What kind of place you are standing in

Mexico City sells cooked food from three formats that look similar from the pavement and behave very differently. A taqueria is a counter built around one or two cooking surfaces, selling tacos by the piece, usually with a standing bar and a salsa tray. A torta shop is a sandwich counter: the same meats go into a bread roll, ordered one at a time, and the pricing is per torta rather than per piece. A puesto is a street stall, often a single specialism such as guisados, carnitas on a Sunday, or tacos de canasta in the morning, with no seating at all.

Choose by what you want to order: tacos by the piece, a torta in a bread roll, or a particular filling at a specialist stall. Check the posted hours of the place you intend to visit; a cooking style does not establish its opening time.

Al pastor, the trompo, and where it came from

Al pastor is pork marinated in chilli and achiote, stacked on a vertical rotisserie called a trompo, and shaved off in thin slices onto a small corn tortilla, usually with a sliver of pineapple from the top of the spit. The technique is Middle Eastern in origin and arrived in Mexico with migration rather than being invented from nothing. The Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, discussing Lebanese influence on Mexican cooking, describes tacos al pastor as the most Arab-Mexican dish there is and dates the relevant wave of Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian migration to the last third of the 19th century, when arriving families opened small restaurants, ingredient shops and bakeries.

That history explains the cooking equipment; it does not tell you when a particular shop opens or establish whether its food is safe. Use the menu and ask what is available before ordering.

The meat vocabulary that actually appears on boards

Most Mexico City taquerias run a short, fixed list, and knowing five words covers the great majority of orders.

  • Pastor: spit-roasted marinated pork, cut to order, usually with pineapple.
  • Suadero: beef from between the belly and the leg, cooked slowly in fat on a flat comal until soft, with a mild, rich flavour and no crust.
  • Longaniza: a seasoned, coarse pork sausage, cooked on the same comal, spicier and darker than suadero.
  • Campechano: a deliberate mix, most often suadero plus longaniza or chorizo, ordered when you want both textures in one taco.
  • Bistec: chopped grilled beef steak, plainer than the others and a safe first order.

Guisado stands work on a different logic: instead of these cuts, they hold six to twelve stewed fillings in pots, from chicharron in green salsa to rajas with cream, and you order by pointing and naming.

Ordering by count, and the two phrases that matter

You order tacos by number and meat, in that order, and the standard sentence is short. "Tres de suadero, por favor" is a complete order for three suadero tacos. Adding "y dos de pastor" extends it. You do not order a portion, a plate or a set.

Two modifiers cover nearly everything you will want to say. Con todo means dress them the house way, which in Mexico City almost always means chopped white onion and coriander, and at an al pastor stand a piece of pineapple. Sin cebolla removes the onion; sin cilantro removes the coriander, which is worth knowing if you are one of the people to whom coriander tastes of soap. If you say nothing at all, most taqueros will dress them con todo by default and hand you the salsa yourself.

Tortillas are corn unless you say otherwise. Ask for doble if you want two tortillas under a heavy filling so it does not tear, or de harina if the stand offers flour tortillas, which is more common with gringas and quesadillas than with standard tacos.

Salsa etiquette and how hot things actually are

Salsa at a taqueria is self-service and it is yours to control, which also means nobody will warn you. A typical tray holds a red salsa, a green salsa, sliced or grilled limes, radish, and often pickled onion or grilled spring onions. There is no reliable relationship between colour and heat: a green tomatillo salsa can be considerably hotter than the red one at the same stand, and habanero-based salsas, more common at Yucatecan counters, sit far above both.

The workable method is to put a small amount on the edge of your plate rather than on the taco, taste it, then dress properly. Use the serving spoon and return it to its own bowl; dipping a taco directly into the communal salsa is the one clear breach of etiquette at a shared counter. Lime goes on last.

Paying: you tell them what you ate

At most Mexico City taquerias you are not given a bill during the meal. You eat, then you say how many tacos of which meat you had, and the cashier or the taquero totals it. The honesty system is the norm, and the correct behaviour is to count accurately, including anything you added mid-meal. The phrase is "La cuenta, por favor," followed by your own tally if they ask.

Assume cash in Mexican pesos. Card terminals exist, particularly at larger sit-down taquerias in Roma, Condesa and Polanco, but a street counter or a small neighbourhood stand may take cash only, and small notes are much easier to break than large ones. Tipping at a standing counter is not expected in the way it is at a table-service restaurant, though rounding up or leaving loose change in the jar is common.

Your first order, in practice

At a counter serving the filling you want, stand where you can see the cooking surface, and open with three tacos of one meat rather than a spread. Say the number, say the meat, say con todo or name what you want left out. Dress the first one lightly, taste both salsas on the edge of your plate, then order the second round with what you have learned. Keep a running count in your head, because you will be asked for it.

What this guide does not cover

Ordering at Mexico City taquerias, guisado stands and street puestos is the whole scope of this article. It does not name or rank specific establishments, and it does not cover prices, which vary by neighbourhood, by meat and over time and are posted at the counter. It also does not cover market fonda meals, which run on a fixed-price sequence rather than per-piece ordering, or regional taco traditions from elsewhere in Mexico that appear here in adapted form.