Sirius XM Podcasts All right, it's Dan here with another reheat for you.
And look, I love every episode we do here on The Sporkful, but some of them involve me getting to do something especially fun.
And you know, sometimes I meet someone and eventually we're chatting and they say what do you do for a living?
And I say, oh, I host a food podcast.
And they say, oh, food podcast?
So it's like restaurant reviews?
No, not really.
So it's like cooking and recipes?
No, not really.
And sometimes I'll be like, well, you know, like...
I hung out with this professor and his students and we went on a taco crawl.
And they're like, wow, you do have a good job.
So that's what we're sharing with you today.
I joined Professor Steve Alvarez at St.
John's University who teaches a class called Taco Literacy.
All about the idea that you can actually read a taco.
You can interpret its different components and learn a lot about Mexican and American history and culture in the process.
But what exactly does it mean to read a taco?
Well, listen to this episode and find out.
Now one quick reminder if there's an episode of The Sporkful, you want us to pull out of the deep freezer and reheat, drop us a line.
Send me an email or voice memo to hello at sporkful.com.
Tell me your first name, location, what episode you want to hear, and why.
Thanks so much and enjoy.
Steve Alvarez is a professor at St.
John's University in New York.
He teaches a class there called Taco Literacy.
Yeah, you heard me right.
The class where you can study tacos.
And it's the one in college.
So you and I, Steve, we have something in common.
We both managed to find our way into careers.
Hey, yeah.
With some real good fringe benefits.
Yeah, well, I mean, I can't complain about the research.
This is The Sporkful.
It's not for foodies.
It's for eaters.
I'm Dan Pashman.
Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.
Okay, let's talk tacos.
Taco literacy is based on the idea that you can read a taco.
You can look at the meat, the spices, the tortilla, and each component unlocks something about Mexican and American history and culture.
Who needs Shakespeare?
Every ingredient of a taco is its own kind of poetry to be analyzed and interpreted.
What a piece of work is a taco.
How noble in flavor, how infinite in seasonings.
In portability, how like an angel.
In deliciousness, how like a god.
So pack up your Bob Marley poster and your mini fridge because we're going to college.
But this won't be a lecture.
It's a field trip.
We're going to join Steve Alvarez and his students for their end of semester taco crawl.
But before we get to that, I wanted to understand why Steve created a class called Taco Literacy.
Why literacy and language are so important to him.
So before we left, I spent some time talking with him in his apartment in Queens.
Steve grew up in Safford, Arizona, a small mining town about two hours from the Mexico border.
Safford was a pretty segregated place.
There was one area where the white folks lived.
Many of them were Mormon.
The Mexican neighborhood was across the highway.
Both Steve's parents are Mexican-American, but their family lived on the Mormon side of town.
Knowing they didn't quite fit in with the white folks, but then when I was with the Mexican folks, similar
And food always became this thing.
When I had some of my Mormon buddies over, They were always asking what's for dinner.
They could smell things, and they had a lot of questions.
They were happy when they got some of my mom's beans.
My mom's beans were pretty famous.
But I never really had those kind of same cravings, for example, when I went to their places.
So through the food I definitely was being introduced to different kind of flavors and also sometimes be able to be proud of being Mexican.
A lot of times, too, there was...
As it happens everywhere with folks, especially being near the border, a way of shaming people for having Mexican roots.
And that was definitely something that came through both in my generation, my parents' generation, I'm sure down the line.
And did you speak Spanish at home?
Well, no.
This is also kind of complicated, and it's not a unique story.
Previous immigrant groups can think about the generation when, for example, Italian starts to fade away.
Spanish was around, especially among my parents and whenever they spoke to other folks.
But with the younger folks it was more English-dominant, except for words for members of a family and words for food.
Did you wish that you spoke Spanish?
I think in Safford, not really.
I think the wish was always to be heard.
And any kind of, let's say, trace of Spanish or a Mexican Spanish accent in terms of one's English was a way for folks to be discriminated against.
And if anything, I thought speaking better English would give me more advantages.
So growing up, you were basically monolingual.
Mm-hmm.
Do you remember when you first started to have a different feeling about the fact that you didn't speak Spanish?
Well, early on I do remember having some cousins who were bilingual and then being able to have conversations with my grandparents.
My grandparents only spoke Spanish.
I was a little bit of jealousy there because I noticed that the way they spoke Spanish sounded a little bit more informal than the way we were trying to speak English to them.
And then later on, I would say, especially when I moved from Safford and Tucson and there was a lot more people who were speaking Spanish and I started traveling more to Mexico, especially to places like Hermosillo and Nogales.
That's when I started really having questions about well, why don't I know this?
I mean, people expect me to, and I don't.
So a lot of people would, even my own cousins would be disappointed that I didn't speak Spanish.
And sometimes I felt like, yeah, maybe that is my fault.
And then there's also the other side of me that thinks about this kind of journey, of recovering it, and as being something that is an opportunity.
And certainly that's made me have a more enriched understanding about myself.
You feel that learning Spanish has given you a richer understanding of yourself?
For sure, yeah.
Now there's a lot more words that made a lot more sense that people were calling me especially a lot of bad words.
My mom says a lot of this one word.
I guess I probably can't say it because it is a swear word.
But I didn't know my mom was saying that all these years.
When I got to college, I was like, oh my goodness, my mom speaks like a sailor.
This is incredible.
So things like that, and then also different words for foods, especially.
Sometimes I didn't know what I was eating.
I didn't know what it was called.
Steve first started learning Spanish in his freshman year of college.
When the professor saw his last name Alvarez, he thought Steve was trying to score an easy A.
But Steve needed his mom's help with the homework.
Soon, though, he started picking it up.
Really early back.
I do remember when I would go taking the stuff I learned in my university undergrad class and go to places like Nogales and Sonora or Hermosillo and just be able to order tacos, for example.
Practicing on food was one of some of the first places where I would go and just try it out.
And when they were able to understand me, that was pretty cool.
How did that feel?
I mean, you were in Mexico.
Yeah.
Speaking Spanish, ordering tacos in Spanish.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sometimes it would be, for example, I mean because it's close to the border, so people would speak English too, and they would speak to me in English and I would answer back in Spanish.
And they would be sometimes amused because they could hear my accent and then they would speak to me in Spanish.
At that point, it's like, well, that's pretty cool, right?
So now I can start to do this and maybe not be a local but also have a different kind of relationship with people.
Yeah.
Those experiences inspired Steve to create Taco Literacy.
He uses the class to explore a central question of all his work.
What happens when language, food and people cross borders?
Steve used to teach at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
It's a city with a large Mexican-American population.
They even have a neighborhood nicknamed Mexington.
He's written about the ways that Mexican food is changing America and the ways America is changing Mexican food.
Before we started reading tacos, I was curious to have Steve read a menu.
Oh, wow, that's a big menu.
You can tell by looking at the menu.
I showed Steve the menu for a Mexican place in my town in the suburbs, a place I like a lot called Tres Amigos Mexican Grill.
It's owned by a man named Manuel Gomez, who's Ecuadorian.
Right off the bat, Steve noticed the restaurant's logo.
Yeah, first thing that strikes me are the chili peppers with sombreros and the mustache.
And they're also wearing those little white gloves.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, I don't need to get too much into it, but there was something that came out recently about those white gloves being involved with minstrel shows, with cartoons.
But that speaks for itself.
Let's just take a look at the food.
I mean, the first thing that struck me is when I saw wraps.
I was like This is a burrito, but they do have a burrito.
Well, I don't want to start a big fight here Steve, but I do technically believe that a burrito is a type of wrap.
Oh, man.
I would go the other way.
I think a wrap is a burrito.
I was like, come on, don't even front.
You're putting in a tortilla?
That is a burrito.
I don't care what you put inside.
I used to put macaroni and cheese inside tortillas, and that was a burrito.
We let that debate go and Steve continued to study the menu.
And this menu is so interesting to me because I feel like you can see cultures coming together right there on the paper, but not in a melting pot sort of way.
A melting pot would just be middle of the road, watered down Mexican food.
This menu has opposite extremes side by side, coexisting or doing battle, depending on how you look at it.
Nice jalapeno.
Okay.
Bowl of chili.
Pinto refried.
Amigo chili.
What?
What?
What did you see?
Crispy calamari burrito.
I'd do that.
Yeah, there's actually a law on Long Island.
You're not allowed to open a restaurant and not serve fried calamari.
You can't even get a license to operate.
Hey, they do got lengua.
So this menu, to describe it, is like an 11 by 17 piece of paper.
There's probably at least 50, maybe 75 items.
Oh, yeah.
But way down in the bottom right-hand corner, in this tiny little box, you see this section called Authentic Mexican Tacos.
Yeah, it's the smallest one, and it's right at the very bottom.
Lengua is tongue and those authentic tacos are done on two corn tortillas with cilantro, chopped onion and lime.
Classic.
That lengua taco is my jam.
But at the very top of the menu there's another section called tacos and that's the American hard shell taco with the shredded lettuce.
Steve noticed the difference in those two placements.
And you know that this would be the first one you encounter assumes something about the audience and that this is sort of relegated to the bottom of the menu also says something to us too.
I sort of I feel like on my more optimistic days I can look at the menu like this and be like it's so great that authentic Mexican tacos are on this menu in a place like the suburbs or a place like Kentucky where you lived and worked for a while.
And that feels like progress on my more optimistic days.
And then, on my less optimistic days, I look at a menu like this and it feels like the authentic part of the menu is getting eaten a lot.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, you know, I guess it depends on the day as well.
Maybe on the day that sombrero wearing chili would be more offensive to me.
And some days I was just like, oh, you know, I got other things to worry about.
One note to add, I did speak with Manuel Gomez, the owner of Tres Amigos.
He declined to be interviewed on mic, but he did tell me more about the thought process of his menu.
First off, the logo, he found it on the internet.
He said he just got a kick out of peppers wearing sombreros.
As for the food, he was pretty blunt.
He said, quote, this is Mexican food for Americans.
He says he needs to offer all these options to run a successful business.
And he knows what he's doing.
He's been owning and operating Mexican restaurants in my area of Long Island for 20 years.
In that time, he says he has seen some changes.
About 10 years ago.
That's when he introduced that little section at the bottom of the menu authentic Mexican tacos.
At first, they didn't sell.
But eventually Manuel tells me a lot of the Hispanic people in the area who work in landscaping started buying them.
And they shared them with their bosses.
And the bosses started bringing their families in to the restaurant.
Now, Manuel says, he sells about half those authentic tacos to non-Spanish speakers.
When he opened his latest place, he tried to get more ambitious.
He offered items like chile rellenos, chilequiles, and huevos rancheros.
But they didn't sell.
He took them off the menu.
So, baby steps.
Coming up, Steve Alvarez and I join his students and go from reading menus to reading tacos.
Read this taco.
Well, the first thing, of course, we had to unwrap it before we had opened up the book cover.
But the first thing you see is, well, you notice it's a flour tortilla.
And that already is very different.
And we go looking for good tacos in a very unlikely place.
Stick around.
And now, a delicious word from our sponsors.
It's very good.
Welcome back to A Sporkful Reheat.
I'm Dan Pashman.
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Thank you.
Now, back to this week's reheat.
After I spoke with Professor Steve Alvarez in his apartment, he and I went to meet up with his taco literacy students at a nearby restaurant.
They had spent the whole semester interviewing the cooks and owners at local Mexican restaurants and bakeries, reading about the history of Mexican cooking and ingredients and writing about what they learned.
This end of term taco crawl would be part culmination, part celebration.
Steve had picked out several spots in the Corona section of Queens where there are a lot of Mexican immigrants.
The first featured food from Puebla in southern Mexico.
So we are going to known as Bella Puebla, but really the full name is Aqui en Bella Puebla, where we're going to try some tacos arabesques.
Now, Tacos Arabes, that's Arab tacos.
Yeah, and this has a lot to do or really ties in directly with some of the Middle Eastern migration, particularly Lebanese immigrants, to Mexico.
Here we are.
Okay.
Here in beautiful Puebla, in Queens, next to the 7 train.
Let's do it.
Yeah, let's go.
All right, let's go meet the students.
Inside Bella Puebla was decorated with streamers in the colors of the Mexican flag and Mexican tapestries.
Spanish language TV was out in the corner.
I started meeting the students.
I wanted to take this class because the theme of this seminar was just different from anything I've ever seen before.
And usually for English majors.
It's like British literature or contemporary literature, but to have something say like Mexican food, it just sounded unique.
And more delicious than British literature.
Yes, definitely.
That's Cindy.
She and I agreed we were both starving.
While we waited for the food, I also talked with Riche.
Knowing the history of the food you're eating.
It's kind of important because you know where it comes from.
So now I'll know more about tacos, the history of tacos.
I'll know burritos aren't really like Mexican, the whole history of that.
What is the whole history of that?
Pop quiz.
They're more like a borderland type of food.
It doesn't really come from Mexico like a lot of. they called it quote-unquote like the handlers of like mexican people who would come to do work that's the food they were given it was really like food of shame nobody really wanted to bring out their tortillas because it also showed like your social class and all that so i think now when i order a burrito i'll be like i'll just like the flashback in my mind all the assignments i wrote on that and then still enjoy it but at least now i know where it comes from i think that's really cool Then I met Arianna.
OK, so I actually got into this class on accident.
My advisor signed me up for it.
And on my schedule, it just said that it was an English lecture.
It didn't specify like taco literacy or anything like that.
So when I first walked into class, I was late.
And I was like, is this the right class?
I sat down and I was like, OK, if he doesn't call my name, then I'll leave.
I'll apologize and I'll leave.
But he called my name.
I was like, oh, OK.
He asked me, oh, what's your relationship to Mexican food?
I was like, well, I'm Mexican.
So I grew up eating it.
What did you learn about Mexican food from taking this class that you didn't know growing up as a Mexican-American?
Well, I've definitely... Okay, so I'm from Texas.
And there is kind of this idea of Tex-Mex not being real Mexican food.
And I had always just kind of accepted that.
Like, okay, it's not real Mexican food.
But this class has really taught me about authenticity and what authenticity really means.
And how it's really subjective.
Because, you know, Mexican people came to Texas and in a lot of cases already lived there and just made the food that was available, with the ingredients that were available to them.
So I don't know.
It's really made me question that when someone says oh, that's not real Mexican food, I'm like how do you know that?
At this point, the tacos arabesques started coming out.
Like Steve said, they're called Arab tacos because around World War I there was an influx of Middle Eastern immigrants to southern Mexico.
They brought the shawarma tradition of spit-roasted lamb served in pita bread.
In Mexico, that morphed into spit-roasted pork in a flour tortilla.
It's seasoned with cumin, oregano, onions, and sometimes Mexican chipotle sauce.
All right, taco number one, taco arabe.
I'm going in.
Oh my God.
Oftentimes, when you get the meat off one of those spits at a less good place, it can be kind of like dried out.
It sits in front of that heater for hours and hours and it gets kind of dry.
This is so juicy.
And a little bit of lime juice on top.
I think this is the best thing I've ever had for breakfast.
My ordering game was on point on this day, my friends.
I ordered two tacos arabes, one to eat right away, one to read with Steve.
Well, the first thing, of course, we had to unwrap it before we had opened up the book cover.
But the first thing you see is, well, you notice it's a flour tortilla.
And that already is very different.
What does that tell you?
Well, it could be one of two things.
One is that we're dealing with a norteño taco or we're dealing with a taco arabe.
In this case, we're going with the latter.
Okay.
And why are flour tortillas more common to northern Mexico?
It's a long story, but really it was the ease of producing wheat in the northern frontier and also the encouragement by the government.
I guess you could say economic development, and also a kind of stigmatization of corn as being backwards or
Somewhat quote-unquote primitive.
So the North was... Where did that idea come from?
Well, that's been there since the Spaniards arrived, I'd say.
And it was the food of the conquered being understood as part of the reason why they were conquered.
And a superiority of especially bread, and the ideology of European or Western progress was also a conquest culinarily.
So you're saying, when the Spanish arrived and conquered Mexico, they were like you, people are eating corn.
This is why we were able to kick your butts.
Yeah.
And we don't have these silly tortillas.
We make bread with wheat and it's superior.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And so corn was stigmatized and wheat stigmatized, rose in the north and it became, and that is why we have flour tortillas today.
I mean really in the metropolitan center, so that ideology takes hold in Mexico City and it became a way to one's diet that was more wheat-based, was the idea you were a higher status person.
Oftentimes tied to race and class as well, but really it was a way to move away from indigenous cultures, indigenous food ways and really to start to prize a European way of thinking of what is human really.
Despite the complicated history of the flour tortilla, Steve says he loves them.
His family is from northern Mexico, so he grew up on his mom's homemade flour tortillas.
I downed my second taco arabe, and we left Bahia Puebla.
All right, so we're going to walk this way to 90th Street.
Let's go.
Next, we arrived at Taqueria Sinaloense.
It's one of the few restaurants in New York that specializes in food from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, which is in the northwest part of the country.
There's a lot of ranching there.
While we waited for our tacos, I talked with a student named Swanee.
The next time you sit down to a plate of tacos, what will you be thinking about that you wouldn't have thought about before?
The process of how everything was made.
I think we take that for granted where it's like oh, the nixtamalization of tortillas.
And like What is the nixtamalization of tortillas?
Pop quiz.
So basically it's where you would get the corn and you would put it in either calcium or like limestone and like in water you leave it there.
And then the following day you would rinse it out and they do this.
So it gives nutrition to it.
And also it prevents people from diseases.
And it also gives it flavor and preserves.
And that's where the Europeans, when they took horn back to their homelands, they failed, because they noticed everyone was getting sick and dying.
OK, good job, Swanee.
You got an A on your pop quiz.
I also talked more with Ariana, the Mexican-American student you heard earlier.
She's the one who signed up for Steve's class by accident.
She's glad now that she did.
I'll definitely be thinking more about the past, you know, of corn.
Corn has been something that I've actually written a lot about and done a lot of research on, and like NAFTA and the importance of corn.
How does NAFTA relate to tacos?
Well, NAFTA, Mexico had to open up its corn sector to foreign imports of corn.
So American corn kind of flooded Mexican markets and it was a lot cheaper.
And people who used to be able to make a living off of growing corn could no longer do that.
A lot of them actually immigrated to America for opportunities.
So...
NAFTA had a lot of unintended effects, you know, for Mexicans in Mexico and also for America, because that's how the what they call the immigration problem began.
That's one of the huge reasons it started.
All right.
You passed your test.
You got an A. Congratulations, Ariana.
Thanks.
Our tacos arrived.
And at this place, Steve had selected tacos de machaca.
Steve read mine to me.
Machaca, because in Sinaloa a lot of people from the ranch.
They would have to preserve their meat by drying it.
So this one is egg mixed with dried beef, tomato and onion on a flour tortilla like a breakfast taco.
Really, really tasty.
Ariana was especially excited for this one.
She grew up eating machaca in El Paso, Texas.
So there's actually a cafe that my dad would take me to growing up.
He'd take me to school and we'd wake up super early and he'd go to this cafe like every morning.
And I would always get the machaca plate.
And it's basically almost like a brisket with scrambled eggs.
And they would like slather it in this cheese.
That was almost like a queso that you would dip chips in.
So good and definitely not healthy.
But...
So I have a lot of good memories about machaca, so I'm really looking forward to eating it here.
Did you tell your parents about this class?
Yes.
What do they think of it?
I actually interviewed my mom about her relationship to Mexican food for an assignment and she was really into it.
What did you learn from that?
A lot of people feel like if you grew up and like your parents for instance, my mom's parents were way too busy working all the time to be able to cook, you know really traditional foods.
So she grew up with a lot of American food, but she later rediscovered how to cook Mexican food and now she makes it all the time, and I grew up eating it.
Yeah, it's just interesting that you can rediscover these things and reconnect to your culture later in life.
The machaca taco was very nice, especially with a few drops of hot sauce on there.
But then Steve pulled me aside and told me about the other specialty here, chilorio.
Chilorio is pulled pork simmered for hours with hot peppers, dash of vinegar and served with refried beans.
Steve recommended it in a taco, of course.
One of my favorites, something that my grandparents used to make.
So when I have this here, it just reminds me a lot of going over there.
Because this is kind of really hard food to find in New York.
The chiloreos that your grandparents used to make?
Yes, Sinaloa food, for sure.
That's where my father's side of the family folks came from.
So when I saw this place in my neighborhood, I was really happy.
And I come here a lot.
That is really good.
Gracias.
The pork and the beans make it so smoky.
But then also there's like, I think she said there was vinegar in there.
So there's like a little bit of like a vinegar bite zing to it.
And then the fattiness of the beans and the pork.
Oh my God.
You know, sometimes you don't realize how good something was until days later.
During the taco crawl, the tacos are a best for my favorite.
But now looking back, the chilorio is the one that I can't get out of my head.
Just the depth of flavors, so much going on.
Reading that taco was like reading Moby Dick.
Only difference was, I actually finished the taco.
Thank you, muchas gracias.
From there, we made a quick stop at Nieves Tiamimi for some Mexican ices.
I went with half mango and red chili, half tamarind.
A perfect palate cleanser.
It was time now for the final stop of the day.
But this one wasn't on Steve's original itinerary.
It was my request.
I didn't pick it because of the tacos themselves.
I'd actually never had them.
I picked it because I thought the location seemed meaningful.
It wasn't in Queens.
So Steve, all his students, and I hopped on the subway.
This is Times Square, 42nd Street.
Transfer is available to the one, two, three.
I've got to be a little more careful here crossing the street.
All right, you guys, so we're here in Times Square.
The cliche nickname of it is that it's the crossroads of the world.
At any given day, there's probably someone from every single state, and many countries come through here.
And there's a taco stand in the middle of Times Square, a taqueria.
Yeah, absolutely.
So let's eat some tacos.
Sounds good.
All right.
Steve, what can you tell us about this place?
I have no idea.
I have never tried this place.
I've seen it around before, but just like you said that it's in Times Square and that it actually is in Spanish as Taqueria I think is really cool and that it's next to a pizza spot, which I think will give you some indication of what street food in New York is becoming.
I'm looking at the menu.
Read this menu with me a little bit.
Sure.
The staples, guacamole and chips, chips and salsa.
Elote, which is a pretty cool option of corn on the cob with chipotle mayonnaise and some well, some cheese on the side too, there.
And then, of course, you can see it in the back hanging out.
Looming is the al pastor.
And that looks like a winner from here.
Definitely.
Yeah.
I do notice a few... curveball ingredients on this menu.
I perceive them as curveball.
You tell me what you think.
The costilla has Thai basil.
Yeah.
I see that the pollo has chimichurri, which is an Argentinian spice often served with steak sauce.
Right.
And one of these quesadillas has arugula in it as well.
Yeah.
So it's certainly there's some upscale, but also some non-Mexican.
Yeah. influences here.
What are your thoughts on that?
I think part of that is this restaurant is considered modern Mexican food.
I mean, we can see some kind of hybridity happening here, and it makes sense.
We're here in the middle of Times Square, so we've got a little bit of everything happening.
Right, right.
What do you guys think?
Amazing.
Really?
Actually, really good, yeah.
I have no words.
I didn't think it was going to be good because we're in Times Square, but this is like a nice surprise.
Ariana, what makes it so good?
Well, I'm eating the costilla right now, and it's really good.
That's the short rib, the beef?
Mm-hmm.
It has, like, Thai flavors in it.
Like, it feels like a, I don't know, like a cross.
That's the one with Thai basil in it, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It's really good.
So you sort of started off taking this class reconnecting with your Mexican, Mexican-American roots.
Now you're ending it eating a short rib taco in Times Square with Thai basil in it.
Yeah, my ancestors are crying, but it's okay.
But I'm loving it.
Before we wrapped up, I checked in with Steve one more time.
Often that sort of cross-pollination that happens with food and that's happened with Mexican food in Mexico and in the US is a result of colonialism.
It can be a result of oppression.
We talked about corn versus flour tortillas and all that, but you're someone who grew up with flour tortillas.
Yeah.
That's like your comfort food.
Sure.
When you eat the food and enjoy it, I mean, how does that factor into it?
You personally, how do you process that?
Well, I mean, it goes a couple ways.
One is that I'm the product of colonialism.
My identity is somebody who is mestizo. who has indigenous blood, European blood, African blood.
Even people from Spain were already mixed, especially religiously, with people who were of the Muslim faith, Jewish faith and Christian faith, before they even came here.
And really putting it into a bigger context of thinking about history, people and the movement of people and movement of their food.
There's a lot of talk about walls these days, a lot of rhetoric about walls.
And what I would say is that, number one, walls don't stop people.
Walls don't stop languages.
And they certainly don't stop food.
So wait, wait, gather around one more time.
So...
Thank you all, first of all, for including me.
You guys were fantastic.
This was a lot of fun.
I was going to say class dismissed, but I feel like Steve should say that.
Oh, man.
I'm so sad to say that.
Well, some people are going to keep eating tacos, so I can't say it's dismissed.
But stay in contact with me.
Let me know how everything works out.
And then, of course, you've got projects due next week, so don't forget.
Of course.
But thank you all.
Thank you all for coming, too.
Thank you so much.
It was our pleasure.
Now say class dismissed.
Oh, class dismissed.
Do they not say that in college?
Probably not.
That's Stephen Alvarez, associate professor of English at St.
John's University in Queens.
He'll be teaching that taco literacy course again this spring.
If you want to learn more about taco literacy, check out his course website at Tacoliteracy.com.
Or if you just want to drool over some pics of good food, check him out on Instagram at Tacoliteracy.
And a quick update, we originally recorded this episode a few years ago.
Since then, sadly, Taqueria Sinaloense has closed.
But you can still get Sinaloan specialties at a restaurant called Cielito Astoria in Queens.
Note to self, go eat there.
This episode was originally produced by Anne, Sani, and me, with editing help from Peter Clowney.
Senior producer Emma Morgenstern produced this update.
The show was mixed by Jared O'Connell, music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher.
Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
And this is Larkin, from Ithaca, New York, reminding you to eat more, eat better and eat more better.
This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer.
The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern and senior producer Andres O'Hara.
Our engineer is Jared O'Connell.
Music help from Black Label Music.
The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts.
Our executive producer is Camille Stanley.
And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app?
Yes, the SiriusXM app.
It has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage.
Does your podcasting app have that?
And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more.
It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.
And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to SiriusXMcom slash Sporkful.
Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.
