Campechanos Tortas

Eat this!

What should you get at a taco stand? Tacos… Sure, why not. But there are other things on the menu, and you should try them. Why would you try something other than tacos at a taco stand? I mean - don’t they clearly specialize in tacos? Not necessarily.

Let’s imagine you’re a recent immigrant from El Salvador, and you want to start selling pupusas. Unless you have a bunch of people around who know what pupusas are, that could be kind of rough! But you see people buying tacos all around you, and sure, you can make some tacos, so now you have a taco stand that sells pupusas. (Or - a donut shop that sells pupusas! There was one of those on El Camino till not long ago. I thought it was weird till I remembered all the Donut shops that sell chinese food in SF… This is a tale as old as immigration, apparently). So it might be that the thing to get at that taco stand is pupusas.

If you’re at a taco stand and they’re selling tortas, try one! A torta is like a sandwich with taco filling. I tend to like them best with dry meats rather then wet - there are places that will sell you a chile verde torta, but the sauce gets the sandwich rather soggy. So conventional options would be things like carne asada and al pastor. But - if you really want to go all out I suggest getting campechanos - pork, beef and sausage (and sometimes nopalitos) sauteed together. You can get campechanos tacos, but I think the torta is where it really shines.

(Torta courtesy Super Tacos El Conrro)

Depending on the stand, a torta can vary in size from hot dog to hoagie. You can usually tell how big a torta you’re getting by the price - twice the price of a taco is going to be a pretty small torta - 5x will be enormous.

Often the torta will come with sliced pickled jalapenos and/or salsa in it, but this one didn’t have either, so I just dripped in some of their spicy salsa while eating it. The cucumbers and radishes served with the torta are useful for those times when the salsa gets to be too much.