La Comida!

Without a doubt, people move to Mexico for several reasons: the beautiful scenery, the gracious people, the pace of life, the less expensive cost of living, and the food.
An old joke is that Mexican food has all the same ingredients. Let's face it. Nachos? It's fried tortilla chips, with meat, cheese or vegetable. Burrito? Tortilla, with meat, cheese or vegetable. Taco? Tortilla, with meat, cheese or vegetable. Gordita, Enchillado....and the list continues.

The Food! La Comida.

It goes without saying that the food in Mexico is anything but your typical “combination plate” Mexican food dinner in the United States. Very, very few restaurants here will serve you chips and salsa when you sit down at your table.

What kind of food is in Mexico? There’s a lot of variety but the most popular type is tacos. 

Tacos

Obviously, tacos. And more tacos. One of the first questions posed by friends here was: “Do you like tacos?” It’s difficult not to.

And across from our apartment, we have two taco restaurants. Well, they’re not really restaurants. They are more people’s homes, who use their inside front area to cook sopes, tacos, quesadillas and gorditas. Of course, like many businesses in Mexico, they choose their hours: Monday to Friday from 8-10. Kinda of. They could be open earlier. Or decide not to open at all. One Sunday, they were open, and we were shocked.

Selecting the right Gordita, Sopes or Taco

And...what kind of stuff is in these tacos? The staples are puerco (pork), eggs, lettuce, onions and cilantro.  Of course avocado, if you want.And homemade salsa--usually verde or rojo--sometimes spicy. Okay, usually spicy. One taco is usually about 15 pesos. One woman, Marina, stands over a hot griddle, flipping the tortillas to perfection with her hands, precariously close to the burning hot iron. Another rotund woman sits, pounding and  flapping out tortillas by hand. This is Jana (pronounced Chana), whose restaurant bears her name. Those are their jobs, and they enjoy flipping the tortillas, talking and pleasing their customers. In Mexico, there is something intrinsic about food service. It’s not about making money, but about completing the job correctly. It’s all about pride.

After a hard day on a grill!

Right next door, there is a small door, Juan stands over a pig. Yes, that’s right. He starts out at 8 p.m.(sometimes) with a pig carcass and starts chopping up the whole pig. He divides it in 3 kinds of cerdo: everything from the pig (uh, that’s everything), only the middle, and then the legs and other not disgusting parts. People say the first part is the most flavorful! But I’ve only tried the last kind, and it was delicious. 2 tacos for about 24 pesos (that’s about $1.22 for both)

Now, Juan is interesting. People line up for hours for these pig tacos and for the show of him chopping, chopping and chopping.. Inside the restaurant (shop, home, whatever?), it is usually silent as people just watch him chop. For this reason, we call him the Taco Nazi--I can imagine someone saying they want chicken instead of pork, and he might scream, “no taco for you.!” 

We talked to him when he opened his restaurant and home  for a Posada and he was so sarcastic. And spoke good English. After that, he always gives us a smile. The Taco Nazi. I just hope George and Elaine don’t wander by.

Street Tacos

We won’t even talk about the street tacos, but let’s. A couple months ago, 2 men were frying up street tacos. Diane and I were starving (okay, only me). We had a couple, as the men used their cart on the street (hence the name: street tacos) to quickly throw down some tortillas, heat them and fill it with 
carne or pollo or pork.
It tasted great, as Diane and I downed the tacos immediately. You can either

The famous "street tacos"

eat them there: they give you a brightly colored plastic plate with plastic wrap over it and place the tacos on that..or you can take them to go. We ate there. The next day, Diane was in miserable pain, and the doctor diagnosed it as a parasite (she nicknamed it Charlie). The doctor advised us not to eat anymore street food, at least until she was better. Fortunately, I didn’t get sick. It might have been the tacos, or not.

Chilaquiles

Imagine Nachos gone wild and spicy. Those are chilaquiles. They are tortilla squares or strips smothered in verde or rojo salsa. But there’s more. We usually add pollo and cheese and top it with crema (uh, cream sauce) and anything else around. There is a franchise (or a lot of stores--it's difficult to tell in Mexico) called ChilaKing, which specializes in Chilaquiles--and tacos, sopes, etc. These particular Chilaquiles were eaten after we had played 2 hours of tennis--an unusual habit to down tortillas, chiles, cheese and pollo right after exercising. But, hey, this is the land of "anything goes." 
Especially with food.

Next: everything else: Sopes, Pozolli, and even non-Mexican food.