Celebrating Mexican food culture and tradition.
Al pastor is one of Mexico's most beloved taco fillings, but its origins are surprisingly international. In the early 20th century, Lebanese immigrants brought shawarma — spit-roasted lamb — to central Mexico. Mexican cooks adapted the technique, swapping lamb for pork, replacing Middle Eastern spices with dried chilies and achiote, and adding pineapple to the rotating spit. The result was something entirely new — a fusion dish that became more Mexican than its origins would suggest. Today, al pastor is as essential to Mexican street food as the tortilla itself. The vertical spit, called a trompo, is an icon of taquerias across Mexico and increasingly around the world, serving as a delicious reminder that the best food traditions are never pure — they're the result of cultures meeting, mixing, and creating something better together.
A taco is only as good as its tortilla, and in authentic Mexican cuisine, that means corn. Flour tortillas have their place in northern Mexican and Tex-Mex cooking, but the corn tortilla is the foundation of Mexican food culture, stretching back thousands of years to the Mesoamerican civilizations that first domesticated maize. The process of nixtamalization — soaking dried corn in an alkaline solution — transforms the grain chemically, releasing nutrients, developing flavor, and creating the pliable dough called masa that becomes tortillas, tamales, and dozens of other preparations. Mass-produced tortillas from commodity corn flour are a pale imitation of hand-pressed tortillas made from fresh nixtamal. The difference in flavor, texture, and aroma is as dramatic as the difference between Wonder Bread and a fresh sourdough loaf.