Mexico is a big country, eight times the size of Great Britain, for example. It stretches from the arid borderlands with the United States in the north to the tropical jungles of the Yucatan in the south, from the humid coastlines on the Gulf of Mexico in the east to the drier Pacific coast on the west. The high central plateau, where much of the population lives at an elevation of 1800 m (6,000') or more, is separated from the coasts by massive mountain ranges, passable only in a few places. Many parts of the country are still largely Indian with ways of life and culinary customs little changed by the Spanish Conquest; Mexico City, by contrast, is the largest city in the world, subject to the same international influences as any large metropolis. Does it then make sense to speak of Mexican food?
