Tacos & Churros & Mezcal, Oh My!
By: Jake Potashnick
Tags: Food, Tacos, Mexico, Travel, Restaurant

Every taco mentioned hereafter is built upon two corn tortillas, features no guacamole or sour cream, and is the size of a human palm, unless otherwise mentioned. Great, I’m glad we got that housekeeping out of the way.

My trip to Mexico City was planned for two days as a brief stopover between a week in Oaxaca and two weeks in Cuba. Five hours into day one, I called the airline and pushed my flight to Cuba back one week. I was instantly smitten, enticed by the wafting aromas of trompos on each corner, by the large stand displays with fruits of every color palette, the sacks of cracked concha breads on the backs of motorcycles, the hustle of a city always on the move with limits that stretched beyond the mountains that bordered the valley it resided in.

The trip to Mexico had started in Oaxaca with family, my parents and sister acting as travel companions. This was our first family trip together in almost five years, and my mom had, with much excitement, planned out the entire vacation. Every day in Oaxaca was arranged with different tours, a visit to an archeological site followed by a specific museum, then a cooking class or mescal distillery visit. The trip had been pleasant, if not a touch stressful and frustrating as any family trip normally is. But much of it felt forced. The visits to pottery makers and wood carvers felt set up for tourists, busloads at a time being brought in. The ruins were so trodden over and pillaged by previous visitors that they had been re-ruined. One moment did stand out though. A particularly special afternoon spent two hours outside of Oaxaca, meeting a Zapotec family for lunch.

Our black SUV, the air conditioning blazing, pulled in front of a compound with no sign or number. We were in a small village in the mountains, sandy roads in every direction, with long stretches of desert in every direction. Only the occasional agave plant or cactus popped up on the horizon. The gates opened up into a large courtyard. A clothesline hanging large tapestries ran down the center of the space, large weaving looms were tucked under an outdoor roof to the right side. To the left was a stairwell that led up to an outdoor kitchen that overlooked the compound, covered in just a few pieces of sheet metal for protection from nature. A short woman welcomed us and introduced herself as Ludavina. She was just barely five feet tall with a dark complexion and dressed wrapped in a colorful tapestry, her long gray and black hair tied neatly in a bun.

Ludavina and her metate

We followed Ludavina to the upstairs kitchen, where she would be teaching us how to make two traditional Zapotec dishes. The Zapotec are one of the largest indigenous groups from the Oaxaca region, still residing in communities that dominantly speak their native language. The kitchen was sparse and entirely built up by cinder blocks. Along the far wall was a wood fired stove with four burners, each burner covered with a clay flat top known as a comal. Scattered around the kitchen were numerous metates, a flat mortar and pestle that uses a stone roller to crush ingredients into a paste with repeated wrist motions. Ludavina had four metates, one for making mole sauces, one for mashing chocolate, one for grinding up peppers, and one for grinding masa. The stones are naturally porous, hence the importance of having different ones for different aromatic tasks. They also evolve over time to the grinding motion of the owner, giving each a unique curvature.

Another of Ludavina’s metates

The first priority was to make a mole amarillo for Zapotec tamales. Ludavina started by showing us how to soak a mix of gaujillo and arbol peppers to make them easier to grind, as well as to help remove the seeds and stems. Each wrinkled and warped rehydrated pepper was taken out one at a time and ground on the metate, scraped between the stone roller and stone base, shredding first into fibers and then those fibers breaking down into pulp, a new pepper added only after the previous had been completely desiccated. We hand blended nine peppers this way over thirty minutes. Well, Ludavina did; we mostly stood aside and watched her skilled metate usage.

Ludavina called over to her daughter, twelve years old and standing nearby, who was starting to prepare herbs for a soup we would have later on. She asked for a handful of hoja santa leaves. Our guide and translator Carlos admitted that he could not understand their conversation, as it was spoken in Zapotec and not in Spanish. The daughter brought over the heart shaped leaves. We moved our pepper paste to the mole designated metate, and worked in four of the leaves, which have a flavor somewhere between tarragon and anise. Ludavina asked if I’d like to try my hand at the metate. Sure, how hard could it be?

Embarrassing myself

I grabbed the sides of the stone warped into the shape of a rolling pin and began to crush, sending the pepper and herb mix pouring over the sides, not crushing so much as sliding around. Ludavina had made it look simple, the flick of the wrist on each roll, keeping everything compactly centered in the metate as she smashed. I disgracefully handed back the roller, my head down in shame, my family loudly laughing and mocking.

She added about a pound of freshly ground masa, purchased from someone in the village who took the time to cook the corn with limestone and then grind it to different levels of fineness. She used the smoothest grind, mashing it into the mole mix. The masa would bring both flavor and the thickening agent. This mole was relatively simple, very different from the thirty to fifty ingredient sauces I’d thought of as mole before the trip. Those moles do exist in the Oaxacan culture. Every wet market features stalls hawking pre-ground pastes rich with mixed nuts, dried fruits, and dark chocolate.

But many moles, I learned, are a simple affair, homemade sauces of just five to ten ingredients with more focus and designated purpose for serving with specific types of meat or vegetable. This mole amarillo would have just four ingredients: peppers, hoja santa, masa, and chicken stock, seasoned with heavy amounts of salt. When the masa was incorporated the paste looked like a crimson-red polenta. The polenta was taken over to the stove and poured into a ceramic pot that fit perfectly into one of the stovetop holes, directly over heavily flaming wood. We added chicken stock to create a very thin broth, and then I stirred. At this point my family had checked out, eager only to eat, leaving me behind to assist in the cooking.

Over the course of twenty minutes the mixture started to change, from a thin broth, not completely emulsified, into a cauldron of velvety smooth sauce with the texture of melted chocolate. From time to time Ludavina would come over and stick a finger in to taste, adding a bit more salt or chicken stock. The mole had a glossy shine now, bubbling away, each bubble splattering my apron and the sides of the pot.

Mole bubbling away

“Si. Done.” Ludavina pulled the pot from the stove and brought it over to the worktable. Now was time to assemble the tamales. Tamales normally involve taking a soaked corn leaf, spreading a thick and sticky masa/lard mixture on it with a spoon, putting a small line of filling in the center, and then rolling up the leaf and tying with a string for steaming. Zapotec tamales, normally only prepared in the height of summer for celebrations or weddings, are a more delicate affair. A piece of masa is torn off the larger block and smashed in a tortilla press. The thin round of masa is then delicately draped over a slightly concave palm up left hand. Using the right hand, a large spoonful of the mole is added to the center, filling the palm cavity that the tortilla has sunk into. Shredded chicken (from the making of the broth) is added on top, and then the sides of the masa are folded over so that they just meet in the center, leaving a bulging rectangular tamale, with slightly curved ends on each side, the mole and chicken fully exposed on the long uncovered ends. The folded tamale was now very delicately flipped from the left hand onto the base of a long unsoaked corn husk, which is gently rolled up (careful not to push out the filling), and then wrapped around itself and tucked into the previous folds, to create a self binding wrapper. These are then steamed for thirty minutes. The process was time consuming due to the gossamer masa layer requiring a delicate touch. Many of the thin wrappers tore at the introduction of the mole, or seeped out of their corn husk wraps. Ludavina will make 500 for a celebration. Today we made twenty.

The set up for tamale assembly

Next, we worked on a soup to open our meal. A simpler affair, we simmered zucchini, maize, squash, zucchini flowers, and epazote, an herb that’s also called “rabbit herb” and is traditionally added to black beans with an aroma similar to wild and untamed oregano. As this simmered away together and our tamales steamed, we headed downstairs to learn about the household’s other source of income, tapestry making.

The Zapotec people are beautiful weavers, each member of the family having their own loom and style of design. The father made the largest rugs, while the son and daughter made smaller pieces with simpler designs. He showed how all the colored dying of the wool (which was also cleaned and spun in house) was imprinted with local ingredients. The vibrant reds came from the cochineal beetle that grows on the cactus that we could see in the desert across from the house, shades of yellow from marigold, blues from the indigo flower, and green from foraged mosses. Add different ground rocks or fruit juices for an acidic or basic pH addition, straight out of nature’s chemistry class, and the reaction would then turn each of these color infusions into a completely different color dye that could be used as well.

Ludavina came down to let us know that it was time to eat. We entered a small chapel decorated with figurines and pictures of Jesus. One wall was covered with flowers and paintings to make a shrine. The rest of the room had pictures of the ancestors of the family, old tattered photographs of parents and grandparents weaving and cooking in the same compound that we now sat in. Ludavina and her husband joined us for lunch. The table was set with glasses, cutlery, and a bowl filled with small deep-fried grasshoppers, the local equivalent of salted peanuts, crispy little salty bits that tasted of the meadow. Unlike peanuts, these snacks occasionally lead to a crooked leg stuck in between the teeth.

First came the soup, pungent with a pervasive herbaceous presence, the zucchini flowers tender and delicate, all floating in a sweet broth made from the cobs of the maize, thicker and starchier than the corn breeds back in the United States. Mezcal was poured from crumpled and unlabeled plastic water bottles, the distillate picked up from a brew house that morning.

The tamales came still steaming, the room suddenly brimming with the aroma of sweet and smoky pepper. We carefully unwrapped the tamales from their cornhusks. The thin masa layer was almost painted on, holding in a cauldron of steaming hot mole and chicken, saucing itself with each spoonful. They were absolutely delightful, filling and enriching, so simple and yet so complex, just barely set together like a wobbly crème brulee. They tasted of corn ground just around the corner, of peppers picked and dried in this home, of a chicken raised in the hills and slaughtered for the purpose of this meal.

Ludavina, her husband, and their two kids, lived a difficult life. They were workers, dedicated to keeping alive the crafts of their ancestral people, and passing on knowledge. This type of knowledge often has never been properly written down or compiled, but instead lives in the minds of those who met those who met those who met those who passed it down. They seemed a happy family, satiated by their own deference to tradition.

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In Mexico City I was alone, my family having returned home.

The first person I met was Hugo, a 20-something Brazilian with curly, golden hair, goofy, dark rimmed glasses with frames that dwarfed his face, and a chubby prepubescent look about him. He had a jolly laugh and easy smile, and talked English like he had learned it from Hollywood movies about skaters and surfing, which was how he had. He claimed to be a hit with the ladies, although for next nine days I would only see him get politely rejected again and again. His confidence never wavered.

“How about churros?” I pitched to Hugo as we sat around, escaping the harsh afternoon heat.

“Yeah, dude, absolutely man.”

We were staying around the corner from the original location of El Moro, the most famous churros and hot chocolate shop in Mexico City. Originally opened in 1935, El Moro now has locations in every nook of the city.

The whole shop reeked of the pervasive smell of oil bubbling up from the fryer that lined an entire wall of the kitchen, at least three feet by ten feet. The menu was simple. The churros were available in amounts of three, six, or a dozen, each the thickness of a ballpark hotdog, rolled in cinnamon sugar, and cut with scissors off a fried coil to about a foot long length. To accompany the churros, El Moro offers numerous hot chocolate options. The big decision is between Spanish style and Mexican style. Spanish hot chocolate is essentially warm chocolate pudding, thick and barely sippable, a mug of which is a meal unto itself. Spanish style is perfect for dipping the churros. The Mexican version is a watered down Spanish blend, a frothy beverage that is easily drinkable, more for soaking churros than dipping.

El Moro

We both ordered a platter of six churros and hot chocolate. Hugo ordered the Mexican version, and I ordered the dense Spanish variety. Our order arrived less than two minutes later, the waitress (and from what I could tell they were all waitresses) decked in an all white and blue striped outfit, dropping off our plates and mugs and walking away to serve another table. The café seemed a relentless beast, constantly full with a line out the door. The churros cracked and broke open with a thick and crunchy shell, but with an inside resembling an undercooked cake donut. We could see the kitchen from our seats, watching as viscous dough was put into an extruder and then piped into coils the width of the fryer, starting in the middle and slowly wrapping around to the outer edge. One man’s only job seemed to be using thin metal wires to deftly flip the churros coils and move them farther down the fryer so another batch could be extruded.

Over the next couple days Hugo and I would pair up with some new arrivals. Yael the gorgeous Australian, skinny as a stick but sassy and highly fashionable, who had just had her phone and wallet stolen and was now traveling technologically blind and broke on the way to her sister’s wedding in Tijuana. And Aaron, a hyper-sexualized pansexual Californian jock with all-American good looks and well-kept long brown hair, working on a PhD in Agricultural Sciences. Aaron was infatuated with Yael, and she knew it. Together we saw lucha libre wrestling, drunkenly cheering on masked men as they pretended to assault each other, we visited the pyramids of Teotihuacan, the anthropological museum, and the Casa Azul museum that was the lifelong home of artist Frida Kahlo. These journeys were interesting enough. But I was not eating enough. My days were filled with commutes around the city and jovial drinking and laughing with my new found crew of goofy outcasts, watching Aaron metaphorically chase after Yael with his tongue, each attempted-flirt ending with her promptly putting his tail back between his legs.

I wanted tacos. The desire became an over-encompassing aspect of my daily Mexico City thought process. I’d had eaten a couple so far, on street corners and in small restaurants, each so different, so exciting, so unique, so freaking delicious.

I put together a taco walking tour, an entire day of nothing but walking and eating. I pitched the tour to the crew. Yael was uninterested in participation (as a lifelong vegetarian, it did not appeal), which by default meant Aaron backed out as well. Hugo had already made plans to tour the famous canals.

So I set off alone on a taco trek for the ages. I started at Los Cocuyos, a literal hole in the wall. On a side street in the historical center is a space maybe three feet by three feet built into the side of an apartment building. Two men stood inside shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by a constant crowd of customers. One man spent the whole time on a griddle, toasting tortillas. The other stood in front of a large wooden cutting board and a simmering vat of pork parts. I started with an order of one pig snout and one surtido, an assorted mix of pork shoulder and offal chopped together. Here the tacos were garnished with raw white onion, cilantro, and two bowls with mild and spicy salsas were on offer. The snout filling was a pinguid mix of more fat than meat and bits of soft cartilage that crunched as I chewed. The surtido was dripping and sticky with the gelatinous broth from the vat, an intoxicating taco full of flavorful swine.

I move on to El Huequito, a shop that has been around since 1959, and makes Cocuyos look like a special palace. Essentially a renovated broom closet, the spaces fit one person, a trompo of skewered pork meat roasted on a spit, and two juice machines. I ordered two of their tacos sencillo. The meat skewer was unlike the tacos al pastor trompos I had seen around the rest of the city. This meat was not heavily marinated nor was it a vibrant red with spices; it looked like caramelized pork, crispy brown with dark spots where the flames of the spit licked up from fat drips. The meat was cut off the spit with a long serrated knife, and mixed with diced caramelized onion that sat below the skewer and wallowed in the rendering fat. The tacos were rolled into tight bundles and then served on an orange plastic plate. There was one salsa on offer, which I declined to use. I took one bite and ordered a third taco so it would be ready by the time I finished my second. I knew I had a long way to go in the day, but this was a consequential moment, a notable gastrological masterpiece. The taco was just lightly spiced, with tastes of rendered pork fat and crusty bits of roasted and caramelized meat, the onions adding just enough sweetness to keep it from getting boring and repetitive. The tortillas were more mellow than other shops, less vibrant with corn flavor but still tender and pillowy, allowing the meat to shine as the emphasis. I wanted to stay here for hours, calling off the selfish tour, but I knew I must move on.

El Hueqito

The rolled taco at El Hueqito

Next up was Taqueria Orinoco, by far the largest operation I’d seen, a narrow restaurant filled with tables, three trompos of al pastor in the kitchen. The menu had three options, the pork al pastor, thinly sliced beef, or chicharon (pork skin), any of which could be put on a griddle with cheese to be turned into an open face quesadilla of sorts. I ordered one of each taco, with the beef covered in cheese.

Each taco arrived on one tortilla, not two, providing a less structurally sound dining experience. Maybe they offered one tortilla because the tacos were a touch bigger. Or maybe it was because this operation had gotten too big for its bridges, as my dad would say, and had enough acclaim where it could get away with taco blasphemy.

Tacos Al Pastor is a signature taco of Mexico City, heavily influenced by the Lebanese immigrants that came over in the 19th century. Al pastor is Mexican shawarma, pork layered with an adobo sauce made from achiote mixed with a house spice blend. The meat is sliced very thin before marinating and then is punctured onto a skewer, built up and out, often with a pineapple skewered on top. The meat is sliced off and served with a piece of the roasted pineapple as well as onions and cilantro.

The al pastor taco at Orinoco was light on pepper and heat, and garnished with a fresh unroasted piece of pineapple. The taco was flavorful, but the weakest of the three ordered. The chicharon was braised until soft and had fried skin crumbled on top. This taco was a beautiful creation, savory and glutinous, topped with a thick sliced pickled salsa of red onion and jalapeno. The beef was topped with the golden brown and crispy cheese and topped with cilantro and white onion like the al pastor. The cheese strung along with each bite into long gooey strands, breaking out from underneath the crispy-griddled surface that had formed into a salty cheese cracker. The luscious last taco was possibly a mistake this early in the tour. I could feel the cheese sit in my stomach.

An example of an al pastor trompo

I needed a pick me up, a midday drink, something to help keep my hunger up as I was barely half-way through the crawl. I walked into a bar across from Orinoco, a place where the hipsters of Mexico City would hang out, dark lighting and black bar fixtures. I checked the drink list and noticed Macurichos mezcal, a brewery I had visited just a week before with my Dad outside of Oaxaca. I ordered a glass.

The mezcal tour was to be father and son bonding time. Leaving mom and sister behind, the men embarking on a day of raucous drinking at the distilleries out beyond the border of Oaxaca.

Let’s start with a quick note on mezcal. Mezcal is booze, hooch, the devil’s liquid. If Tequila is Champagne, then mezcal is wine. Mezcal is the mother distillate. Made from one of any number of agave plant varietals, it is a double distilled beverage that is the clear liquor of choice in Mexico (and more recently of hipster bars world-over). Agave can be small (soccer ball with spiky leaves) and huge (truncated palm tree), and every size in between. The plant can be wild, chopped down from the mountains and carted to a local brewery, or farmed on large plots of land directly next to a brewery. Some varietals do not take well to domestic life and must be grown wild. The plants take anywhere from seven to twenty-five years to mature to a point where they are ripe for harvest, and can only be harvested once, as the base of the plant is used to make the wart. The slow maturation rate and inability to reuse a plant makes agave a hot commodity. Most reputable producers have made a vow to plant three agave plants for every one that they cut down, ensuring prosperity for the future of the industry.

The process for artisanal mezcal is relatively constant regardless of agave varietal. The plant is cut out of the ground and the outer spiky leaves are trimmed off and left behind. The hearts of the plant, the massive bulb that sits in the center of the leaves and is ripe with sugars, is chopped into manageable chunks and cooked in an outdoor kiln for seven to ten days, layered with hot coals on the bottom, agave in the middle, and then covered in rocks on top for insulation. The result is a piece of plump smoked fruit, dense with filaments, that smells of roasted sugar cane.

The cooked agave heart is taken to a stone basin for smashing. A horse-drawn stone wheel on a pivot is used for the task. The horse walks in a circle, the stone wheel rotating around and breaking down the thick remaining fibers. The smashed plant is then mixed with water in large open wooden barrels, and fermented for another seven to ten days, depending on the weather. The fermented mash is then double distilled in either wood fired copper stills or clay pot stills. The clay pot stills are a more rarely used process where clay jugs with a spout are set on top of the fire, and a basin of cold water is placed on top to act as a condenser, the alcohol pouring out of the spout. The clay pot method is less commonly used because the pots can only produce in smaller production batches, and the clay has a tendency to break from the temperature differentials that occur during distillation, oftentimes shattering in the middle of a run and ruining an entire batch.

Clay Pot Distillation

The mezcal is either aged in oak barrels or, more commonly, bottled straight from distillation. It is very rare to see Oaxacans drink aged mezcal. Every agave varietal has its own distinct flavors and aromas, and like wine grapes, they are appreciated for their nuanced differences. To age the mezcal or poorly cook it in the kiln can give the beverage too much smokiness, which overshadows the distinct qualities and terroir of the agave being used. Artisanal mezcal, as it was described on my first day in Oaxaca, is like great natural wine, a testament and ode to the craftsmanship of the brewer and the land around them. Every bottle has a batch and bottle number on it, as well as the name of the brewer, as no batch will ever truly taste alike.

My father and I were taken to two distilleries, but found that they both were closed or doing the bare minimum due to our timing just after the New Years holiday. We were driving back through Matatlan, a regional hotbed of mezcal brewing activity, when our driver saw smoke drifting out of the chimney of a compound on the side of the road. We pulled over. The location was not an idyllic romantic factory out in the mountains. We were on a busy street lined with poorly stocked grocery and liquor stores, acting as a main pit stop drag along an important highway leading to Oaxaca. There was a large wall that hid the entire property from the road with a buzzer on the door that read ‘Macurichos’. We buzzed and waited. A small lady cracked open the gate. Our guide Felix asked if we could have a tasting. She closed the gate. We heard voices behind the door. The gates glided open.

The compound was not large, but was tightly organized. Along the right side sat a long wooden table for hosting tastings. Past the table was the kiln dug deep into the earth and filled with recently uncovered roasted agave hearts, their caramelized aroma filling the air. On the left were six fermentation barrels, a row of four clay pot stills, and four copper pot stills. Between the stills and the barrels was a smashing area with a horse attached by harness but not currently walking. The operation was in full swing, five men moved around tasting from the stills and adjusting fire wood temperatures beneath them, shoveling smashed agave into barrels, and shooing the pet peacock away from the sweet treat in the kiln.

The lady went into the attached house to find Gonzalo, the head of the family who operates Macurichos (which was started by his father). We wandered around as we waited. A worker handed us a piece of the just kilned agave heart, explaining the variety to be tobala, one of the smallest wild varieties. The agave tasted of a mix between roasted pineapple and sugarcane, tasting little of smoke and more of complex caramelized sugars that seeped out over our hands as a warm sticky thick syrup. The smoke flavor resided on the surface, not penetrating the tough fibers that made up the plant itself. We chewed until the flavor had dissipated and then spit out the fibers into one of the fires beneath the stills.

Mezcal fermentation tank

Next we walked over to the fermentation tanks, filled with a mix of the smashed kilned fruit and water. Each tank had been filled the day before and was already bubbling away like soda water, the yeast eating at the sugars, smelling of sourdough bread and dark rum. We walked over to the copper stills, flowing heavily with a clear liquid. Felix explained that this was a second distillation, the final distillation, and was roughly 70% alcohol before being cut for bottling. We were handed a hollowed out and dried gourd and told to sip some. We held the gourds beneath the trickling stream and took a couple of tablespoons each. Seventy percent mezcal is a shock to the senses. Spicy like a pepper, my tongue was censored anesthetized, but the aromas that drifted through the back of my palate and up into my nostrils were of burnt citrus and the perfume of a grassy field on fire. A man approached behind us and introduced himself as Gonzalo. He showed us to a table and pulled down a series of bottles for tasting.

“We produce only 1,200 bottles a month. We are a tiny operation.” Gonzalo’s English was practiced, but understandable. He dressed like a cowboy, in a dark purple button down, tight black jeans, and tall black boots, his jet-black hair slicked to one side. “We are the only distillery in Matatlan who still use the clay pots.”

He sets three bottles in front of us, three different agave varieties, each distilled twice in the clay pots, and then cut down to 48% alcohol. “We are on the menu at Pujol and El Cellar de Can Roca,” Gonzalo bragged, talking of two of the most renowned restaurants in the world. He is a proud man, turning a small operation from his father into an established brand in the high end sector of mezcal, every bottle labeled “Ancestrale,” a legal designation only put on bottles that followed strict rules that range from the source of the agave to the minimal use of modern equipment or tools for a mezcal’s production.

Each of the three samples was strikingly different. The first was tobala, the same variety that we just tried from the kiln, a small wild plant that takes over twenty years to be ready for harvest. There’s no way of getting around the fact that mezcal is almost 50% alcohol, there is always going to be a touch of gasoline burn to the aroma and taste. These mezcals though were bounteous with flavor associations. The tobala smelled of grass and black liquorices, and had a quickly dissipating finish on the palate. The madre cuish, a massive plant that takes far less time to mature, had more notes of corn and pepper, like a distilled elote. The last cup was of a variety called tepextate, a fifteen-year maturation plant that sits in size between the other two. This abundant flavor profile was ripe with grilled stone fruit and limestone, rich in minerals, perfect for sipping chilled on the porch during a blazing summer day.

We purchased a couple of bottles and prepared to head back to the car. Gonzalo stopped us near the door and asked to show us one more thing. He walked us to a shed next to the house and unlocked the door. Inside were hundreds of ten gallon plastic barrels, each filled with mezcal and labeled with an agave variety, month and year, style of distillation, and how many liters were produced.

“These are my babies. Every batch I’ve produced since taking over, so I can come and sample and remember. Maybe one day I’ll even bottle and sell all of this.” To Gonzalo this was a shed full of memories of errors and tampering and hard earned knowledge. He was showing us the private collection in an attempt to make it clear that though the mezcal making process before us had seemed simple, there was nothing easy about the years of tinkering and testing that Gonzalo had undergone in his struggle to make Macurichos renowned. We thanked him and departed, our heads full of distilled fog, ready to nap on the long car ride back.

Gonzalo’s private collection

Back on my taco tour I finished sipping a glass of tobala at the hipster bar and I headed to the next taco shop. Tacos Don Juan is a corner shop in the elitist Condesa neighborhood. The shop is dressed up like a crummy Spanish tapas bar, with a tacky faded tile bar wrapping around the wall and no seats. Men and women eating tacos spilled onto the street, each holding a plate and minding their own business, trying not to drip juice on their business clothes before returning back to work. Don Juan is a famous spot in the Mexico City taco scene, not known for their specialization so much as their jack of all trades capabilities, built into what used to be a small butcher shop owned by the father (Juan) of the current chef/owner (Gerardo). They are featured in numerous guidebooks and food tour recommendations, which made it a hesitant must-stop.

The menu was written on a whiteboard, a daily rotation, which at my count had forty-three taco options the day of my visit. I ordered one steak and one chicharron taco, seeking to compare to Orinoco. The steak came in a thick brown sauce while the chicharon was braised until soft and flabby and served straight up. They both were topped with speckled orange rice. I added some pickled white onions out of a bowl next to the cashier to the chicharon. Don Juan was the only stop of the day where I did not finish the tacos. They were both soggy and wet, the meat cooked in too much sauce, and the rice tasting like it had been microwaved in a packet. Maybe I ordered wrong or maybe it was an off day. I want to give Don Juan the benefit of the doubt.

Two al pastor stops were lined up next, starting at Los Parados established in 1965. The trompo sat outside so anyone passing by could grab a quick taco. The pork was crusty and golden over the subtle red hue, the pineapple warm and juicy from the roasting, covered in a heavy handed pinch of cilantro. Here was another superlative taco, one that I would return for at a moment’s notice. Every component of the taco could be tasted in each bite. Each mouthful walked the fine line of equally representing the gentle adobo seasoning, the tender and explosive pineapple, and a tortilla that emitted the wafting aroma of recently ground corn. I sipped a large horchata on the side. The frothy spiced rice milk helped to settle all that I had consumed so far. Again, I reluctantly moved on.

Next was El Kalifa, a chain famous for their al pastor that came recommended by numerous friends in Mexico City. Unlike Los Parados and its one-foot tall trompo operated by one man, El Kalifa has two towering trompos operated by a small army in a Ford style assembly line. At El Kalifa there was no color on the meat from cooking. The meat was neon orange, heavily marinated and teeming with pepper. The taco was dressed with three thin slices of raw pineapple, the meat glued together into a mosaic of orange and white by the thick slathering of marinade. The taco was juicy and flavorful, with more heat and kick, but also more sweetness and less of the meaty savoriness that the great joints had satisfied in their contributions. El Khalifa would be late night post-bar satisfactory, but was late afternoon mediocre compared to other available options.

I had one more planned stop, at this point unsure if I could eat, or even stare down, one more taco. I would finish at La Casa de Los Lechonitos al Horno, a spot renowned for their roasted suckling pig. After entering the shop, overwhelmed by the smell of pork fat wafting off a massive puffed chicharon sitting under a heat lamb in the window, seeing the shredded and chopped pork sitting on a wooden cutting board like at an American BBQ restaurant, only then was it that I admitted defeat. I ordered a torta to go, a sandwich on a white roll topped with a heavy handful of both shredded meat and crumbled puffed skin, plus lettuce and two types of salsa. I would eat it for dinner that night.

Two hours later, I unwrapped the bag and found white butcher paper soaked through with fat and drippings. The sandwich bread was steeped in a blend of juices and salsa. I used a fork and knife to shred it into a bread and meat salad, each bite a piece of luxury, tender little nuggets of pork doused in a ripping hot green salsa that had my lips numb and swelling and my forehead glazed in beads of sweat.

After eating the torta I headed to the upstairs bar and ran into Hugo, Yael, and Aaron. They looked sunburned and exhausted from a boat trip on the canal. “How was the tour?” they asked together.

“I never need to eat a taco again.” I laughed.

At that moment a platter of tacos arrived from the bar kitchen and was set down on our table, ordered just before I arrived.

“Oh. So you don’t want one?” asked Yael.

“Alright, just one more won’t hurt.”