Tacos al pastor in Mexico City: what to order and avoid

Overview

Tacos al pastor are cut from the trompo — Spanish for a spinning top: a vertical spit stacked with thin sheets of pork that have spent hours in a brick-red adobo of dried chillies, spices and usually achiote, pressed into an inverted cone, crowned with a pineapple and roasted as it slowly turns. The taquero shaves the crisped outer layer straight onto small corn tortillas, a few strokes per taco. The design is the point: only the surface of the cone is ever finished, so what reaches the tortilla is charred at the edge and juicy just behind it — but only when it is carved to order from a working, turning spit, which is the fact everything in “what to avoid” hangs on.

The family tree is documented in outline. Lebanese immigrants brought the vertical-spit shawarma to Mexico around the turn of the twentieth century; in Puebla it became the taco árabe — spit-roast meat without the chile marinade, folded into a soft flatbread called pan árabe. When the idea reached the capital in the 1950s it was remade in local materials: pork instead of lamb, the chilli-and-achiote adobo instead of the older seasoning, corn tortilla instead of flatbread. The name — “shepherd-style” — is usually read as a fossil of the lamb it no longer contains, though like most things about this dish, the name’s etymology is argued. Which taquería did it first is claimed by rivals and unprovable, so treat every “birthplace of al pastor” sign as marketing, because that is what it is.

The pineapple is the dish’s own small controversy. Nobody documented who first put the fruit on the spit, more than one place claims the idea, and purists who refuse it exist and are indulged. In its home city, though, the default is yes: the piña roasts on top of the cone, and a sliver lands in the taco unless you decline. What is not in dispute is the hour. Al pastor is nocturnal — the cone is stacked in the afternoon, hits its stride after dark, and the crowds at the good stands are thickest long after dinner. The dish belongs to the end of the night, and the city treats it that way.

What to order

The transaction is standing, fast and pleasantly loud. The words:

• tacos al pastor — the standard. The counter question is ¿con todo? — “with everything”: chopped onion, cilantro and the pineapple. The correct answer is yes. Salsas — usually a red and a green — and halved limes sit on the counter, and dressing the taco is your job, not the taquero’s.
• gringa — the same meat with melted cheese in a flour tortilla, folded over: richer, closer to a quesadilla, usually the dearest thing at the stand and worth ordering once.
• taco árabe — where you see it offered, it is the ancestor from Puebla: milder meat in its soft flatbread. A history lesson you can eat.

Tacos are small — two or three bites — so the rhythm is to order a few, eat, and order again rather than commit to a plateful. At most street stands there is no ticket: you keep your own count and settle up when you are done.

What marks a visitor, harmlessly: asking for a fork, and asking for flour tortillas outside a gringa. Eating standing at the counter, taco in one hand and lime in the other, is the form.

What to avoid

The main substitution sold under the name is al pastor without a trompo: marinated pork chopped and finished on a flat grill. It is a perfectly legitimate taco; it is not this one, because the layered crisp-and-juicy texture only comes off the turning cone. The check costs nothing, since the trompo is theatre and always in sight. No visible spit, no al pastor. A spit that stands dark and still, with a tray of pre-shaved meat drying beside the grill, is the same substitution in slow motion.

Turnover is the other test. The dish depends on the knife working constantly: at a busy stand nothing sits, while at a slow one the outer layer overcooks as the cone waits. Between two stands, choose the one with the crowd and the constantly moving blade — the queue is short, because the serving is fast.

The tourist-zone tells are the universal ones wearing a sombrero: laminated photo menus, someone waving you in, and al pastor at several times the going rate within sight of the biggest monuments. The good stands advertise with smoke, smell and a huddle of locals, and need nothing else.

Practicalities

At an ordinary taquería a taco al pastor runs roughly 15 to 30 pesos, and a standing dinner of five or six tacos with a bottled drink lands around 100 to 200 pesos; a gringa costs a few tacos’ worth on its own. Near the major sights prices can run well above that without the food improving.

The natural window is the evening onward, and the later the livelier — weekend nights latest of all. Lunchtime al pastor exists, but the dish’s own hour is after dark, when the cone is fresh, the turnover is fast and the stand is doing the one thing it exists to do.

Portions being small is a feature: the right unit of appetite is “a few more than you think”, ordered in instalments, with the count settled at the end. The last taco of the night, eaten standing on a pavement in the smoke of the trompo, is the version of this dish everything else is measured against.