Tacos through the day

In Mexico different tacos belong to different hours: stewed guisado and basket tacos, barbacoa and northern breakfast tacos in the morning and at midday, and grilled and spit-roasted meats at night, a rhythm that food writers and historians link to work schedules and to who cooked and sold each kind of taco.

Tacos and the Mexican meal day

Wikipedia's article on Mexican cuisine describes a day built around a light breakfast, a snack and drink around eleven in the morning, the comida as the main meal between noon and two in the afternoon, and a supper between six and nine at night. It notes that tacos are not usually the main meal and are most often eaten before midday or late in the evening, which places them on either side of the comida. A guest identified as Ruvalcaba on the food podcast Gastropod traced this split to the early taco trade in Mexico City: women sold tacos filled with stews in the morning, while men sold grilled meats, including al pastor, at night.

Morning: guisado and canasta

Tacos de guisado, filled with home-style stews, are widely treated as a breakfast or almuerzo food. El Universal reports that vendors usually sell them in the morning and into mid-afternoon, a schedule that suits the hours of Mexico City workers, though they can be found at other times. The same article traces them to the tacos acorazados of Cuernavaca, Morelos, and to sugarcane workers in the 1950s, a story it describes as anecdotal.

Tacos de canasta, kept warm and soft in cloth-lined baskets, are another working-morning taco. Ruvalcaba told Gastropod they began as leftover stews sold from baskets, and México Desconocido describes vendors riding bicycles with a basket and salsas. On timing the sources differ: México Desconocido's general history says canasta tacos are eaten mainly at midday and never at night, while its article devoted to the dish says they can be found at any hour. At Tacos de Canasta Los Especiales near the Zócalo, the MICHELIN Guide reports, a fixed shop sells about two thousand a day to local workers and visitors.

Morning in the north

In northern Mexico the breakfast taco is a fixture of its own. CNN Travel identifies Monterrey and Nuevo León as its center, with fillings such as machacado with egg, barbacoa and deshebrada. The Monterrey food blogger Ernesto Esquivel told CNN that the custom goes back at least to the early 1900s, when workers at the Fundidora steel foundry needed a quick meal before their shifts. Tacos Doña Mary La Gritona in downtown Monterrey, listed with a Bib Gourmand in the MICHELIN Guide, keeps morning hours, opening at seven and closing at two in the afternoon. Texas Monthly's taco editor José R. Ralat told CNN that the Texas breakfast taco most likely came from northern Mexico. The same CNN report describes barbacoa tacos as a Sunday-morning habit in San Antonio.

Midday: barbacoa

Barbacoa, lamb or goat cooked in an earth pit in the pulque country of Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla and the State of Mexico, is a morning and midday taco. México Desconocido notes that it is practically impossible to find at night. The same source pairs it with salsa borracha, made with pulque and pasilla chile.

Night: the trompo and the grill

After dark the taco trade shifts to stands built around a vertical spit, a griddle or a charcoal grill. Chilango's profile of a neighborhood stand on Doctor Valenzuela street in Mexico City describes a business that opens at six in the evening and closes at six in the morning, sells about 550 tacos on a busy night, and does most of its trade from Thursday to Sunday. Its trompo of al pastor draws customers in, though the taqueros say costras and volcanes sell best once people know the menu. Gastropod's hosts describe al pastor as having dominated Mexico City by the 1960s. In Los Angeles, PBS SoCal's report on the pastoreros of Tacos Los Guichos describes the nightly work of building the trompo, trimming the meat and slicing to order.

Reviews

See also

• Tacos de guisado
• Tacos de canasta
• Breakfast taco
• Tacos de barbacoa
• Tacos al pastor
• Tacos de suadero
• Tacos de cabeza
• Taco etiquette
• Pastorero
• Tacos in Mexico City
• Tacos in Monterrey

References

1. "Mexican cuisine". Wikipedia. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
2. "Talking Taco (transcript)". Gastropod. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
3. "¿De dónde son los tacos de guisado?". El Universal. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
4. "Tacos de canasta, todo lo que necesitas saber sobre esta delicia popular mexicana". México Desconocido. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
5. "¡Para tacos, sólo México!". México Desconocido. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
6. "Mexico City's Beloved Tacos de Canasta: Inside the Steamy, Melt-in-Your-Mouth Street Food Tradition". MICHELIN Guide. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
7. "A short history of the long fight over breakfast tacos". CNN Travel. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
8. "Tacos Doña Mary La Gritona". MICHELIN Guide. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
9. "Los secretos de un taquero de barrio". Chilango. Retrieved 2026-10-10.
10. "Behind a $1.50 Taco, a Deep Well of Expertise". PBS SoCal (The Migrant Kitchen). Retrieved 2026-10-10.