Last Sunday I left the cool comfort of the Fog Belt, looking for an acceptable approximation of a chilango Taco Al Pastor in the famously “Mexican” Mission district. I started at El Castillito (2092 Mission St.), which has a decorative pit from which no meat shall escape. The meat is closer to cochinita pibil in flavor, something I just accepted , but I really don’t get the tomato salsa as the default. Unfortunately, they don’t offer a good alternative. Every single one of their salsas is borderline awful.

But I was not discouraged. Yet. I made my way down to La Alteña (2588 Mission St), which also has an authentic pit decoy on display next to the register. I think the price of the tacos ($2.75) is somehow justified by the generous amount of meat they dump on a tortilla, but if I want to have a policeman’s lunch I’ll just order a burrito, thanks.

Tacos Al Pastor are supposed to be almost delicate, and you should be able to eat 20 of them in one sitting. In Chilangolandia, if you run a taqueria famous for serving luminaries such as Godzilla, and one day you decide to start serving Al Pastor, you will still do it gently and sweetly. And you will serve a lime wedge with each taco, or you will die.

After that, I moved to La Corneta (2731 Mission St.), which puts beans on their tacos. Well, they can go fuck themselves.

I walked out immediately.

Here are two things you don’t put in tacos:

1) Rice
2) Beans

Exceptions apply if you are at home, and you’re still hungry and you ran out of meat.

Next on the tour was the famous-to-white-people El Farolito (2779 Mission St), which does not have a fake pit, but does have an amazing Rufino-Tamayo-inspired depiction (first image in this post) of what I hope is a real one (or else my mind will be blown).

It was nice to pay under 2 dollars for a taco, but I still don’t know what I was served. I am guessing it was their special version: Al Pastor Aleman.

It was not bad food, but it was also a joke as mimesis.

Just around the corner from El Farolito is El Taco Loco (3274 24th St), which is further proof that if it talks like a duck and walks like a duck you should still go ahead and kill it and make sure it tastes like a duck. Not the fake pit again! At this point I felt as if I were being taunted by shadows while chained inside Plato’s cave.

Their meat is a little on the gritty side, but the flavor is an acceptable approximation of someone’s retelling of their grandfather’s recollection of that Mexico City taste, and their salsas are nice, and you can have as many limes as you want! But what is the purpose of the speared meat? Please tell me!

After that, I was off to El Tonayense (3150 24th St.), which is famous for its taco trucks around town. The cheapest taco of the day ($1.63) was also the best, and to be honest I think it was because the cilantro was chopped fresh and it was still fragrant.

I ended the day at La Palma (2884 24th St), where I ordered a chicharron taco to, um, cleanse my palate. Their deep fried pork belly is fucking incredible, and with its help I was easily able to get over the lies.

…but calling it ‘asada’ when it hasn’t seen a flame may be.

It appears that someone in LA is trying to put your tax dollars to good use by curbing assaults on the Spanish language.

OK, putting the pedantry aside for a second… if they come for the taco trucks, and I do not speak up, there will be no one left to speak when they come for the makeshift taco stands with melting hoses as gas lines (I saw this happen at Metro Balderas yesterday—I guess I should have mentioned it earlier). Save them. Please.

This weekend I had a fine meal in Saratoga at The Plumed Horse (and I had a fine chuckle at the sight of white foam scum on my plate) and drank quite a bit of expensive-tasting wine, but the sensory experience I won’t forget soon is the taste of the tacos al pastor at Metro Balderas in San Jose (1st and Virginia, right off 280). This is not the same Balderas as the one on Almaden listed in Yelp* (I think the asterisk is supposed to be there, but I will use it to request that you ignore any reviews of the area as unsafe–unless by “unsafe” you mean “Mexican”), but that one has a PUBLIC NOTICE FOR APPLICATION OF OWNERSHIP CHANGE on its window, so don’t bother chasing your dreams there.

Tacos officially start at 5PM (the only reason I know about the future state of the other location is that my heart broke there a few hours earlier) from Thursday to Sunday. They get a good headstart on the pastor meat, so don’t be afraid to get there early if you can’t wait.

I can’t tell you what the inside of the place looks like, but I have a feeling that it is cramped to make room for the TV sets (I count three satellite dishes on the roof). The waitstaff for the front of the house may be from a part of Mexico where shampoo only recently replaced DDT, but you should be ordering directly from the dude with the knife. Otherwise you may miss the sight, and smell, of bubbling grease sliding down the cone as the meat turns.

They serve a decent suadero, but who gives a shit. You’re there for there for the perfectly crusty orange meat.

Skip the green salsa. It’s OK, but for some reason it’s the default when you ask for “everything.” That red salsa is the best kind of salsa on tacos al pastor is as true as a^2+b^2=c^2 (for a right triangle with legs a and b and hypotenuse c).

The little Paisa has no idea what to do with the pineapple and lets it flop lifelessly onto a random part of the plate after slicing a chunk off, but that’s the corner he paints himself into by trying to do too many tacos at a time (sometimes he gets impatient and starts slicing meat before he gets an order—this is one of the purest expressions of evil, but I think he’ll learn after someone less patient than myself stabs one of his fingers as punishment).

Still, the meat is outstanding. One of the great bonus pleasures of eating tacos al pastor is the strong smell they leave on your finger tips, and I seriously thought about going to bed without washing my hands last night. I don’t understand why I haven’t found anything like this in San Francisco.

Notice there are no signs for fucking burritos.

(La Gallinita) 2989 24th St., SF. Unfortunately, only open Fridays 5PM-11PM, Saturdays 9AM-11PM. Sundays 9AM-6PM.

I can’t believe some asshole took Mexcellent.com and wants 700 dollars for it.