Taquería Miranda
Sunday, October 15
On our first day in Mexico City, while looking for a supermarket, we came across a large and busy taco stand. The stall was on a small side street near our apartment and judging by the looks on people's faces, tourists didn't usually wander there.
At this point it was already late morning, we hadn't had breakfast and were eager to try our first tacos in Mexico! However, since this taco stall was not a permanent restaurant, but rather a street food stand literally built on the street, you could of course only pay with cash and not with card. So we walked past the “Miranda” taco stall because we had only landed in Mexico a few hours ago and we hadn’t withdrawn any Mexican pesos at that point.
The freshly made tacos looked so good though that we quickly abandoned our search for a supermarket and instead made our way to the nearest ATM. Luckily it was only a few streets away and we were able to withdraw money without any problems. As we were just about to make our way back to the taco stall, we realized that the ATM had of course only issued us very large bills with which we would not be able to pay for our two small tacos at the street stand. Having travelled across Latin America before we knew that street food stalls like this usually didn't have a lot of change on hand.
Now we had managed to withdraw Mexican pesos, but had still no chance to eat tacos at the street stall. So I took one of our large banknotes and entered the actual bank building next to the ATMs. The employees looked at me and were quite confused as I was the only non-mexican person in the entire building. When I explained the bank teller in Spanish that I would like to change this note to a smaller size so that I could buy a few tacos at the taco stand, he burst out laughing and immediately changed my money into taco stand-friendly note sizes.
A few minutes later we finally stood in line at the “Miranda” taco stand and ordered two “tacos al pastor” — the traditional tacos in Mexico City. My illustration shows the “Al Pastor” skewer: a kebab-like skewer with pork marinated in chili and spices is cooked and then cut into thin slices. The meat is served on a Mexican tortilla, a thin flatbread made from cornmeal, and, typical for the “Al pastor taco”, topped with a slice of fresh pineapple. These types of tacos can be found all over Mexico City, but what's special about the Miranda taco stand is that they have a huge selection of toppings to put on your taco. Here you will find creamy refried beans, cheese, various fresh vegetables, a selection of salsas, very hot guacamole and an incredibly hot onion and chili salad, which Christoph always enthusiastically topped his taco with but shortly after realizes he in fact could not take the spice level! This happened again and again and Christoph never seemed to learn from his mistakes.
During our time in Mexico City, we had tacos from various taco stands in the city, but nowhere we went the tacos were as tasty as at the “Miranda” taco stand. We quickly became regulars, were recognized by the staff over time and were always greeted warmly. Even our Mexican friend Mario who had never eaten at „Miranda“ before and whom we took for some Miranda tacos was really exited and confirmed that this taco stand was indeed amazing! In fact Mario liked the Miranda tacos so much that he became a regular customer there himself and regularly sends us photos of him eating lunch there.
Before we finally left Mexico City and moved to the next country, we had a few last tacos at „Taqueria Miranda“. We got to say Goodbye to the lovely crew, and took a few last photos together.
