tacos al pastor

One starts with two small stacked corn tortillas, each roughly 5" in diameter. These are thrown on the frying pan just to fry them a little bit and heat them up.

The meat of an al pastor taco is pork which has been seasoned and cooked with pineapple and stacked on a spit to form an inverted cone about 2’ long. If you’ve ever seen gyro meat, its basically identical in the grilling and slicing fashion. The spit of al pastor meat, however, is topped with a pineapple.

The taquero, otherwise known as the Lord of the Tacos, uses a big knife to slice of bits of the rotating stack of meat, taking care to also slice off bits of the roasting pineapple.

The meat and the pineapple slices are places on top of the tortillas. Then, finely chopped fresh onion and fresh cilantro are added on top of the meat, just enough to make a full taco when you pick up the torillas.
The taco is then garnished with a bit of green (or red, if your prefer) chile sauce, you squeeze a small lime over the entire thing.

When done well, its incredible. The ulimate street food. Great for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Takes all of two minutes to fill an order. And dirt cheap. I can usually pick up three tacos al pastor for under $3.

The problem, however, is my diet before coming here was intensively grain and green based, and I’m now throwing in tons of fried stuff, meat, and carbohydrates. Its true I’m walking three miles a day on average, more on the weekends, but its still wreaking some havoc on my system.

I did find a salad place a few blocks from where I work, however.