wooly bully, from justink's flickr stream

To judge by the comments and emails I received over the weekend, my summary dismissal of NYC Mexican food as being divided between the overpriced and the undergood ruffled a few feathers in the urban chicken coop. Dear readers, I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but when the sousaphone’s out of key and the majorette drops the baton, revealing in its retrieval her taste for neo-Gothic undergarments of dubious quality, I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen and clap along for good old Flag Day.

I fully acknowledge that my homemade Mexican-style concoctions are as authentic as I am Catholic, but they’re made at home by someone who makes no claim to being a professional preparer of Mexcian food. (Nor, for that matter, do I make any claim to be professional, or even prepared.) Despite all this know that I still love a parade, and could happily eat Mexcian food between three and seven days a week. Therefore, in the spirit of openness, and embracing all that is affordable and delicious, I hereby declare that July 2009 is:

Taco Slam 2009 on Fiftybucksaweek.com!

Here’s how it’ll go: each week in July, I will visit a reader-recommended Mexican restaurant or mobile dining establishment, and report back on this blog. Destinations will be chosen from among the expected deluge of entries by means of the Super-Secret Google Restaurant and Mobile Dining Establishment Choice Algorithm, which I lifted from the fanny pack of an inebriated Google employee at the Bohemian Beer Garden in Astoria on Sunday. The R/MDE must be somewhere within the Five Boroughs of New York City. Its entrees must cost no more than $10/plate, because I have at least to try to stay on budget. If it’s truly abysmal, I will leave the meal out of my weekly budget, and replace it with a portion of pickled herring of equal value, in order to get the taste out of my mouth. If it’s anywhere from merely ok to pretty good considering, the cost comes out of my $50/week. If it’s truly great, and you prove me wrong in my belief that there is little to no Mexican food worthy of the name in the Greatest Food City on the Eastern Seaboard, I will gift you a copy of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ 1965 Mexicali hit, “Wooly Bully,” from the iTunes Music Store, to memorialize my own lack of authenticity (in addition to the original, I reserve the right to choose among the many covers available, from that of Bad Manners, to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, to Doug Adams’ arrangement for marching band, depending what’s most apposite, or how mad I am for your proving me wrong).

Please vote early and often.