When they put this plate in front of me, I almost stopped breathing for a moment. That red sauce, the casually curled corn tortillas, those slow-simmered cubes of pork. It looked so good.
My patience wore thin as I hovered the camera above the plate, waiting for it to feel like the right shot, so I could dig in. Danny didn’t wait. He dug in immediately. Just one more shot….
There. Fork ready.
These are tacos al pastor, as served at the Mexican restaurant on our island. We waited months to go, because we had heard the little place had gone entirely Tex-Mex, dumbing down the spices to make the Americans feel more at home. However, the first time I went, I was impressed. My friend Tara said her enchiladas nopales were the best she had ever eaten. Danny and I went back, with another friend, and ate another good meal.
And then these tacos al pastor.
Now, I have a feeling these aren’t entirely authentic, even though I told our waiter (the one in the place who spoke the most English), “Please make them for me the way you would eat them, okay?” His eyes grew excited at that. Clearly, he loves these tacos too.
However, traditional tacos al pastor, which originated in Mexico City, contain pork that is cooked shawarma style. Marinated for days with spices, herbs, and chili peppers, the pork cooks slowly, with a fresh pineapple ring on top of the meat. (Apparently, an enzyme in the protein breaks down the meat, which makes the final tacos insanely tender.) With all the immigrants to Mexico City, perhaps some Mexican chefs adapted the method of cooking meat slowly, hanging upside down on a rotisserie from the Lebanese chefs in town. Now, this cooking practice is firmly entrenched in the culture of Mexico City.
Everyone has a different recipe for how to prepare and cook it, of course. There is no one right way. This is the stuff of heated food arguments, after all. Rick Bayless has a recipe for a shortcut method for tacos al pastor (in case you don’t have a vertical rotisserie and a meat hook in your kitchen). This one from Bon Appetit looks great to me. And I’m guessing that these guidelines from Mex Grocer are probably the closest to Mexico City we will experience here.
I’m pretty sure our local Mexican restaurant did not hang their pork from a rotiserrie. This meat came in cubes, instead of shaved-off shreds of tenderness. However, I didn’t care. The flavoring was spicy and fruity, the meat nearly fell apart at first bite, and I could not stop eating them.
Good enough for me.
Have you eaten good tacos al pastor? Where? When? And do you have a recipe you’d like to share? We’d love to see it.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
The very best tacos al pastor I’ve ever eaten were at El Tizoncito in Mexico DF — they claim to have invented them! — but Tacubaya in Berkeley makes good ones, as does El Grullo truck in Oakland.
Here’s a photo from Mexico City
http://www.kodakgallery.com/imaging-site/services/doc/1852:360342216303/jpeg/BG
yumm!
Now wait just a minute, my dear… don’t go trashing Tex-Mex food! Tex-Mex is a darn good legitimate cuisine (and is rightly beloved in the Southwest)! Even wikipedia will tell you so:
Tex-Mex cuisine originated hundreds of years ago when Spanish/Mexican recipes combined with Anglo fare. “Tex-Mex” first entered the English language as a nickname for the Texas-Mexican Railway, chartered in southern Texas in 1875.[4]
…..
In the mission era, Spanish and Mexican Indian foods were combined in Texas as in other parts of the Northern Frontier of New Spain.[6] However, the cuisine that would come to be called Tex-Mex actually originated with Tejanos (Texans of Hispanic descent) as a hybrid of Spanish and native Mexican foods when Texas was part of New Spain and later Mexico.
Otherwise, yum.
These look fantastic, I love tacos, I don’t care what’s in them I love them no matter what. Thank you for including links to a few recipes, I can’t wait to try these at home.
tere’s nothing wrong with tex-mex fod, but what it’s mexican it’s mexican, and that is that! BTW this looks delicious, and I’m jealous, cheers from london
There’s a restaurant in Kansas City, Kansas called El Camino Real that has delicious tacos al pastor. A friend of mine who’s originally from Mexico City and now lives in Las Vegas always makes a point of going to El Camino Real for lunch when he’s in KC because he says they’re the best he knows of.
Oh My Goodness,
you don’t even know how hard it is to find a real Mexican restaurant in Texas. Tex-Mex is Ok, but sometimes… you just need the real thing.
Sounds like you have a winner there in Washington. My goodness, I haven’t had good Tacos since my cousin’s wedding (in L.A.) where her brother in law catered the whole thing with his taco stand. YUM!
In Merida, Mexico, I spent an evening at a restaurant watching a man shave pastor off a spit into tortillas then flit-flit-flit his knife over the pineapple on top, douse the whole thing with green sauce, and hand them to one hungry customer after another. I was a vegetarian then, but I was tempted.
I’m no longer a vegetarian, and I can say that Curras, in Austin, Texas, has fantastic tacos al pastor.
Tacos al pastor are my obsession. The best are clearly found in Mexico City, but more and more you can find then in the US. The key is to look for a spit of stacked pork loins roasting outside. They also must have pineapple slices, which often sits atop the giant spit of meat. On my blog I write a lot about them. In Denver, Taco Veloz, Los Carboncitos and Taco Mex all have excellent and authentic tacos al pastor.