The mission district is known for its Latino culture, but before the 1940’s it was a predominantly Irish community, which was interesting because of such a drastic change. As more and more Hispanics moved in more and more whites moved out. During the 80’s and 90’s many Central and South American immigrants moved to the mission due to civil wars and domestic conflict in their home country. When the different Hispanic cultures immigrated here they brought with them their unique recipe’s that have been developed through generations. These recipes would change, some would get Americanized, its all about what is available. The Latino community are also known for their murals that depict their social struggles, the most famous of the artists being Diego Rivera, speaking of which I went to the MOMA this weekend and saw a couple of his paintings but no picture because the thought of bring a camera didn’t hit me until I entered the building. Anyways the murals often contain both aspects of struggle and food.
When we first stepped into the Taqueria I wanted some tacos the guy was selling in the corner of the restaurant, but I wanted to try something I normally wouldn’t get so that meant no to the chimichanga too but I do remember the story of the chimichanga. I was watching the food network and it was a special on Mexican food. The story goes Monica Flin accidently knocked over a burrito and it fell into the fryer, she was going to curse something in Spanish, and as she uttered the work chi…she saw a young girl and quickly changed it to chimichanga. It just goes to show everything is better fried. Ok, back to my dinner, I pondered for a while and saw flautas de pollo and with English underneath three chicken flute with salad and sour cream. It sounded interesting and that’s what I ordered. Upon waiting for the meal there was chips and 3 salsas to choose from, I got all three. First one was a regular generic tomato slasa, second was a green chili and third was a avocado based salsa, which was the first time seeing something like that.
I was so hungry by the time my food came, my first thought was oh these are just taquitos, but when I research it, I learned they are very similar and different at the same time. Though some people specify one uses corn and one uses flour there are equal amount of people that say the reverse. Ultimately its just the name, Flautas are the authentic name while taquito is a American created name. Flautas are traditionally severed as entrée thus they are bigger and taquitos are sides and therefore smaller. Flautas mean flute is Spanish, they are made traditionally with shredded meat rolled in flour tortia and fried until crispy. Flautas are made differently from each cook, it depends on the region they are from, some are like burritos and some are coned but I found two examples that match the one I ate that night. Below there a link on how to roll the flautas and a blog that made the whole entrée from scratch, if anyone is interesting in trying these instruments of deliciousness.
How to make flautas de pollo
How to roll the tortillas
