I'm not big on Mexican type food, so I rarely eat it. [....]
Me
neither! The unavoidably overcooked ground beef in United-Statesian recipes might as well be replaced by the product of damp brown
shirt-cardboard fed thro' a meat-grinder.
Bleccch! And I'm no fan of any cuisine that's based on drowning otherwise good food in whole cans-full of tomato sauce.[×]
I'm not a fan of [...] messy [....]
I
agree. Another reason why a Mexican restaurant would
never be my own choice. Especially
not in circuмstances that require me to be wearing a
necktie or be socially presentable after such a meal.
I would make an exception to my aversion to sit-down meal messiness for something like a Louisiana
crawfish boil or
shrimp boil, but those are
not merely lunch-hour-away-from-work meals.
I'm not a fan of spicy / hot [...] and I try to steer clear of garlic / onion....
Sufferin' succotash! No
garlic nor
onion nor
hot peppers!? You're disqualifying
escabeche and even dishes sauteed in butter and wine, e.g., nonMexican
shrimp scampi (which typically has garlic and onions), nobly intended as an alternative to having them drowned in thickened tomato sauce.
Your criteria reject even bland mashed potatoes being enhanced (i.e., given any flavor at all beyond homogenized starch) with garlic and onion (readers shouldn't even
think about mixing in any diced
mildly-hot green peppers)!?
So you might look for one of the widely known
arroz dishes, i.e.,
rice, customarily
yellow [
$], either
con camarones, i.e., with shrimp, or
con pollo, i.e., with chicken, served most commonly (I think) as a chicken quarter on top of the rice. Neither dish has a tradition of spiciness; they're broadly Iberian, not Latin-American,
per se. But if there's also an
arroz con chorizo, you'd want to skip that one.
-------
Note ×:
[Hades],
yes! My objection applies--quite strongly--to southern Eye-talian (d.b.a. Neapolitan) cuisine. Americanized "pizza"
ain't at all the same thing.
Note
$: Industrially produced white rice colored during cooking. Originally via saffron, but
not any more: metallic gold is reportedly cheaper per ounce than saffron nowadays. Expect (healthful) turmeric to be used instead.