I know that my mother didn’t see a taco until 1965, when she and I each had one at the New Mexico pavilion of the New York World’s Fair.

So to tell her in 1954 that tacos would be among the most popular foods in America in 2024 might have drawn a blank expression and the question “What’s a taco?”

Of course, tacos were hardly new to the Southwest. In Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, Mexican immigrants had brought their food to the United States.

But in the 1950s, when New Yorkers thought about Hispanic immigrants, they thought about Puerto Rico. It’s a big point in “West Side Story.” And not a lot of Puerto Rican dishes spread beyond certain neighborhoods in the city.

So tacos and other Mexican-type food were slow to come east. Taco Bell, which is to Mexican food as Pizza Hut is to Italian food – that is, not really – didn’t open its first location east of the Mississippi until the late 1960s.

Tacos became popular for several reasons. One is that as more people come to the U.S. from Latin America, the food of the region – Mexican as well as from other nations – has become more popular. Tortillas and salsa take up considerable portions of a Safeway’s aisles.

Another is that they’re amazingly good. Even at Taco Bell.

Among the people who loved tacos was my mother. She made them for the first time in the late 1960s and loved them all the rest of her life.