Most people like to celebrate Cinco de Mayo with a few too many margaritas at their local Chili’s, followed by some drunken rendition of the Mexican Hat Dance. This year, we decided to mark the holiday in a slightly different way – by making tacos with local ingredients, and going to see where some of those ingredients were made.
We took a trip to the “Tortilla Triangle,” an area of Brooklyn straddling the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg that gets its name from the many tortilla factories there (read more about the area in Edible Brooklyn). One such place is Tres Hermanos Tortilleria (if you click through, be prepared for some Mexican music), located on Starr Street, that deserves special mention because it also has its own taqueria where they serve up fresh-made Mexican delicacies. Thanks largely to the marketing departments at Corona and Jose Cuervo, Cinco de Mayo has become a favorite excuse for non-Mexicans to get drunk, but on this day, most of the Mexicans we met didn’t have time to celebrate – they were too busy working. After placing our order at Tres Hermanos, we stepped through the door in the back, and there we saw the manufacturing line buzzing away at 10 p.m., with fresh tortillas rolling out, soon to be filled with savory meats, fresh vegetables, and sour cream and served to hungry customers just a few feet away.
We took a trip to the “Tortilla Triangle,” an area of Brooklyn straddling the border of Bushwick and Williamsburg that gets its name from the many tortilla factories there (read more about the area in Edible Brooklyn). One such place is Tres Hermanos Tortilleria (if you click through, be prepared for some Mexican music), located on Starr Street, that deserves special mention because it also has its own taqueria where they serve up fresh-made Mexican delicacies. Thanks largely to the marketing departments at Corona and Jose Cuervo, Cinco de Mayo has become a favorite excuse for non-Mexicans to get drunk, but on this day, most of the Mexicans we met didn’t have time to celebrate – they were too busy working. After placing our order at Tres Hermanos, we stepped through the door in the back, and there we saw the manufacturing line buzzing away at 10 p.m., with fresh tortillas rolling out, soon to be filled with savory meats, fresh vegetables, and sour cream and served to hungry customers just a few feet away.
The tortilla manufacturing line is even on the menu.
Cinco de Mayo is thought to be a major Mexican holiday, but it is more widely celebrated in the United States than in Mexico. The date marks the 1862 Battle of Puebla, when Mexican forces defeated a French army that was trying to install a puppet government. The French were ultimately successful, placing Archduke Maximilian on the Mexican throne in 1864, but he was eventually deposed and executed, and the French were driven out in 1867. This holiday has special significance for New York’s Mexican community, as the vast majority come from Puebla state, which is the only place in Mexico where Cinco de Mayo is regularly celebrated. Here in Brooklyn, the Moore Street Market in East Williamsburg will be marking the holiday on Saturday, May 7th with live music and special vendors; Urban Oyster will also be holding its inaugural tour of the market and the surrounding neighborhood, which we’ll be running regularly starting in June (tickets go on sale next week, so click here to learn more, or sign up for our newsletter to receive updates).
But back to the tortilleria. Having a restaurant in the front of your factory is a great way to create more jobs and generate more revenue, but it also invites people to see and learn about the manufacturing process. Manufacturing remains an important part of New York’s economy, but it is usually done in small-scale operations hidden away in quieter, more remote parts of the city. New York actually ranks second in the nation in the number of industrial jobs, and one of the largest industries is food processing; companies that make products to serve immigrant communities, like tortilla factories, make up a large part of this sector.
But back to the tortilleria. Having a restaurant in the front of your factory is a great way to create more jobs and generate more revenue, but it also invites people to see and learn about the manufacturing process. Manufacturing remains an important part of New York’s economy, but it is usually done in small-scale operations hidden away in quieter, more remote parts of the city. New York actually ranks second in the nation in the number of industrial jobs, and one of the largest industries is food processing; companies that make products to serve immigrant communities, like tortilla factories, make up a large part of this sector.
Emperor Maximilian (far left, being shot) was never a fan of Cinco de Mayo (Edouard Manet's "The Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico," 1868).
Advocates of “slow food” and “locavores” tout the idea of shrinking the distance from the farm to the dinner table. Eating local, seasonal foods, they argue, will reduce our impact on the planet, make us healthier, and make us feel so much better about ourselves. That is all well and good, but I think there’s something to be said for shrinking the distance from factory to table. Last year, Good magazine published a fascinating article titled, “Your Taco, Deconstructed,” about a project conceived by a group of graphic designers and researchers that sought to trace the pathways of every ingredient in a taco eaten in the Bay Area, from the corn in the tortillas to the aluminum in the foil wrapper. The end result was an infographic that showed a vast and sprawling network stretching to nearly every corner of the globe. Of course, this is not something unique to tacos; almost every food item we eat is linked to global networks or production and trade. Even mundane items travel thousands of miles and pass through the hands of thousands of workers.
When I first encountered this project, I was actually eating a taco that I made at home, and it gave me pause. But not because I thought about the global impacts of the taco in my hands; rather, I thought about how it was so closely linked to the local economy. Nearly all of the basic ingredients were either grown, processed or manufactured in New York City. So, being a cartographer, I decided to map it out in a similar manner as the Tacoshed project had. Here’s what I came up with:
When I first encountered this project, I was actually eating a taco that I made at home, and it gave me pause. But not because I thought about the global impacts of the taco in my hands; rather, I thought about how it was so closely linked to the local economy. Nearly all of the basic ingredients were either grown, processed or manufactured in New York City. So, being a cartographer, I decided to map it out in a similar manner as the Tacoshed project had. Here’s what I came up with:
As you can see, most of the items didn’t even have to leave the borough. I like to think the tacos I make at home approximate something you might get at a decent taqueria or food cart, and I accomplish this by using authentic ingredients. Foul-mouthed celebrity chef (though I guess that modifier does not really distinguish him from other celebrity chefs) Anthony Bourdain visited Tres Hermanos on his show No Reservations (video clip), where he decried the tasteless, adulterated, quasi-Mexican food most Americans eat at chain restaurants and from pre-packaged taco dinners. Like with all food, good Mexican food starts with good ingredients, and those can be easily found in New York, if you know where to look.
The tortillas I used actually didn't come from Tres Hermanos, but Tortilleria Buena Vista in East Williamsburg, and the mole was made at the nearby Moore Street Market. The sour cream was made at Casa Blanca’s in Rockaway, Queens, and the cheese came from Quesos Mexico just a block from my house in Windsor Terrace. The beef came from a butcher in nearby Kensington, though I later learned that it was slaughtered and processed in Jamaica, Queens. Other than the Green Mountain Gringo salsa, which was made in North Carolina, and the onions from a farm on Long Island, nothing traveled more than a dozen miles to my local grocery store. Of course, for most of these items, only the penultimate step to my belly (the last being my cooking) was made in New York. The ground beef probably came from a cow raised in the Great Plains; the mole was likely made from cocoa grown in Mexico; the list goes on.
Perhaps someday I will be able to do a full commodity chain analysis of the food the food that I eat (and the full report of the Tacoshed project will eventually be published as a book). But until then, at least I know that I can eat a delicious, authentic, homemade taco that supports local producers and manufacturing jobs. And that made for an enjoyable Cinco de Mayo.
If you would like to learn more about the city's efforts to preserve and expand manufacturing jobs, or to find a list of manufacturers, visit Made In NYC. For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. To see more of his graphic design work, visit his website.
The tortillas I used actually didn't come from Tres Hermanos, but Tortilleria Buena Vista in East Williamsburg, and the mole was made at the nearby Moore Street Market. The sour cream was made at Casa Blanca’s in Rockaway, Queens, and the cheese came from Quesos Mexico just a block from my house in Windsor Terrace. The beef came from a butcher in nearby Kensington, though I later learned that it was slaughtered and processed in Jamaica, Queens. Other than the Green Mountain Gringo salsa, which was made in North Carolina, and the onions from a farm on Long Island, nothing traveled more than a dozen miles to my local grocery store. Of course, for most of these items, only the penultimate step to my belly (the last being my cooking) was made in New York. The ground beef probably came from a cow raised in the Great Plains; the mole was likely made from cocoa grown in Mexico; the list goes on.
Perhaps someday I will be able to do a full commodity chain analysis of the food the food that I eat (and the full report of the Tacoshed project will eventually be published as a book). But until then, at least I know that I can eat a delicious, authentic, homemade taco that supports local producers and manufacturing jobs. And that made for an enjoyable Cinco de Mayo.
If you would like to learn more about the city's efforts to preserve and expand manufacturing jobs, or to find a list of manufacturers, visit Made In NYC. For questions or comments about this blog post, please contact Andrew Gustafson or leave a comment. To see more of his graphic design work, visit his website.