(If this doesn't meet the intent of this thread, let me know and I'll delete it. I will probably never be mistaken for Latino/Hispanic.)
Really enjoying this thread, always been a fan of whatever food and culture I got to experience from any region south of the US. Tried to make corn tortillas a few weeks back and failed miserably, a topic for its own thread. It's very cool seeing how similar cuisines are between different areas of the world. There are a lot of very similar foods between Mexico and south Asia: Jamaica/Roselle as well as cane sugar drinks, ceviche/yum 'raw' acid salads, grilling anything on a skewer, chili powder on fruit, the aforementioned chicken hearts, etc.
My favorite churrasco in the US is actually a little hole in the wall in Hartford, CT - Brazil Grill and Pizza. Grab your sides off the buffet line, then go to the grill and have them cut the meats you want, weigh your plate to pay. As it's by weight, the black beans are a much worse deal than the meats. If you are unlucky, the guy ahead of you will have just bought all the chicken hearts (asshole!) Ate there at least weekly for a year. I actually took takeout rice and chicken hearts and mixed them into a ziploc bag to take on a plane a few times. Reviews say prices have gone up, but at the time the most expensive plate I could put together was not over $15. Hartford was a shithole, yet this place makes me want to go back and visit, enough so that I've flown to NYC and rented a car and driven to Hartford twice after leaving, just to eat there again:
https://goo.gl/maps/tx8Fdk1ZX82pLYESA
Some of my takeout trays. I took a photo of every single one. Most of them feature chicken hearts, some of them are just chicken hearts and rice:
Mortar/Pestle (molcajete?) garlic, coarse salt (doubles as a friction grit to help with grinding), white peppercorns. Pound them into a paste. Then add olive oil and wine vinegar.
Marinate hearts, I went overnight.
Skewer and grill.
Genuine laugh at this one, there's a little hole in the wall grilled chicken shack near my work that has a clock hung on the wall in box just like that (not with tape). This place has the best grilled chicken in the world, period. I've taken a lot of foreign visitors and have yet to have anyone disagree. Restaurant:
https://goo.gl/maps/GJffzHNPtzRoVmDA8
I can't find my clock photo, but here's a photo stolen from Google Maps.
The chicken:
This is genius and may be universal.
For most ethnic foods in countries with health scores, I will always pick the place with the lower health score - frankly I want the priority to be the food, not the cleanliness and health score. Here in Asia, I pick the dirtiest, shittiest looking place, because if they're open and busy, you know people sure as hell aren't coming for the clean premises.
I spent many a teenage summer in China, the money in sock or under foot in shoe was a lesson I very quickly learned. At the very least keep enough taxi/motorbike fare to get home in a separate place under your sock. To this day I keep a separate stash of cash, enough for one-way fare home, every time I travel anywhere. It wasn't robbery/mugging there, it was pickpockets. I'm still in awe of the pickpockets, even knowing it was happening I could not tell how or when it happened.