The Trump administration has spent weeks threatening Chicago, trolling the Midwest colossus of 9 million with incendiary on-line posts. Within the intestine, even from distant, it has felt like early June in L.A. once more.
That’s as a result of Chicago is rather like us: huge, city, vibrant, and brown. This summer time I visited the town the place I at all times really feel the flutter of familiarity.
Let or not it’s stated: Chicago, like L.A., is Mexican as hell.
Sikil pak at Bar Sótano. A mezcal by Gusto Histórico. (Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Instances)
Los Angeles could have extra Mexican residents in whole numbers, however by way of who makes up every metropolis’s Latino inhabitants, Chicago is “as Mexican” as Los Angeles. Contemplate that a few third of Chicago is Hispanic or Latino, and roughly 73% of these folks determine as Mexican. In Los Angeles, greater than 45% are Latino, and about 71% of that inhabitants is Mexican, based on current census information.
There’s a Mexican essence on this robust, labor-leading Midwest city, and it’s transmitted within the meals that native folks of all backgrounds revere. Tacos, birria and carnitas are as acquainted as deep-dish pizza and pickle-topped Chicago canine. This was solidified for me after crossing a threshold that some West Coast purists would blanch at breaching — going to a Rick Bayless restaurant.
Up to date comforts
First, nonetheless, I fell for Mi Tocaya Antojería, a cool place with tall home windows dealing with a patio within the dynamic neighborhood of Logan Sq.. a Chef Diana Dávila, a pacesetter in values-led eating, established this pillar of recent Mexican American consolation delicacies 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 extra of Dávila’s dishes jogged my memory of the numerous assured, progressive feminine Mexican cooks I’ve admired over time. Like others in her cohort, she did a number of stints in high-stakes kitchens and in addition grew up working at her household’s taquería.
Chicago’s Mexican-ness is just not a current demographic phenomenon.
“I think a lot of people don’t know,” stated Ximena N. Beltrán Quan Kiu, a Chicago author and guide who makes a speciality of Latino and Mexican American subjects.
1. Inside view of eating room and kitchen at Mi Tocaya. 2. The peanut butter lengua and a skin-contact wine from Azizam at Mi Tocaya in Baja California. (Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Instances)
“California, Texas and Florida have the highest Latino populations, but Chicago has the highest Mexican population away from any border state,” Beltrán stated. “The migration patterns are really huge — from Mexico to Chicago.”
The affect of Mexican Chicago on all of us could run deeper than we understand. On the 1893 World’s Truthful, tamale cart distributors sparked a nationwide obsession with tamales, writes Instances columnist Gustavo Arellano in his e-book “Taco USA.” He additionally credit the early canning of Mexican consolation dishes — together with chile con carne and even tortillas — to Chicago‘s canning industry.
Where it feels like home 
Crowds at the Mexican Independence Day Parade on Sunday, Sept. 14, in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago.
(Erin Hooley / Associated Press)
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 again to the 1910s, based on the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
Native legend Carnitas Uruapan, opened on 18th Avenue in 1975 by Inocencio Carbajal, has introduced excellent Michoacán-style slow-braised pork to 5 a long time of households who line up for carnitas to-go with all the mandatory sides.
Lately, the household household added a brand new dine-in location in Little Village, characterised because the city port-of-entry for newer arrivals from Mexico and Latin America.
Homeowners Marcos Carbajal and his father Inocencio Carbajal inside the brand new dine-in location of Carnitas Uruapan in Little Village.
(Carnitas Uruapan)
“We haven’t really changed our core menu in 50 years,” Marcos Carbajal, the founder’s son and co-operator, instructed me, “and if we did, people would revolt.”
Not this, not that
Mexican Chicago is formed by eating traditions that replicate a variety of inter-generational customs, just like the lore of the Tamale Girl, a Pilsen avenue vendor whose tamales are thought of a reduce above some other in Prepare dinner County. Or for Birrieria Zaragoza, open since 2007 in close by Archer Heights.
Pilsen can also be residence to Cantón Regio, a Monterrey-style antojería with significantly good refried beans and flour tortillas, and Pochos, an all-day restaurant that sits proper next-door to the Carnitas Uruapan authentic storefront.
In L.A. it’s Boyle Heights or East L.A. And in Chicago it’s Pilsen and Little Village. Above, contributors on the 2025 Pilsen Mexican Independence Day parade on Saturday, Sept. 6.
(Carolyn Kaster / Related Press)
Pochos co-owner Irene Acosta grew up together with her dad and mom and siblings on the “Mexican side” of Chicago, a part of a first- and second-generation thriving within the native restaurant trade.
“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 stated throughout a quiet lull one weekday.
The restaurateur started watching Julia Baby movies 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 stated, “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 enjoyable pocho brunch, Pilsen-made.
1. Proprietor Irene Acosta and servers Olinca Martínez and Alondra Peña contained in the Pochos eating room. 2. The chorizo omelet at Pochos. (Daniel Hernandez/Los Angeles Instances)
The Bayless impact
I had a Rick Bayless torta as soon as. At O’Hare. It’s nearly a requirement throughout cease at that airport. The torta was good.
Bayless, who first opened Frontera Grill with spouse Deann Bayless in Chicago’s River North in 1987, helped practice American diners to equate Mexican cuisines with high-quality substances and complicated preparations — simply as Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken did once they opened Los Angeles’ Border Grill on Melrose Avenue in 1985. It wasn’t till 2013 that the primary Michelin star for a Mexican-born chef went to Carlos Gaytán for his restaurant Mexique, additionally in Chicago.
The Bayless trajectory in the meantime morphed right into a profitable empire involving books, a TV present, and 4 eating places, all in the identical River North constructing the place Frontera Grill first began practically 40 years in the past. In 1989 he added upscale Topolobampo and finally fast-casual Xoco and his “speakeasy” idea Bar Sótano, whose identify means “basement.”
Chef Rick Bayless in 2007 at Frontera Grill, his first of 4 eating places in the identical constructing in River North.
(Charles Rex Arbogast / Related Press)
I used to be significantly interested by Bar Sótano as a result of I had seen posts about the way it provided a Mango Chamoy drink served in a small plastic bag with a straw tied into it, mimicking a follow deep in tianguis in Mexico, the place you possibly can drink a tepache like this for 10 or 15 pesos.
I wished to see if the Bayless presentation would set off delight or offense in me. Plus, I wanted to see what makes a Bayless restaurant a Bayless restaurant.
I used to be really in a impartial mindset. Sadly, the cocktail within the bag was now not accessible, our server stated. One thing in regards to the tariffs.
In any other case, service was crisp and clear whereas we sampled sikil pak, a Yucatecan cream or dip that’s trending in Mexican eating places this 12 months, and a ceviche with an excessive amount of tomato. Additionally had two tacos that I may solely describe as incoherent.
After I seemed up, the room was jammed.
I may see why this type of eating is taken into account top-quality and price its worth on this metropolis. Each type of attainable Chicagoan was there on the night time I visited, all having a great time. Most of the workers had been Latino or Mexican, or maneuvered like veteran hospitality folks, flipping tortillas and getting ready salsas, or furiously mixing drinks.
Mexican Chicagoans within the meals trade often acknowledge that Bayless eating places have served as springboards for a veritable tree of future chef ventures, making him vital for the ecosystem of Midwestern Mexican positive eating.
“At a time when we need allies, Rick Bayless is not an enemy,” stated Beltrán, the author.
Bayless “opened a lane for Mexican food to be perceived as gourmet, something that has deep cultural connections,” Carbajal stated. “And as a result of that, he’s opened doors for other people.”
Certain, I might additionally wish to ask in regards to the withering criticism he’s acquired for his characterization of how we do issues in California from writers like Gustavo Arellano and Invoice Esparza, or the litany of public spats he’s had with outstanding West Coast meals voices together with the late Jonathan Gold.
Bayless didn’t reply to any of my requests for remark.
Even so, I can acknowledge and admire the breadth of his affect on perceptions of Mexican meals inside america. It’s just like the like-it-or-not affect of Diana Kennedy on Mexican home-cooking on this nation.
“He employs hundreds of people from the neighborhoods, and he’s had our food for a really long time,” Carbajal stated. “There are Rick Bayless alumni all over town.”
1. Diana Becerra wears an indigenous Mexican costume through the Mexican Independence Day Parade, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025, in Little Village. (Erin Hooley / Related Press) 2. Onlookers watch the parade. (Brandon Bell / Getty Photos) 3. Individuals cease to take footage of anti-ICE indicators posted on home windows at a clothes retailer through the 2025 Pilsen Mexican Independence Day parade. (Carolyn Kaster / Related Press)
Nightmare raids
Contemplating the context of the ICE raids in the summertime of 2025, Bayless is a reminder that within the better scheme of issues, the main focus proper now ought to be on how alike we’re — all of us Individuals, no matter ethnicity or political lean.
These of us of who love Mexican American delicacies, in all its manifestations, can take coronary heart in figuring out it’s nonetheless probably the most “American” elements to no matter is left of the U.S. monoculture. Our nation is obsessive about tacos.
The ICE surge within the Chicago metropolitan has begun, and has already resulted within the first deadly taking pictures throughout an ICE-identified detention for the reason that begin of the second Trump administration.
Some Mexican Independence Day events and festivities passed off in current days in Chicago, Los Angeles and different main U.S. cities, whereas many organizers additionally canceled occasions throughout the nation, based on native media studies. Eating places in every single place are already feeling the pinch of worry take maintain of their communities, together with Carbajal of Carnitas Uruapan, who stated enterprise has dipped.
“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 stated. “It truly is a nightmare.”
So right here we’re. Within the throes of what now appears like a scientific assault on our lifestyle in multiethnic American city facilities, not merely concentrating on the “the worst of the worst” however anybody with brown pores and skin.
The operations additionally appear to ignore the sense of belonging and pleasure all of us really feel residing in a rich multicultural megacity, fueled by immigrants, no matter our background — the type of place embodied by L.A. or Chicago. Our cities stay wealthy locations, warts and all. We maintain steadfast to neighborhood, to pleasure, to service, to open-mindedness, and we display it in our eating habits.
In fact, our cities present the wonder and promise of this concept, the place folks from everywhere in the world can collect to hunt prosperity, share their cultures, and make it work. And we are able to all even have scrumptious carnitas tacos whereas doing it.
Consuming in Mexican Chicago
