Rick Bayless, however, recently told me at the Austin Food and Wine Festival that when he wrote the draft of his first cookbook, Authentic Mexican, he featured seven culinary regions of Mexico, including the Southwestern United States. “You could even break that down further into the cuisines of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and even the ranchos of California,” he added. Perhaps his view differs from Kennedy’s because he grew up in Oklahoma eating Tex-Mex two or three times a week. Although Carlos Rivero, owner of El Chile Cafe y Cantina and several other Mexican restaurants in Austin, ate traditional Mexican mole and other dishes while growing up in San Antonio, he and Bayless both spoke nostalgically about cheese enchiladas in chili gravy. “They were probably one of my favorite dishes my mom made when my sister and I we were young,” Rivero recalled. But Iliana de la Vega, the chef and owner of the Mexican restaurant El Naranjo in Austin, never ate cheese enchiladas while growing up in Mexico City. She recalls eating foods like chiles rellenos and salads composed of chayote or nopales.
