i personally looooove them!
it tastes better if done with “Bolillo” instead of a french baguette.

yumm..

As for concerns about the food safety, I’m afraid Americans are too obsessed with cleanliness and germs. Some of which, I’m embarrassed to admit, has rubbed off on me. I remember I used to eat most of this street food as a kid and aside from occasional stomach problems, I was perfectly fine. I think, in fact, eating this food has made my body more resistant to spices and other things not easily found in American cuisine. Furthermore, I’d take real sugar and organic produce over high fructose corn syrup and genetically-engineered everything.
I shall check the rest of the articles on this beautiful city.

Thanks for the great tour and photos.

Kathleen

It will never tast the same, and the variety is still lacking. In my family, we say the street dirt and typhoid is part of the flavor I’ve never had home-prepared esquites as tasty as the ones I buy in the street. I’ve never had typhoid, either, but I don’t eat in any stand.

The Mexican versions of hamburgers and hot dogs are also really tasty. My favorites are hamburguesas al carbón, with a lot of chile verde and pineapple.

By the way, I’m chilanga and I’ve never had a nana taco. Unfortuntely, I suffer from the character flaw you mention: I always order maciza.

there’s one thing i’d have to disagree with though. david lida writes that there exists no “indigenous chilango cuisine”. i think there actually is: in the late 19th/early 20th century restaurants like el prendes or bellinghausen championed it. it was a result of the confluence of spanish, french, prehispanic cooking techniques –confit, puchero, comal roasting for example– and ingredients from all over such as gusanos de maguey & escamoles (ant larvae), langostinos/acamayas/crayfish, pork, beef. yes, it’s mestizo cuisine but one that’s also unmistakeably chilango. el prendes disappeared some years ago but its influence lives on.

(i used to go there as a kid. i’d always have the filete chemita, another chilango classic, whose salsa was beautiful and glossy. its “secret” ingredient: sugar. no current restaurant prepares it as the original prendes did; at least not to me or to that part reality-part fiction my memory is.)

mr lida is of course right in that “if there’s a municipal dish, it would have to be tacos al pastor”. but we should also consider: chilango tortas, which are not the same as poblano or toluqueño tortas –whenever you’re in mexico city try the tortas de pavo at la casa del pavo or the tortas de adobo next door at lonchería la rambla–; tacos de suadero (cut from the brisket of beef) cooked in pork lard –confit de suadero, probably?– and tacos de cochinada, a misterious mix of chicharrón, bistec, and the greasy remains of suadero “confit”. now, that’s chilango.

best regards,

alonso ruvalcaba