True Mexican Food Is Cooked and Eaten on the Street
True Mexican Food Is Cooked and Eaten on the Street
Tacos Acorazados in Mexico
Parking on the side of the road is always a dangerous stunt, but even more so in Mexico, where vehicular laws don’t exist—or at least, no one seems to respect them. But more often than not, there are also excellent places to eat lining Mexican highways, making the adventurous meal worth the risk.
Like this little, nameless, spot, located on the side of the road that goes from Mexico City to Cuautla. It has a small but delicious menu that offers, among other things, pancita, a super spicy stew made with cow’s stomach that’s great for tequila hangovers; cecina, salted beef; rabbit; and quesadillas. And on this particular Saturday, when I decided to breakfast there, the place was crowded.
Even though they had people waiting, standing under the unforgiving sun of the Mexican summer, the two women preparing the food on the comal, a traditional, pre-Hispanic frying pan, seemed in no hurry. So, while I waited for my quesadilla and my taco acorazado—a big taco made in a blue tortilla and filled with cecina, mashed potatoes, and nopales—I took out my camera and started to shoot.
The first thing you notice after pulling off the highway here is the great view. On one side—too far away for my camera to take in all of its beauty, but too close if there were an eruption—was the Popocatepetl volcano. On the other side was the rail of an old, forgotten train. Both provided the perfect backdrop for this tiny restaurant. It would never survive in fancy surroundings, but that’s what makes it so Mexican: its stubbornness to survive in a harsh environment, halfway between illegality and opportunism.
As my cecina was cooked and families ate their own breakfasts and drank hot coffee, I realized that food in Mexico is always an opportunity, a safe-conduct to hope. In a country where work is often unavailable, incomes are getting lower and lower, and injustice is our daily bread, there’s one thing almost every Mexican can count on: true Mexican food is cooked and eaten on the street, at the side of the road, by our amazingly talented citizens.