Pati Jinich on Colorado, the borderlands and the ‘golden age of Mexican food’

DENVER — Pati Jinich is having a busy autumn.

The James Beard Award-winning chef and host of the long-running show “Pati’s Mexican Table” is celebrating season two of her PBS show, “Pati Jinich Explores PanAmericana.” Season one saw Jinich explore the culture and cuisine of Alaska and Canada. In season two, she travels through the American West: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

Jinich also published “Foods of La Frontera: Recipes and New Taste Frontiers from Both Sides of the Border” earlier this month. It is her fourth cookbook and it follows her award-winning PBS series, “La Frontera.”

Jinich will be at Asterisk in Denver Oct. 6 for “Cooking Up Conversations with Pati Jinich,” which includes an advanced screening of season two of “PanAmericana.” Jinich filmed in Denver, Breckenridge and Alamosa for the episode featuring Colorado. Rocky Mountain PBS interviewed Jinich ahead of the Denver event. Our discussion covered the “borderless nature of Mexican cuisine and culture,” a recap of her trip to Colorado and whether she agrees with The New York Times that we’re in the “golden age” of Mexican food.

Pati Jinich: Amazing! Oh, I love that one. The bricklayer one? Or the vegetarian one?

PJ: Oh, I love! Awesome. 

PJ: It is. I think when I started Pati's Mexican Table, Kyle, I really wanted to do Mexican food right. And I wanted to do it authentically, and I wanted to represent where I came from. And I felt this heavy duty, this heavy burden and responsibility. And after so many seasons of going back and forth, I realized that there are many Mexicos, right? There are many Mexican regional cuisines that even us Mexicans don't know. The different regions don't really know or understand each other and even more so when it comes to the borderless nature of Mexican cuisine and culture.

And I think people are afraid of that borderless thing because then you can't put it in a box or a label, and that's where you have Tex-Mex and you have Cal-Mex and you have Northern Mexican, and you have, you know, the 31 million people that live in the U.S. and Mexico borderlands and what they eat and what is authentic to them.

And you know, who is to judge? So with this book, it was very liberating, because I stopped trying to do Mexico “right,” even though I love what I've done with the Mexican regions. But now I'm just embracing the Mexican food and culture and people as I'm finding them. And it's beautiful and it's delicious and it's unapologetically scrumptious.

The food of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands is food that people have a hard time understanding. Is it Mexican? Is it American? Nobody wants to say, “Oh, it's ours,” but everybody wants to eat it. 

PJ: I mean, first of all, the proof that Mexican food is borderless: wherever I go, there's a burrito stop, there's a taco stop. And not only that, like, the more hardcore foods like birria, pozole, menudo — which is intestine soup — you know, tongue tacos. It’s all over the place, like from Montana to Arizona. Of course, Arizona is no surprise, but like Montana and Wyoming — I asked, I was with the folks … in Missoula and I'm like, “What's your favorite thing, what should we order for lunch?” And they’re like, “Burritos!” And so we went to a burrito place and at first I was taken aback because one of their most popular burritos is a souvlaki burrito. And I was like, wait, that may be too much for me to digest. But then I ate it and it was delicious, you know? 

You know, when I was at the top of Alaska, the first thing I ate was a burrito, and it was very central Mexico with chicken tinga and beans. So I would say the common denominator in terms of food is that wherever I go, I find Mexican [food]. And Mexicans! Which is a lot of fun.

I'm learning so much that I didn't know about the U.S. You know, as a Mexican, I started my career wanting to share my Mexican food thinking that, “Oh, the U.S. doesn't know a lot about our mother cuisine.” And then I realized, “Well, us Mexicans don't even know a lot about our own mother cuisine.”

Then, I realized that I had very strong myths and stereotypes and preconceptions about what the U.S. food was and I was so wrong. And I'm learning so much.

PJ: I mean, the beers from [Colorado Farm Brewery in Alamosa] are just exquisite and full of flavor, with so many different varieties. And there I had the hot dogs, the sausages from Gosar Sausages where he shared two different kinds of sausages. One is a sausage from his heritage. He is from the Ukraine. And that was a delicious sausage he served with the spicy mustard. But then he has the green chile pork sausage. That's like his homage to his family's new home, which is Colorado. And I learned a lot about the chile verde from Colorado that’s different from New Mexico. And I learned about the rivalry. So I had incredible sausages.

So that was in Alamosa and then in Denver, we had incredible food at Welton Street Cafe. We had fried catfish. We had pates, which I had never tried. Which were so delicious. There were some things that didn't make it into the episode, which was such a bummer because we only had an hour. But when we went to the fire station, the guys from the fire station were making a meal and we captured all of it. They were making burgers and they were making tater tots, but we just couldn't fit it into the episode. But I had great food.

And then at Nocturne, I had really delicious, super elevated comfort food that was so good too. 

PJ: Oh, yes. I went to Breckenridge and there I had a mind-blowing pasta from a restaurant that's called Forage. 

PJ: No, don't. [Laughs.] But I do have to say I'm obsessed with Gosar’s green chile sausage to the point that I'm putting in an order every month.