I just tried this last night for the first time — yum! We were in downtown San Jose CA, at Christmas in the Park, and street vendors were selling street food. We had tacos and bacon-wrapped hot dogs for dinner, with elotes and esquites too. Inexpensive and yummy!
Elotes are boiled corn on the cob on a stick, and the cob is slathered with butter & mayonnaise, and dusted with grated cotija cheese (looks like grated parmesan), some cayenne pepper, and a little salt and lime juice. It looked interesting so I wanted to try it, and it tasted great! A little messy to eat that way, but not too messy. It wasn’t too spicy, I don’t like very spicy food, and on a chilly night the cayenne warmth was soothing. Here is a recipe I found: Easy Elote Mexican-Style Street Corn Authentic Recipe | So Good Blog. Esquites are the same thing, except the corn is first cut off of the cob, the ingredients are mixed and it’s served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon.
It was a nice surprise of a meal on the sidewalk, kind of like the first time I tried roasted chestnuts on a snowy winter day in New York City.
Cool. Anything else you can recommend, things that aren’t the typical Mexican food? What I mean by that, since elotes may be considered typical, is for things that aren’t overly mainstream. Good stuff like elotes.
I’m not sure how mainstream or not they are, but tacos al pastor are always a delicious treat. They come to Mexico via the Lebanese community. They are pork tacos cooked on a spit in the manner of a doner kebab or gyros. Often, the spit is crowned with a big slice of pineapple, too. Here is what it looks like.
These are delicious, with or without the pineapple. They do have to be cooked on a spit, though. There’s a number of places here where I’ve had griddled al pastor, and it’s nowhere near the same. It’d be like griddling a gyros.
Another one of my favorites is the torta ahogada. The name translates to “drowned sandwich.” It’s usually comprised of shredded pork on a roll (either a soft bolillo roll or a firmer sourdough type of roll called a birote saldado) with pickled red onions. It is then served dunked and served with chile sauce. Here’s what it looks like.
Oh, as for street food, also it’s nice to find tacos de canasta (basket tacos). Around here, some of the tamale folks also sell tacos de canasta. They are essentially tacos that are made ahead of time, coated with a bit of chile sauce, and wrapped in paper and stuffed in a basket for sale. They are sloppy tacos that end up being steamed from spending time in a basket (or, these days, more like a Coleman cooler.) If you watch this video from that time stamp, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Love these things!