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Most of us love Cinco de Mayo for its festivities and great food, Cinco de Mayo means “fifth of May” in Spanish. It’s a day for fun, and food, and music, and dancing. While Cinco de Mayo – the fifth of May – has become better known throughout the United States, it is celebrated very differently in Mexico. “This day is huge for us,” said Lauren Graham, manager of Tequila Jack???s restaurant in Portsmouth. “It???s probably our biggest day of the year.”

A word about “Mexican food.” What many Americans think of as “Mexican,” with its homogeneous concentration on fried goods and puddles of processed cheese, is more accurately called “Tex-Mex,” though admittedly it is often tasty, nonetheless.
But in authentic, un-Americanized Mexican food there is not only tastiness but a history lesson and tremendous regional variation.

Sweet sauces, fiery relishes, soft corn flatbreads and roasted chicken and pork. Fine tequilas, icy mixed drinks and the rare opportunity to contemplate how entwined the history and culture of the red-white-and-green culture is with that of the red-white-and-blue.
Mexican foods are just as much a mixture of that country’s many peoples as are “American foods” (whatever those would be). The mad dash for the New World had many of the same results in Mexico as it did north of the border.
For one thing, it mixed cultures. The battle commemorated by the holiday was with the French, the country was originally occupied by indigenous peoples (including the Aztecs and Mayans), colonized by the Spanish, and of course, the Spanish colonization was contested by the United States.

The Chicken in Green Sauce, made with serrano chiles and tangy tomatillos, and the Chicken with Mole Sauce, of which he would only say, “I use a lot of extra spices,” both have a truly Mexican feel. Even so, the latter dish does use a popular American Land O’ Lakes cheese as its topping.
“Every Mexican restaurant, pretty much, they use this cheese,” he said.
Authentic cheese as it would be enjoyed in Mexico is less like the melted cheddars we encounter so often in the United States and more like the fresh-pressed Queso Fresco cheese traditionally paired with tortillas and salsa; it closely resembles a firmly pressed, creamy ricotta. This makes for a great appetizer.