 2004, migrants from San Mateo began to gather at a community center in South Philadelphia where the organization Juntos was based. Juntos was a non-governmental organization formed to create equal opportunities and conditions for Latin American immigrants in Philadelphia and in their countries of origin.
Peter Blum, the Executive Director of Juntos at the time, had tasted the pinole developed in San Mateo and after sampling its commercial potential in Philadelphia, the group developed a project which aimed to produce organic pinole from the community of origin and sell it in Philadelphia. The town project Potehtli-Pinole, initiated by Amigos de Ozolco with the partnership of Juntos worked to produce, market, and export organic blue corn with the goal of making traditional agriculture a more viable occupation and preserving indigenous species of corn which were under threat due to the import of transgenic corn in Mexico.
In this project, farmers and the groups involved developed new technologies and methods to produce high quality blue corn and transform it into highly demanded food products such as pinole, a toasted blue corn powder mixed with sugar and cinnamon, and corn flour.
This has empowered many farmers in the community, involving more of them in growing Blue Corn and transforming it and marketing it in different ways to sell to their communities in Mexico and the US. Further, and of great importance to Augustin and Max, this project means it is now possible for more people in San Mateo to stay in Mexico instead of immigrating to the United States in search of better employment opportunities.
Final Thoughts
The three of us entered this project and class with very different backgrounds, experiences, and opinions of what we defined as “authentic” ethnic food. As we finish this project, we now have a new understanding of the definition (or lack thereof) of authenticity and of the implicit biases and implications tied to this word. As mentioned earlier, Blue Corn maintains close cultural ties to their hometown of San Mateo Ozolco through their menu, imported traditional ingredients, interior design, and continued development and business relationships. While we find it harder than before to define what authentic means for ethnic food, we propose that all these features are what makes Blue Corn authentic in their own way.
As we spoke with Max and Augustin, they demonstrated what can be done when food meets passion and how it can foster community transformation in San Mateo and South Philadelphia. Instead of searching for consistent standards for what makes a restaurant, food, or community authentic, one lesson we learned is to let the people, environment, history, and speak for itself. Certainly, there is much that can and should be learned from Blue Corn and other immigrant-owned restaurants and businesses in the United States today.
Citations
Gaestal, Allyn. “Reform in the Back of the House.” Forefront, Next City, 2003.
Kilpatrick, Kate. “Mi Casa, Su Casa.” Philadelphia Weekly, Philadelphia Weekly, 5 Apr. 2006.
Pérez, Ramona Lee, and Babette Audant. “Livin’ La Vida Sabrosa.” Gastropolis: Food and New York City, Columbia University Press, 2010, pp. 209–229.
