The carne asada taco at Los Tacos No. 1 in Chelsea Market, a classic Mexican dish. Photo: Reuben Torres.

By Reuben Torres

I left home for college when I was around 20. Even though I hopped back and forth from time to time, a part of me never came back. That happens to everyone, I guess. It’s the closest our contemporary culture has to a coming of age. That itch that I got after leaving, though, the unrelenting urge to not stay put and experience as much of the world as I could, drove me to uproot frequently. It has became a recurring motif in my life. With each move, my idea of home became murkier and murkier.

Let me get one thing out of the way: I hate civic pride. Or well, I don’t hate it, I just don’t partake. Not usually. Chalk it up to aspirations of cosmopolitanism ––you know, that whole citizen of the world spiel–– but I’ve always found it more enlightening to find the wondrous and the wonderful inherent in all cultures and corners of the globe (or, the parts I’ve visited at least). But then someone will make a glib comment. Or better, yet, they’ll think they’re educating you on a subject you grew up with, and then all that globalist nonsense suddenly vanishes in one second and you’re left with red-blooded, football-jersey wearing, flag-waving, horn-honking hometown pride. “Oh, you know an excellent taco place, huh?”

Like the other day, this classmate of mine invited me for tacos. And, I mean, I’m no snob right? I have no claim on this dish, which is not exactly native to my hometown…BUT… EVERYONE KNOWS TIJUANA TACOS ARE THE BEST! This is actually a very common debate in Mexico, a true regional dispute that is not without merit. Having lived in the world for some time now, I can say with some objectivity that there are, in fact, no tacos like the Tijuana tacos. Or at the very least, there are no tacos like Tijuana’s carne asada tacos. Once you’ve experienced that delectable feast, that tiny inch of roasted heaven, the rest is just, blegh.

I’ll rewind a bit. I have my issues with Tijuana. For one thing, I grew up in San Diego, and there’s this whole identity crisis thing going on with border kids, especially ones so close to their native culture. But sometime in my early twenties, I proclaimed the chaotic border city my own. I set a flag there, if you will. I became engrossed in its culture and built my first true social network from there (it also helps that I dated a girl from there for almost a decade). Such is my attachment, that I now feel well within my right to defend the city, complete with all its problematics and all its nuances. And it is a very complex place indeed.

After college, I moved to Mexico City to pursue a career in music. Again, a part of me was never the same after that move. It’s as if every time I moved, I shed some aspect of myself, or what I thought to be myself, wondering if I would find it again or if it was just some sort of existential jet lag. I came back home from time to time, but always with the understanding that I’d move again. My mother knew this. Maybe for this reason, she’d always try to make me feel as much at home as she could. And every time, on my first night back at home, she’d cook my favorite meal: carne asada tacos.

Los Tacos No. 1 at Chelsea Market is one of the few places in New York that offers Tijuana-style carne asada tacos. Photo: Reuben Torres.

Now, don’t get confused. My mother’s carne asada tacos taste nothing like Tijuana’s carne asada tacos. But somewhere across my global trek, both became indistinguishable in my mind, because they both something pointed, in some way, to what I had come to consider home. Tijuana taught me something crucial about myself that had been missing. It showed me a path. It became a marker in my life’s journey. But it also taught me something deeper, that is, how shifty this whole idea of home is.

You see, every place I’ve lived in has shown me something about myself. Mexico City, Berkeley and New York, these places have all contributed to my growth and evolution as a human being. I’ve left something there and I’ve taken something too. As the scope of my life had gotten wider, so has my idea of home. I’ve now come to accept that home for me exists as a series of fragments, tenuous ideas, rather than a fixed place. It’s the reason I always go to Salón Corona for the micheladas as soon as I land in Mexico City. Or the reason I order the starter breakfast with the Americano at Caffe Med whenever I’m in the Bay Area. All these things, however quotidian they can seem, make me feel like I’m home again.

Reuben Torres