It's cold and gray outside, and every time the door opens it's like a stream of ice water sluicing down the back of my jacket. But I had to take a seat by the door because all the other stools at the counter are occupied, and there are a couple of people waiting to take my seat if I'll give it up. On the other side of the vintage ‘60s counter, the gray Formica pattern worn down to white in front of the anchored stools, the cook stays warm moving briskly over a busy griddle, scraping eggs, or piles of shredded beef, or both together, with a worn industrial spatula. I warm my hands on my cup of coffee, and before long the cook brings me my order of Tacos Antonia, shredded beef in a crispy corn tortilla with cabbage and crema. Lucy's is famous for its machaca, but I came for the tacos.

Tacos are an embodiment of El Paso's key brand feature, our Mexnicity. Our ethnic makeup is our Unique Selling Proposition, that single feature that distinguishes us from every other city in America. San Antonio makes strong claim for its Mexican heritage with half, as a percentage, of our Mexican population. Tucson, also, puts on Mexican airs, though their Mexican population is only 30 percent of the total population. We, of course, are more than 80 percent Mexican or of Mexican heritage.

Perhaps it's a sign of the times that our Mexicaness is not featured more prominently on our city's web sites. The right wing pundits of the national media devalue the Mexican brand value. Even the Glass Beach study advocating the Downtown Plan disingenuously disparaged Mexicans.

The city's web sites tout our bilingual facility, but Spanish and Native American contributions are billed above Mexicans. Reading the web sites, you would think that all the Mexicans here are over the bridges in Juarez.

El Paso, of course, is not Mexico, or even Mexican. Except for that 80 percent.

And our Mexnicity spans the whole analog range, from first generation to those whose families maintained their residence as the geopolitical boundaries shifted around them.

Tucson and San Antonio can embrace their Mexnicity as a charming sanitized Disneyland-style abstraction. In California, and even Las Cruces, they can call their street calles. Here, though, we're faced with the gritty reality of it. And so we deny it. Futilely.

But our cuisine betrays our pretensions. It gives us away. Our cuisine declares our culture. It claims our collective heritage.

Taco is a big word. Few words are freighted with as much cultural subtext as taco.

My Syrian landlord-at-the-time told me once, “We're all Mexicans. We speak Spanish, we eat tacos.” Tacos are inextricably tied to our Mexnicity. I've heard people use taco when they mean snack, the way people in this part of the country use coke to mean soda. “I'm going to go get a taco,” they say, when what they're really getting is a sandwich. Like people ask “What kind of a coke do you want?” even before brand extensions made that a legitimate question. Often the answer is “Root beer,” or “Dr. Pepper,” or “Grape.”

The cheese soup sodden flautas served up at Chico's are as much a part of our communal DNA as the Franklin Mountains. In our collective history, in woolen memories fuzzed by late nights at the Kentucky Club, we have all eaten the tacos al pastor from Taquitos Mexicano. The salsa bar at Taco Tote is nobody's secret.

It's a common observation that our culinary blessings are a key brand component for El Paso. Nowhere in the world is the Mexican food as good as it is here. Not even in Mexico. You can get a bad Mexican meal in Mexico. But not here.

Any Mexican restaurant that's been open in El Paso for more than a month must be good, because our standards are high. Good Mexican food here is table stakes. You can't even get in the game in El Paso without really good food.

And El Paso is more than tacos, and more than Mexico. We're golf courses, and fine dining, and culture. And we're West Texas, and the desert, and more than 300 days a year of sunshine. But what makes us most unique is that we're Mexico. And that's what we should be selling.

Taco is a big word. Few words are as freighted with as much cultural subtext as taco. Tio Taco is what Mexican Americans call other Mexican Americans who deny their Mexnicity and put on Anglo airs.