Posted Feb 6, 2014, 12:59 PM
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Midwest Moderator - Editor
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Big Mitten
Posts: 31,745
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Local Cuisine: Botana, a southwest Detroit original
A little interesting something I found this in the paper, this morning.
Quote:
Botanas, like this one from Detroit's Los Galanes restaurant, originated in southwest Detroit. The coney dog and Canada's poutine helped inspire the dish. David Guralnick / The Detroit News
Take snacking to the extreme: Botana, a southwest Detroit original
By Louis Aguilar | The Detroit News
February 6, 2014
Southwest Detroit— It’s become common to see cable TV chefs and hipster food bloggers discovering Detroit cuisine. Much overlooked in the blitz of coverage, however, is a dish as unique to the Motor City as the coney dog.
That would be the botana, born in the one and only Detroit neighborhood with a Mexican accent: southwest Detroit. Since the mid ’70s, the locally influenced botana — the proclaimed inventor says he got inspiration from the coney dog and Canadian poutine — has been one of the most popular dishes in area Mexican restaurants, and it continues to be a staple.
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So what exactly is this irresistible dish? Depends on whom you’re asking. In Mexican Spanish, the language spoken in Mexico and often in U.S. cities like Los Angeles and Houston, the word means snack or appetizer. If you say you want a botana, it’s as generic as saying you want a sandwich.
In Detroit Spanish, however, botana means something specific, yummy and calorie-busting. It’s hot corn chips layered with a mix of chorizo sausage and pinto beans, then covered with melted Muenster cheese, topped with onions, green peppers, avocados, tomatoes and pickled jalapenos, sometimes with olives and lettuce on top.
It’s served on a big platter nachos-style; the aroma wafts around the table, triggering the over-eating gene of seemingly everyone except vegetarians and vegans. A sharp knife is usually jabbed into the heart of the mountainous dish, the heft of the ingredients suspending the utensil in mid-air. The knife is used to slice gooey wedges of the dish that’s served communally often with beers or margaritas.
The botana characterizes the difference between a traditional Detroit Mexican restaurant and a traditional Mexican restaurant, which southwest Detroit also contains. Those restaurants do not serve botanas because it’s as foreign to them as a slider. Luckily, both camps co-exist and thrive.
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Over an average week, Armando’s Mexican Cuisine on West Vernor, the main business strip of southwest Detroit, sells about 400 botanas, said Cecilia Hernandez, whose family owns the restaurant. There’s at least a dozen Mexican restaurants in the area that sell the dish; several report similar sales figures, putting a rough estimate of botanas sold weekly in the thousands in southwest Detroit alone.
Botanas have made their way outside the city limits, too. For decades now, many Mexican restaurants in the suburbs have offered the dish.
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