What Is The Real Difference Between Tex-Mex And Mexican Food?

Hold onto the sides of the boat everybody, we're about to hit some tricky waters here.

What The Others Say

If you were to aggregate all the stories online about the difference between Tex-Mex and Mexican food, the answers seem to fall into two camps

1. Tex-Mex uses chili powder while Mexican food uses real chilis

2. Tex-Mex is a smaller grouping of classic dishes like tacos, burritos, and chimichangas while Mexican food has much more variety and much more complicated foods.

3. Tex-Mex has a focus on beef and chicken, whereas Mexican leans heavily into pork and some fish.

The Difference As I See It

Just this past summer I visited the West Coast and a couple of authentic Mexican restaurants (one a Michelin-star restaurant). The difference, as I saw it (and tasted it) was that Tex-Mex tends to drown everything in cheese. Now, I am a cheese lover, but as noted above, the Mexican dishes were a bit more complicated and the taste would have actually been ruined by a big handful of cheese. I guess I should also mention that a lot of Tex-Mex features hard-shell or flour tortillas while actual Mexican food leans hard on corn tortillas.

What Does It Matter?

It absolutely does not matter. It's whatever you are in the mood for. Whichever one is "better" is the one you prefer. I just don't think you can compare the two. It's like two, almost completely different cuisines. Comparing the two is like comparing two different Asian foods, they can be completely different but still of the same family.