The Best Taco (in my opinion)
Tortilla Stack #1
Hello friends! Welcome to the “Tortilla Stack,” a series of essays about the wonderful world of Mexican Cuisine. Join me, a self-proclaimed taconnoisseur, on a tour that will feed your curiosity and most likely make you drool. Sorry, not sorry.
The precursor to this series was Quintessential Quesadillas, in which I discussed my love for this comfort food. I hope you enjoy it!
Tacos de trompo are my favorite kind of taco. Growing up in Mexico, this delicacy was available only on the weekends. Around 7:00 PM (we eat dinner late), you could start smelling the charcoal fire, signaling that tacos would be ready within the hour. My dad would walk to the taco stand in our neighborhood and get a few orders of tacos. Each order has five tacos, grilled onions, and something similar to a fingerling potato. Limes, onion, cilantro, and salsas were part of the equation as well.
Each taco would have two slightly fried five-inch tortillas topped with thinly sliced, bright red pork meat. As a kid, I would split the pile of meat between the two tortillas and make two tacos out of one and add a splash of lime, salt, onion, cilantro, and salsa. My mouth is watering just thinking about this. This taco has it all: salt, fat, acid, heat. It’s bliss at first bite.
While I studied abroad in Finland, the closest thing I could find was the Donner Kebab from this hole-in-the-wall restaurant operated by a few Turkish dudes. However, I never made the connection between the kebab and the taco de trompo, or taco al pastor, if you’re in Mexico City. I started looking into the history, and I felt like someone who looks at their ancestry. It turns out tacos de trompo is a direct descendant of the kebab and shawarma. But how did this happen? Well, let me tell you.
In 1892, Lebanese immigrants arrived in Veracruz, Mexico and Lebanese communities started forming across Mexico. Some famous Lebanese Mexicans you may have heard of are Salma Hayek and Carlos Slim Helú.
In the 1930s, Zayas Galeana, an Iraqi Lebanese in Puebla, Mexico, tried to sell kebabs to support his family. Lamb meat was expensive and not readily available, so he used pork instead. Flour tortillas replaced pita bread. Yogurt and a chipotle salsa completed Zayas's new creation: tacos árabes (Arab tacos).
In 1966, 80 miles away from Puebla in Mexico City, Concepción “Conchita” Cervantes, a widow, needed to start a business that paid more than her 9-to-5 job as a secretary. She wanted to sell shawarma but faced the same obstacle Zayas did. She tinkered with achiote (annatto), chiles, pineapple, oregano, and other Lebanese spices to create what we now call adobo. Shawarma ovens are usually horizontal, but the place she could afford to rent was so small that a vertical one made more sense. No gas connection? No problem, the pile of marinated pork, aptly named “trompo” because it looks like a toy top, was cooked over a charcoal fire. The restaurant Conchita started almost sixty years ago, El Tizoncito, is still going strong.
The main difference between tacos al pastor (Mexico City) and tacos de trompo (Northern Mexico) would be the addition/omission of pineapple. It’s common to have a pineapple on top of the top, and skilled taqueros will flick their knives to cut a small chunk of pineapple that (almost always) lands on the taco effortlessly. Both are delicious.
Two American girls who lived in Mexico City in the late 1960s loved going to El Tizoncito. However, they would request some modifications to the otherwise perfect taco. They asked for a flour tortilla instead of corn, and they would add cheese to their tacos. Legend says they were there so frequently that other patrons started noticing what these girls were ordering and started asking for what the gringas were having. So, if you order a gringa, you’ll get a flour tortilla with melted cheese and pork; this is also delicious.
And that’s how my favorite kind of taco came to be. A widow who needed to make ends meet, a little entrepreneurial spirit, and lots of thinly sliced pork later, we have this treasure of Mexican gastronomy.
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Sobremesa
Have you ever had tacos al pastor/tacos de trompo?
What’s the best taco you’ve ever had?
Green or red salsa?
adobada tacos and baja style fish tacos done right are some of my favorites. The correct color of salsa is always the house recommendation.
I never knew that tacos al pastor had another name! Thanks for sharing about their Lebanese origin. I never knew there was a Lebanese community in Mexico!