Sí, Con Todo

In Mexico City, the city eats standing up

This week’s piece is by Mandy Sham, a journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in Suitcase, GQ, National Geographic, and Travel + Leisure (@peach.punk). I gave her free rein to write about whatever she wanted for you all, and she chose the thing that tells you the most about a place — where and how its people eat. It also makes me incredibly hungry. All words and photographs are hers.

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This taco is a symphony, even before it arrives.

A resounding “Pásele, pásele!” cuts through the urgency of foot traffic; through the crack and spit of hot oil. I’m at the counter—thinking of the recipes, like culinary sheet music, that travelled through a chain of people I’ll never meet. Then comes the taquero’s movement, where that legacy is not only expressed but embodied. Wielding his knife, he slices meat from the trompo and catches it in one swift arc—followed by a near-instantaneous flourish of onion and cilantro.

Chef’s kiss? Yes indeed—the most fiery, passionate kind. Even without a single bite taken, the tightly choreographed rhythms of this stall are enough to know this will be a memorable meal. The plastic-wrapped plate moves from the taquero’s hands to mine. All of it took ten seconds. But the ten seconds took a lifetime.

Mexico City, a city of twenty-two million people, is sustained every day by this roadside moment. Street food, in its countless iterations, feeds workers in construction and cubicles alike. It’s the engine that keeps North America’s largest metropolitan area running. There’s a circadian rhythm to it, too—tethering the city’s inhabitants to the ebb and flow of any given day. The hearty morning’s chilaquiles-stuffed tortas and tamales transition, by nightfall, to the fire and staccato of tacos de suadero and al pastor.

When I last visited CDMX in March, I was hit by the near-ubiquitous aroma of corn tortillas on the comal—warm, toasty, earthy—a scent that instantly transported me back to my very first trip in 2018. Studies in neuroscience have shown smells evoke more emotionally intense memories than any other sensory cue. The Proust effect, as it’s called, gets triggered for me every time I return.

But this exact smell of maíz is also a sensory time machine—the thing that unites modern Mexico to its pre-Hispanic ancestry. It’s arguable that this olfactory legacy is one of the things that hasn’t changed since the days of Tenochtitlán, the historic capital of the Aztec Empire.

Mexican street food culture begins there, too. For millennia, tianguis (derived from the Nahuatl tianquiztli) were itinerant open-air markets, organized into different types of commodities. They perfectly distilled the social and economic heart of Mesoamerica into a transient gathering space: part-business hub, part-town square, part-communal kitchen. A prepared foods section would feature earlier versions of mole, flavored with chilies and honey, and tortillas. Markets like Tlatelolco were the way both goods and news travelled. Word of mouth, as they say—except these mouths salivated a lot.

While Spanish colonization attempted to do away with these spaces or regulate them, the sprawling weekly markets continued to evolve. A modern-day puesto, or street stall, might look like something added to an existing sidewalk—a metallic micro-kitchen built to conform to Mexico City’s social rhythms and density. But it’s conceptually been around for far longer, and the cultural weight of them is undeniable.

Puestos shape the physical identities of streets just like signs and lampposts do; one might even argue that they change the makeup of them entirely. While they certainly don’t have walls as sit-down restaurants do, they effectively transform sidewalk corners into rooms: a kind of sanctuary to stop, eat, and talk in the midst of a busy transit corridor. The ticket to entry is a few pesos, elbows tucked in, and the delicate choreography ensuring none of the salsa or meat juices drip out.

Among all the places I’ve travelled to, Mexico is still one of the most sensory-charged places to eat—because taking part in that everyday ritual involves digging in, in every sense. Puesto culture is quick and economical for a relentless working force, but it also offers a temporary truce with Mexico City’s unrelenting thrum. It isn’t just a physical third space; it’s psychological, too. For fifteen minutes, your time is yours. And whether consciously or not, it’s a bridge connecting you right to the people who sustain you.

Somewhere under the shade of a hot pink tarpaulin, lined up in single file with a gordita de bistec in both hands, I found the key to uncovering the pulse of a neighborhood’s beating heart. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say it found me—because the places most representative of its people’s tastes will reveal that in the crowds milling next to it. It was lunch hour at a busy intersection, and I lined up with my full wallet and empty stomach. When I asked an older man waiting in front of me to recommend something, he was ecstatic, giving me a rundown of his favorites and a short history of the owners working behind the plancha.

That’s when I realized: scoop up enough nopales and pickled red onions, and you’re bound to scoop up a few stories along the way. Vendors know their repeat customers and vice versa. Sometimes the orders go unspoken. It’s a slow simmer of a relationship, built with familiarity and loyalty to the business. These dishes may be plated with little ceremony, but they are handed to you with the utmost care.

Food as a driver of connection, of course, isn’t isolated to the sidewalk. It feels like the connective tissue of a city where community and sustenance are in fact indistinguishable. The fondas, small eateries known for their pocketbook-friendly lunches, hold up this social contract in one simple exchange: “Provecho”, said even to strangers as diners pay up and leave. This is evidenced as well in the mercados. In the deepest corners of vast, almost labyrinthine markets, you’ll find stalls bursting with the hum of their regulars. Over the years, I’ve made no small number of friends and acquaintances over a spontaneous plate of quesadillas. All it took was limited counter space and a shared hunger.

When night falls, street food isn’t so much of an intermission from the day; it increasingly feels like a destination in itself. The scent of rendered fat and seared meat spikes the air with a renewed aliveness. To me, this sharper, more chaotic energy feels more intimate. I think of the time my friends and I drifted out of a bar, several fancy cocktails deep, and found ourselves face-to-face with a birria stand: the fluorescent lights unabating, the wafting aromas too good to refuse.

The three of us stood there, huddled over our orders of quesabirria and cups of rich consomé—liquid velvet to cut through the late-night haze, and punctuate conversations that felt both generous and easy. I still think of the sanctity of that moment. Suddenly, the scale of millions of people didn’t feel daunting. Instead, it felt familiar: a city held together by that primordial need to be fed and seen.

Any time I’m asked if I want everything with my taco—cilantro, onion, and a dash of the base salsa—I know my answer. I want the toppings, the ritual, the history, and the connection. I want it all: “Sí, con todo.” 🌮

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