Culture | World in a dish

In praise of mass-market American tacos

Authenticity is a terrible metric for judging food

|NEW YORK

A CERTAIN TYPE of big-city eater—including, sometimes, the author of this column—reflexively assumes that noodles eaten at a restaurant without an English menu are, by definition, superior to those from a strip-mall outlet catering to non-Chinese diners. Such people are liable also to think that non-Italian ingredients have no place on a pizza, or that using Italian rather than Tunisian olive oil in couscous is a grave culinary sin.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The unreal McCoy”

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