The soul of Chilanga cuisine lies in a basket, wrapped in brown paper and blue plastic. It is a “sweaty taco“. Small, the size of a number 14 tortilla (two or three bites), filled almost always with potato, bean or chicharrón -the essential triumvirate of the taco homeland-, although sometimes adobo, pastor, chicken with mole or whatever the stew of the day may be, appears. Traveling, bicycle, sidewalk and urban taco, the most enduring of all, edible from the early morning until the basket is emptied in the afternoon.

A convenient craving and quick relief for students, office workers and passers-by in a hurry. Two green sauces: the raw one with avocado that isn’t spicy (it is spicy) and the cooked one with habanero that is spicy (it is very spicy). We eat it standing up, napkin under the plate, with slippery fingers and glossy lips from the grease that keeps them warm and soft all day long. The taco de canasta -or “sweaty taco“-, perhaps the first taco to be sold in Mexico City, is the father of Mexican street tacos. It should be in the National Anthem.