Giovanni Aguilar delivers a freshly made chilaquile cake to a client.
“It is nothing new that Mexican food can be harmful because of the fat it has, but the taste tells you that you have to throw it away,” says Aguilar with an extroverted tone.
The food vendor reacts in this way to the classification made by the gastronomic website Taste Atlas, which has positioned three Mexican street foods among the worst in the world.
The guts (ranked 17th) and the Cuban cake (ranked 14th) have achieved a more favorable position than the tamale cake (ranked 13th), although the three dishes share the same score: 3.5 out of five stars in the that the web values the best meals.
Despite this, they remain almost one point above the worst considered, the "kuzu kelle", a Turkish dish prepared with baked sheep's head.
In Mexico City, the list seems to have no effect.
Aguilar's stall is small and located on Avenida de la Reforma.
A day, he says, he can sell up to 100 tamale cakes, to which one could add the tamales sold separately and those cakes with different fillings.
"It's a very practical dish, with one of these you can last all day," says the street food vendor.
Aguilar does not attend to this type of classifications.
He assures that the criticism of these foods is due to the fact that "they do not know" what it is like to live in Mexico.
“Many times the custom influences, there are differences even between Mexicans from the south and those from the north, who do not eat spicy food.
Those from the south are pure pozole [another typical reference to Mexican food].
The advantage of Mexico City is that it mixes the two”, says the trader.
The stall is surrounded by customers, and they do not stop arriving to order, in addition to cakes, other dishes such as chilaquiles, a meal made up of cut and fried (or toasted) tortillas and chili sauce.
Aguilar says that the diet has changed a lot.
"Now they ask for more sandwiches, more chilaquiles and less tamale cakes, but when the cold arrives... they crave more tamale," says the vendor, who believes that the function of this dish is to fill the stomach.
The tamale that Aguilar prepares contains corn flour, vegetable shortening and, depending on the type, salt or sugar.
A simple dish, which he calls a kind of "steamed bread".
The vendor leaves the seasoning to the customer's taste: “There are those who want me to put cream or sauce on it, everyone has a taste.
Do you want beans?
Go ahead and finish it off, don't waste it, little brother."
The vendor prepares a coffee that he brings in an orange barrel.
He considers that, today, all food is harmful.
“A long time ago everything was better, more homemade.
There is nothing like the ranch, but it has its price, ”concludes Aguilar as he returns some coins to the client.
subscribe here
to the
newsletter
of EL PAÍS México and receive all the informative keys of the current affairs of this country