African invaders brought their meatballs to Iberia. Spanish conquistadors brought them to the new world. Mexicans brought them to the United States, and to your table as albondigas soup.
I sometimes eat at a casino cafe where "meatball soup" recently was deleted from its rotating soups of the day menu... A change which also dropped "tortilla soup."
Both dishes had been "Americanized" (gotten blander, less authentic) since their introduction. And management had previously asked their multiethnic wait staff not to use Spanish words to describe the food to Anglos... A Hispanic waitress admitted it, last fall, when I asked if Wednesday's chicken soup came with tortillas, rice or noodles? Had I asked "¿Sopa de pollo con tortillas, arroz o fideos?" her answer would've been different. But she was serving soup to crackers.
Las Vegas is completely dependent on visitors from all over. But the hospitality is a veneer, because at heart its residents are not at all comfortable with embracing, or even eating, ethnic soup.
Earthquake, tsunami,
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