Cal-Mex is spending a moment in New York. But how does it taste?

When I'm in New York, eating is my favorite thing to do.

Roast pork pieces, skin as brittle and sweet as toffee, bathed in vinegar-garlic sauce at Dominican joints in Washington Heights. Cheesy, cheap pizza slices in Midtown Manhattan. West African buffets. Katz's Deli. Chopped cheese sandwiches purchased from the bodega. Who needs the Guggenheim when there are street vendors from almost every continent except Antarctica around Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights?

One thing I'm not looking for? Mexican food.

There are many wonderful places throughout the Big Apple, from fine dining to storefronts specializing in the dishes of Puebla and Hidalgo, Mexican states that have been sending immigrants to New York for decades. But when I'm in the city, I'm hungry for cuisines that aren't as common in Southern California (Haitian, Russian, Uruguayan) or that are just better in the East (halal carts, Irish pubs, Nepalese dumplings). I also live in Orange County, which has great Mexican food and is two hours north of the border and one hour south of Los Angeles. Eating Mexican food in New York would be like swimming in the ocean when my parents' house already has a pool.

That's why my friends thought it strange when I told them I wanted to explore New York's Cal-Mex scene during a visit last month.

For about 40 years, Californians who remember their home state's Mexican cuisine — particularly burritos, chile verde and Colorado, and taco trucks — have tried to replicate what they lack in New York, with mediocre results. At the moment, however, the metropolis is experiencing a Cal-Mex moment.

Birria de res – braised beef – is on menus across the city after making its way into Southern California last decade. Chefs are ditching factory-made corn and flour tortillas for handmade tortillas, reflecting a nationwide trend we also started. New York, like Los Angeles, has become a de facto suburb for Mexico City's hip scene, with culinary ideas flowing between the three cities.

What I was more interested in this time around were restaurants that not only wanted to make the Mexican dishes that Californians like, but also wanted to replicate the aesthetic of the restaurants that sell them. Are expatriate Californians so desperate to find a home and New Yorkers interested in the gastronomy of a state they otherwise dismiss as culturally backward?

It seems the answer is both si.

The first place I visited was Super Burrito in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. San Francisco native and owner Eugene Cleghorn opened the original Rockaway Beach location in Queens in 2020 with a friend from Frisco. They claimed they couldn't find a good Mission-style burrito – the foil-wrapped edible bricks that made the Chipotle chain nationally famous and that originated in San Francisco's historic Latino district.

I took the L train from Manhattan and found replacement Cal-Mex when I got off at Bedford Avenue. There's an outpost of Dos Toros, an OK burrito chain that was founded in 2009 by two brothers from Berkeley for the same reasons cited by Cleghorn and now has locations throughout New York and in Washington, DC. A few blocks away is Border Burrito, whose awning advertises “Mexican food, California style” when the menu is more Tex-Mex – fajitas, nachos and something called Chicken Arizona.

Super Burrito is down the street and I was initially impressed by its attempt to evoke San Francisco. His color scheme is orange and black, like the Giants. The laminated tables look like they came from a taquería in the Mission District. A poster of the Golden Gate Bridge at night hangs on a wall. There's even a first aid poster featuring Dodgers great Clayton Kershaw as a choking victim in need of help – because San Francisco is probably not possible in LA without a weak salsa jab.

However, the fantasy did not hold up. The crowd was mostly hipsters, and there weren't many of them. At a traditional Mission-style burrito shop, guests can build their order from a variety of ingredients beyond beans, rice and meat. Super Burrito had sour cream, poblano peppers and avocados, which cost extra. My Al Pastor burrito had as many pineapple chunks as an upside down cake and was so greasy that I could only eat half of it. Why did a place that claims to represent the city by the bay in “The City That Never Sleeps” offer San Diego's french fry-stuffed burritos, New Mexico's smothered burritos, and Austin's queso?

In the end, Super Burrito was about as San Fran as Tommy Lasorda.

My next stop was Los Tacos No. 1 in Times Square. Friends from New York who know what great Cal-Mex is and have rolled their eyes at the wave of NYC pretenders over the years have long raved about the chain, founded by friends from Brawley and Tijuana, those the look and feel of borderland taquerías was missing. When I arrived around 3 p.m. there was a line out the front door. External supports suggested that it would only get longer.

Los Tacos No. 1 did a good job of simulating Tijuana-style taquerías. People leaned against white-tiled counters and ate their tacos. There were bottles of soda in a cooler filled with ice near the entrance. Workers shouted about religion in various Spanish accents. nortenas blared The sparse menu—four meats served as tacos, quesadillas, tostadas and mulitas—was painted on the wall.

But I wasn't thinking about the border metropolis as I devoured delicious tacos de pollo asado and carne asada, wrapped in butcher paper as if they were a bouquet of flowers. I thought of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which is playing across 43rd Street at the Lyric Theater. Los Tacos #1 was the Broadway version of Cal-Mex – entertaining and well done, but too elaborate a production. Perfect for newbies, ultimately soulless for those of us who know better.

When I returned to California, I met my friend Steven Alvarez, with whom I had enjoyed a delicious, fancy Mexican dinner during my trip. He's an English professor at St. John's University who teaches “taco literacy” — the idea that eaters can decipher Mexican cuisine by examining the stories behind each ingredient and the people who make them.

“Many Californians come here to visit or live, and California sets their expectations,” he initially jokingly wrote in a text message. The Arizona native was more lenient on Cal-Mex in New York than I was.

“People bring a sense of home with them when they come here to feel at home, and facilitating that belonging through food is critical to well-being,” Alvarez said.

TRUE. But we in Southern California rightly mock New Yorkers who come to LA, call our mom-and-pop stores “bodegas,” and claim they can’t find good bagels. It is ridiculous for Americans to go to another part of the country and declare that the food there is not only inferior but should be replaced. And it's just sad when locals buy the bull that the usurpers are slinging.

Things could have been worse in Gotham, I guess. There are no In-N-Outs in New York City yet.