Alitas Estilo Mexicali con Soya y Miel

These wings are from Mexicali, Baja California. Not from California, not from a sports bar, not from a chain in any other Mexican city. From Mexicali. Specifically from La Chinesca, the Chinese district that has fed this border city since the late 1800s, when Chinese laborers were brought to dig the irrigation canals of the Valle de Mexicali and stayed to open restaurants and small shops on Avenida Reforma. Mexicali has more Chinese restaurants per capita than any other city in Mexico. That is not a marketing claim. It is a census fact.

The technique here is Cantonese in its bones and Mexican in its hands. Double-fried for the crackle. Glazed in soy, honey, ginger, garlic. The Coca-Cola in the glaze is the Mexican fingerprint, the same caramelizing trick that finishes carnitas in Michoacan, used here to soften the edge of the soy and pull the honey into a rounder sweetness. The chiles toreados on the side are the northern Mexican accompaniment, blistered whole on a comal and dressed in soy and lime. They are not a garnish. They are the salsa. Pick one up by the stem and bite between bites of wing.

I spent two weeks in Mexicali in 2019, eating at La Misionera, El Dragon, and a half-dozen storefronts in La Chinesca whose names I could only read in Mandarin. The senoras and senores who taught me this recipe corrected me twice on the soy ratio and once on the second-fry temperature. Esto no es comida de un solo Mexico. This is a dish that exists because Chinese cooks in a Mexican border city built a cuisine that is fully theirs and fully ours. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Baja California has two of them: the Pacific seafood tradition and the Chinese-Mexican kitchen of Mexicali.