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Jayson Eats is a monthly dining column that rates and recounts the food at New York's little-known spots.
I’ve only been to Texas — a state that would be considered its own country if it had the gumption to print its own money — one time but I find their culture, both racially and otherwise, very compelling. It’s a state of nefarious Republicans and gigantically charismatic rappers; high school football and baseball pitchers who throw heat; historic 21st century basketball franchises and oil men who stole land and made their fortunes; short ribs and tortillas. One of the more popular cuisines in Texas, especially Southwestern Texas, comes from the Tejano (Spanish for Texan) people of Texas. Tex/Mex, a version of Mexican food but with generally more cheese in the platter, has just surpassed Italian food as the most popular cuisine in America — a fact that makes Yellow Rose, a Tex/Mex place in New York’s East Village, a sight for a glaucoma patient.
This is my second time there. My first time, I lacked the money that I currently have. It was during a different time in my life, where the demands of a life of freelance make way for a grueling lack of funds. I couldn’t go all out the way I want to. For a cuisine like Tex-Mex, you want to be able to get multiple things, plus as much queso as humanly possible. If Gael Garcia Bernal’s quote about Mexican food being “far more varied than people think” is true, then Yellow Rose is the exact personification, or epitome, of that quote. You aren’t getting a steak burrito then going back to your cubicle. This is a meal fit for a Texas king, done by Texans who have had to show resolve in a state built by its oppressors.