Ham El-Waylly: If it's not cooked on a spit, it is not a shwarma. But a lot of people who make claims, they're like, "Yeah, it's a shwarma," and then they just do like thinly sliced meat cooked on a flat top, thrown in a pita. It burns me up inside.

Sohla El-Waylly: You have tried every single shwarma of place that's like within a reasonable distance of our home.

Ham El-Waylly: And sometimes unreasonable distance.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] And it's most of the time it's not built in the vertical spit.

Ham El-Waylly: It's a shame. It's a damn shame. 

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: Welcome to Deep Dish, the show where we do deep dives on dishes we love, and then cook them. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] I didn't know, like, you had that radio voice in you. All of a sudden ... Batman voice.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, I can bust it out whenever.

MUSIC

Sohla El-Waylly: I'm Sohla … 

Ham El-Waylly: And I’m Ham. 

Sohla El-Waylly: We’re married … 

Ham El-Waylly: And we're chefs.

Sohla El-Waylly: We nerd out on food together all day long

Ham El-Waylly: And we love learning about the stories behind different dishes and ingredients.

Sohla El-Waylly: Now, we're going to do all that nerding out on this podcast.

Ham El-Waylly: In each episode of Deep Dish, we’ll deep dive into the story behind a food.

Sohla El-Waylly: Then we’ll head home to our kitchen and see what we feel inspired to cook up. 

Ham El-Waylly: Today’s story, the twisting tale of tacos Al Pastor: From Lebanon to Mexico City.

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: First of all, for people who don’t know what al pastor is, the al pastor taco is a pork taco. The pork is usually seasoned with chiles and achiote. Achiote, or annatto seeds, it’s what gives the pork its reddish color and it also has an earthy flavor. The pork is stacked on a vertical spit, stacked in a way where it looks like a spinning top, and that in Spanish is a trompo. That spit spins in front of usually this metal grate that has some kind of heat source behind it, and it cooks as it spins, roasting the outside. And so you shave the outside of that onto a corn tortilla, have some pineapple on top, some chopped onions, cilantro, and then salsas of your choice. 

Sohla El-Waylly: What is your like ideal version? When you think al pastor, what do you wanna see in your taco?

Ham El-Waylly: I'm looking for a certain texture of the meat. I feel like a lot of al pastors and spit meats in general don't get enough char and color on their outside. So I want to feel a little crunch and I want to taste at least a little bit of acidity from some vinegar, some chili, some garlic, some kind of seasoning. 

Sohla El-Waylly: That's way more specific than what I was thinking when I think of al pastor.

Ham El-Waylly: All right. What is your ideal al pastor taco?

Sohla El-Waylly: The first thing that comes to mind is the pineapple.

Ham El-Waylly: The first thing that comes to mind is the pineapple?

Sohla El-Waylly: Because I love pineapple pizza. There's not a lot of places where you can get pineapple and savory food. But pastor, they're doing it probably the best? Pineapple's what makes it a unique taco.

Ham El-Waylly: So you think the pineapple is what makes the al pastor the al pastor and not necessarily the skewered meat?

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] Yeah, that's probably totally wrong.

Ham El-Waylly: No, there's ... No, there's no right or wrong. It's very interesting ... That's very, very interesting view on what makes an al pastor an al pastor. Because I — yeah, I immediately go to skewered, like a trompo. But either way, tacos al pastor have become this iconic taco in Mexico. But it actually originates from a totally different part of the world. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh

Ham El-Waylly: I found this food historian, who teaches at the National University in Mexico, and she also teaches at La Escuela de la Gastronomía Mexicana, which is the School of Mexican Gastronomy. Her name is Inga Hernandez, born and raised in Mexico City. Inga's always been really into history.

Inga Hernandez: I started to thinking about history when I was maybe 13-years-old. 

Ham El-Waylly: That's amazing.

Inga Hernandez: Yes.

Ham El-Waylly: Most 13-year-olds still wanna be an astronaut or a firefighter.

Inga Hernandez: [LAUGHS] Maybe? But no, I wanted to be historian.

Ham El-Waylly: Ah, I wanted to be a chef, so I ...

Inga Hernandez: Ah, great. That's great.

Ham El-Waylly: We did. We accomplished our goals. I think a lot of people outside of Mexico, when you mention Mexican food to them, their mind immediately goes to taco. 

Inga Hernandez: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: What does the taco mean to Mexican food and Mexican food culture? 

Inga Hernandez: The taco is a way to eat. It's not a dish, it's a way to eat.

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Inga Hernandez: You can put on a tortilla everything you want. Meat, fish, vegetables ... Everything that you want. 

Ham El-Waylly: In Mexico City, there's one taco to rule them all.

Sohla El-Waylly: The al pastor?

Ham El-Waylly: The al pastor, baby.

Inga Hernandez: The taco al pastor is maybe the most recognized street food in Mexico City. Taco al pastor is always king in Mexico City.

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: Sohla, there's this one place in Mexico City that straight up claims that they invented al pastor. So they're called El Tizoncito and they're one of these, like, al pastor chains that have 15 locations in Mexico City. Tizoncito means like ember in Spanish. That's a reference to them actually cooking their al pastor over charcoal.

Sohla El-Waylly: Oh, wow. 

Ham El-Waylly: That's their signature. I talked to their brand manager, Omar Gonzalez Lopez.

Omar Gonzalez Lopez: [EXPLAINING IN SPANISH]

Ham El-Waylly: On their website, and on the outside of some of their restaurants, in big bold letters, it says, “WE ARE THE CREATORS OF TACOS AL PASTOR”.

Omar Gonzalez Lopez: Somos los creadores del taco al pastor.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's a big claim.

Ham El-Waylly: Serve me.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's a big claim. I'm gonna need some evidence.

Ham El-Waylly: To making big claims.

Sohla El-Waylly: I need to see hard evidence, cause I don’t buy it.

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: If we are looking for evidence, we need to start with the backstory of El Tizoncito. It all starts with Concepción Cervantes, who goes by the nickname "Doña Conchita". She was an executive assistant, she was married, she had three kids, and then her husband dies. So she's trying to figure out how she can support her family and she decides that she's gonna give it a go at opening a taqueria.

Sohla El-Waylly: Wow. So she didn't have culinary background?

Ham El-Waylly: She didn't have culinary background at all. El Tizoncito opened in the 1960s, roughly. The taco al pastor specifically, like considering how ubiquitous it is in Mexico City and how much it's taken over Mexican cuisine in terms of like name recognition, it's not that old.

Sohla El-Waylly: Once she decided she was gonna switch over to tacos, how did she come about with this taco?

Omar Gonzalez Lopez: She took inspire of the shawarma, that is an Arabic taco. The shawarma was very famous here in Mexico because of the people that moved from the east. 

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, from the Middle East? 

Omar Gonzalez Lopez: Yes.

Ham El-Waylly: So this iconic Mexican taco, its origins aren’t entirely Mexican. It’s inspired by Lebanese immigrants, who came to Mexico. 

Sohla El-Waylly: I mean, if you look at a trompo, it looks a lot like a shawarma.

Ham El-Waylly: So Doña Conchita came across Lebanese immigrants who were selling shawarmas. She claimed she saw a horizontal spit being rotated on top of charcoal. And then she took that and innovated that and turned that into a vertical spit.

Omar Gonzalez Lopez: She invent the vertical oven with charcoal — that vertical oven for cook the meat.

Sohla El-Waylly: That's a controversial claim, that she invented the vertical spit.

Ham El-Waylly: There are many controversial claims that El Tizoncito are making. We're gonna ...

Sohla El-Waylly: So she's …

Ham El-Waylly: We're gonna dive into there. 

Sohla El-Waylly: So she’s not just claiming that she invented the al pastor, but the method ...

Ham El-Waylly: Yes.

Sohla El-Waylly: Of cooking on a vertical spit.

Ham El-Waylly: Yes. There .... she's ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Whoa.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. So that's the claim. What are your thoughts?  

Sohla El-Waylly: I don't ... I don't buy that.

Ham El-Waylly: You don't buy that?

Sohla El-Waylly: No, I don't.

Ham El-Waylly: No. You don't buy Doña Conchita?

Sohla El-Waylly: No, I mean, I don't buy any of the story now. I was like on board with the — perhaps she had invented the al pastor, but the claiming the vertical spit, that's completely false. Like there's so much archeological evidence of vertical spits throughout the Middle East that are like so old. This is like an ancient cooking method. So now if she's willing to lie about that, what else is she lying about?

[LAUGHING]

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh ...

Ham El-Waylly: I was a little skeptical too. So I went to Inga. I wanted to find out more about the history.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: I wanna see what Inga had to say about it.

Sohla El-Waylly: No, you have to go to Inga.

Ham El-Waylly: You have to go to Inga.

Sohla El-Waylly: I really wanna know what she said.

Ham El-Waylly: She agrees that the shawarma is a big part of al pastor's history and D.N.A. But Inga said that the story of the al pastor started way before El Tizoncito In the 1960s.

Sohla El-Waylly: I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. [LAUGHS]

Inga Hernandez: The taco al pastor has a history related with immigration. In 19th century, the Lebanese community started to came to Puebla and also to other parts of Mexico like Yucatan, for example.

Ham El-Waylly: So Lebanon was part of the Ottoman Empire, and at the time the empire was crumbling. So wars are breaking out. People usually wanna leave when things get violent. So a lot of Lebanese left Lebanon for other countries, Mexico being one of them.

Inga Hernandez: After we get our independence in 1821, Mexico opened the doors to many immigrations. They came — French people, Italian people, English people, and also people from Middle East. 

Ham El-Waylly: I didn't know there was like a come one, come all immigration policy in Mexico.

Inga Hernandez: Yes. So when we got our independence, we tried to open the doors and to try to find a new identity. Okay, we are not Spaniards, we are what? So a lot of people came to us in 19th century, so they want to open businesses. You know? They open hotels, restaurants, for example, coffee shops, all of these kind of, businesses here. And of course, we opened the doors to the food, to different flavors, to different tastes. For example, in Mexico City, we have a lot of French restaurants. You know? Because the most stylish thing was eat by the French way, no?

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Inga Hernandez: So we started to adopt this kind of influences.

Ham El-Waylly: You always hear about, you know, Ellis Island and how like, bring us everyone.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: But like, Mexico had that attitude as well. The Lebanese immigrants, they settled a few hours southeast of Mexico City in Puebla. Puebla was a big textile manufacturer at the time and a lot of the Lebanese immigrants were in that industry already. So it was a pretty seamless transition. And as usual with immigration, you always get the cuisine as part of that immigration as well.

Inga Hernandez: A lot of them came to Puebla and started to establish little restaurants. And they started to sell, of course, shawarma.

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Inga Hernandez: You know, that kind of food for the community, the Lebanese community in Puebla. Maybe at the beginnings of 1920s, they started to transform the recipe of the shawarma because they changed lamb for pork. Because Puebla is a state that has a lot of pig farms. 

Ham El-Waylly: So we're starting to, like, see some of the changes now. So like you get Lebanese immigrants moving to Puebla and bringing the shawarma with them, but finding out that like, oh, lamb's expensive and not as easy to access here. But there's a lot of pork, it's a lot cheaper. And a lot of the Lebanese immigrants were Christian. They weren't Muslim or Jewish, so pork was okay to eat. So that was a pretty easy transition.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's interesting how whenever people bring their cuisines to another country, how well people can adapt to the local ingredients. And it sounds like that's what they were doing. Like this is an important part of their culture and their heritage, but they're making it work with the ingredients they have.

Ham El-Waylly: And so they call this new shawarma the taco árabe. The Arab taco. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Ohh ... The taco árabe is like a transition point. 

Ham El-Waylly: Exactly. It's like an in between — it's one of those moments where you can see history in front of you. It's like those evolution charts?

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: Where they put the evolution from like the early apes into the human? It's just like that chart, cause you see the shawarma into the taco árabe, into the taco al pastor.

Sohla El-Waylly: Can you describe the taco árabe?

Ham El-Waylly: So the taco árabe is thin slices of marinated pork, similar to the al pastor meat that's cooked on a vertical trompo, and it’s served in either a pita or a flour tortilla. And they're still really, really popular in Puebla where there still is a large Lebanese community. 

Sohla El-Waylly: What's the seasoning for the pork for the árabe?

Ham El-Waylly: Some tacos árabes keep the Lebanese seven spice vibe, but some of them start adding chilies and achiote, more like what would become an al pastor. And that addition of chilies was an important stop on the road to al pastor.

Inga Hernandez: It's very common that Mexican food, if you want to make it more enjoyable for us, put them chili and that's all.

Ham El-Waylly: [LAUGHS]

Inga Hernandez: You can find in the cookbook recipes, for example, the bologna sauce, a la Mexicana — you know? That's the name of the recipe — what's the difference? You only have to put chili. 

Ham El-Waylly: So it's bolognese with chili?

Igna: And that's all.

Ham El-Waylly: And then it's bolognese a la Mexicana? 

Inga Hernandez: Yes. Bolognese a la Mexicana. Yes. That's the difference. And it's very common to find this kind of things in the recipes from 19th century.

Ham El-Waylly: So they like kind of took that approach to making the al pastor tacos. Like, let's take the shawarma, we'll add chilies. 

Inga Hernandez: In order to get more clients, you know, the Lebanese cook decided marinate this meat in chili, in achiote, with onions, with garlic. We still eating something that looks like shawarma, but with a Mexican flavor. And the taco al pastor born. 

Sohla El-Waylly: I feel like it's exactly the same method for Bangladeshi food.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, really? 

Sohla El-Waylly: Like my mom's move was, this is gonna be Bengali meatloaf cause there's ginger and chili in it.

Ham El-Waylly: There you go. Like, it's …

Sohla El-Waylly: It’s the same.

Ham El-Waylly: Like people do that.

Sohla El-Waylly: There's are core flavors.

Ham El-Waylly: They're core flavors that once you hit the core flavor it becomes a part of like the culture, if you hit those notes. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Bobby Flay wasn't wrong about adding a — what does he add to everything?

Ham El-Waylly: Ancho chilies. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Ancho chilies! [LAUGHS] Transformed!

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: So let's do a recap.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay.

Ham El-Waylly: So, Lebanese immigrants bring shawarma to Puebla. Over time, that lamb becomes pork, the pita becomes tortilla, and then that cylindrical spit starts to widen up top and then it becomes a trompo. This transformation from shawarma to pastor is also kind of mirroring this interesting time where Mexico's trying to define their national identity. So in the 1800s, Mexico was all about opening its doors to everybody, welcoming other cultures and other foods. But then the 1900s came and then there was a shift. Mexicans started becoming more interested in foods that were Mexican.

Inga Hernandez: In that time, we started to look a new identity with our dishes. No French food, no Italian food, no Spanish food. Our food, for example, moles or soles, tacos started to be the stars of our gastronomy and where named traditional food, and we started to thinking about moles and tacos and this kind of food as our food.

Ham El-Waylly: So that didn't happen until 1910. That's pretty recent. 

Inga Hernandez: Yes. 

Ham El-Waylly: That's not that long ago. 

Inga Hernandez: Yes. We were trying to look for our identity and we create and recreate a lot of dishes from our past. 

Sohla El-Waylly: That's crazy.

Ham El-Waylly: Right?

Ham El-Waylly: I thought that was crazy.

Sohla El-Waylly: So all of these dishes that we now think of as iconically historically Mexican are very new.

Ham El-Waylly: They’re all a part of this reawakening of Mexican gastronomy, of trying to rediscover the old and infusing it with the new. Like, so tacos arabes and the al pastor are kind of happening in this time period. I asked Inga if Lebanese immigrants were in Puebla and then that's where the shwarma began its transformation, how did it end up in Mexico City? So she said that in the 1960s, there's a lot of people were coming to Mexico City looking for new opportunities and they were coming from other parts of Mexico and all over the world. And then 1968, Mexico City, Olympics. They wanted to turn it into a touristy spot. So nothing attracts people more than a wide range of food, so you started to see a Chinatown start to pop up, and then that's when the al pastor becoming more popular. 

Sohla El-Waylly: All because of the Olympics, now al pastor’s a Mexico City dish. That's crazy.

Ham El-Waylly: And when al pastor moved to Mexico City, it changed.

Inga Hernandez: Maybe the difference between tacos al pastor in Puebla and the tacos al pastor in Mexico City, is the pineapple.

MUSIC

Inga Hernandez: The smallest slice of pineapple, no? And this is an invention, no, from a taqueria named El Tizoncito.

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: Huh? Does that sound familiar?

Sohla El-Waylly: The pineapple, baby.

Ham El-Waylly: By your definition, since the al pastor taco is made by the pineapple and that El Tizoncito probably invented, like, started putting pineapples on their al pastor, it sounds like you — you're on El Tizoncito’s side now.

Sohla El-Waylly: They invented the al pastor taco.

Ham El-Waylly: Wow. We … You're convinced. We've got you on tape affirming their claims.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: Wow. Doña will be so happy with you.

Sohla El-Waylly: I don't want one without pineapple, so they did it. Hey, I think that pineapple is a genius bit of marketing. It's like visually, from far away, you see the pineapple on the spit, and you know that that's their ...

Ham El-Waylly: That's a pastor.

Sohla El-Waylly: That’s their trompo.

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's very smart.

Ham El-Waylly: And it was probably cheap. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. 

Ham El-Waylly: And Mexican food's all about acidity.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: Like it's all about balancing acidity with heat and like lard and fat. And that pineapple is a really nice way to add a different kind of acidity that isn't lime.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's the ultimate functional garnish.

Ham El-Waylly: And you get texture! It's like you get another kind of crunch.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: All right, I'm becoming a pineapple believer. Now I'm gonna pay more attention to the pineapple in my pastor. 

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: As you know, I spent a solid chunk of my professional career making al pastor at Empellon.

Sohla El-Waylly: So many tacos.

Ham El-Waylly: But I kept hearing about this place in Brooklyn that opened not so long ago, Taqueria Ramirez. The owners are from Mexico City, and I heard they had great al pastor. So I wanted to see how they made theirs. I know we had planned for a while now to go there together … but I went there without you.

Sohla El-Waylly: That's a problem. [LAUGHS] Is this podcast gonna tear us apart?

Ham El-Waylly: I am sorry because I feel bad that you weren’t there, but I’m not sorry that I ate it. And I’m gonna learn how they build their trompo — which is different than any trompo that I’ve made in my al pastor days. That’s coming up, after the break.

MUSIC

 

+++ BREAK +++

 

MUSIC

Ham El-Waylly: I'm Ham … 

Sohla El-Waylly: And I'm Sohla.

Ham El-Waylly: Welcome back to Deep Dish, a collaboration with our friends at The Sporkful podcast. If you’re new to The Sporkful, welcome! I would describe The Sporkful as a fun conversation about food. They're either stories or interviews or it can be really anything.

Sohla El-Waylly: And if you are looking for a place to start, check out their recent episode about the complicated history of Hibachi. Hibachi in America was developed after World War II to make Japanese food seem fun and non-threatening to a western audience, but that required some compromises.

Ham El-Waylly: Eventually, chefs started playing up stereotypes for laughs. The Sporkful talks with one former hibachi chef, who says he was pressured to use a stereotypical Asian accent with customers, even though he was born in America and has no accent. 

Sohla El-Waylly: That episode is up right now in The Sporkful feed, get it wherever you got this one. 

Ham El-Waylly: Okay, back to tacos al pastor. So we left off with El Tizoncito opening up in the '60s. From there, al pastor blew up and now it’s basically the dish of Mexico City and one of the most popular tacos in all of Mexico. It’s also one of the most delicious exports to the rest of the world. You go to any taqueria in the U.S. and find some version of al pastor ... Well, they're claiming it's al pastor. A lot of them aren't really cooked on trompos, it's just like pork shoulder cooked on a flat top.

Sohla El-Waylly: It still has pineapple.

Ham El-Waylly: It still has pineapple.

Sohla El-Waylly: Because that's what makes it an al pastor.

Ham El-Waylly: Uh-huh. So that's what makes it ... to you.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: To you, that's what makes it an al pastor. So I’ve made a lot of trompos, and I’m pretty familiar with how al pastor is made. But I’ve heard that this new spot, Taqueria Ramirez, has their own special way of making trompos. And they've gotten so much great press, I've been wanting to check it out since they opened. So I actually went to Brooklyn ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Without me. 

Ham El-Waylly: Without you. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS]

Ham El-Waylly: Can we stop? I just want to — I can already smell it.

Giovanni Cervantes: Yeah, yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: I can already like — as soon as you turned the block, you can smell it.

Giovanni Cervantes: Yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: You smell the lard, the chiles, the roasting meat.

Giovanni Cervantes: Oh, you do, man.

Ham El-Waylly: So, let me tell you about Taquería Ramirez. It's a small space. So you walk in and it's all white tiles and then in one corner in red marker, that's — the menu's just written down. They only have six tacos and that's it. It's a completely open kitchen, and in one corner they have the trompo.

Ham El-Waylly: You weren’t kidding, the trompo is so, so wide …

Ham El-Waylly: So Taquería Ramirez, husband/wife team — I didn't know that.

Sohla El-Waylly: The best team.

Ham El-Waylly: The best teams. Best teams, always supporting husband/wife teams. 

Giovanni Cervantes: My name is Giovanni Cervantes. 

Tania Apolinar: And my name is Tania.

Ham El-Waylly: That's Tania Apolinar. Oh, by the way, even though, Gio's last name is Cervantes — not related to Doña Conchita Cervantes. Unrelated. So Gio’s from Mexico City and Tanya's from Torreon. Torreon is in the north of Mexico. Neither of 'em have a background in food. Gio was a photographer. So they started doing taco pop-ups in Greenpoint in 2016. So during the pandemic, they decided to open their own place. Gio thought about what would be on the menu and started watching YouTube videos about street tacos. 

Sohla El-Waylly: It's crazy that he was influenced by YouTube.

Ham El-Waylly: Right? You can learn anything .... Anything on YouTube.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: Like, my electric toothbrush? There was a screw that went loose ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHS]

Ham El-Waylly: And it stopped vibrating?

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-uh.

Ham El-Waylly: Went straight to YouTube about how to pop that thing open and fix it for myself.

Sohla El-Waylly: That's how I learned how to install lamps, probably illegally, but ...

Ham El-Waylly: You can learn anything on YouTube.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: Gio decided he wanted to do an al pastor taco at his taqueria, but there was a problem. He hadn’t done al pastor for the pop up. He’s never even built a trompo in his life.

Sohla El-Waylly: Well, and it's something that requires a lot of practice, like building it and knowing how to cook it and shave it. 

Ham El-Waylly: A lot of trial and error.

Sohla El-Waylly: They're making a meat sculpture every day?

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. 

Giovanni Cervantes: And at some point when we had our first soft opening at the shop, we decided just to go for the pastor, even though we have never done it. 

Tania Apolinar: That moment that Gio told me, "The first taco we're gonna do is a pastor," and I was like, "Are you sure?", like we have done everything else for a like a couple months already, like tastings, but this is the only one we haven't done, "Like, are you sure?" He's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it." I was like, oh my god. I mean, we had the spit, but we didn't have a tool to, you know, like build it. So it was Gio kind of like holding the spit for a long time and building it at the same time.

Sohla El-Waylly: Whoa, what? 

Ham El-Waylly: That's crazy!

Sohla El-Waylly: Like a balancing act?

Ham El-Waylly: Like, you know what that reminds me of? When we had a restaurant and we didn't have a turntable for a cake. And the cake was a core part of the business, and you were just ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Our number one seller.

Ham El-Waylly: And you were just make — frosting cakes on without a turntable. And a turn table's like twenty bucks.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, but this sounds a lot harder.

Ham El-Waylly: This is a lot harder.

Sohla El-Waylly: So he's just standing there with one arm supporting this heavy thing while loading it up with meat with the other arm.

Ham El-Waylly: Yep. First time ever soft opening. That's like ...

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] Oh no.

Ham El-Waylly: That is a lot of pressure. That is so much pressure. And …

Giovanni Cervantes: And ... And it went great. Like when I tasted, I wanted to cry because ...

MUSIC

Giovanni Cervantes: No, literally, it was the flavor that I wanted to have in my mouth. There were a few technical issues with the gas, like we needed to pump more fire into it, but they flavor was there.

Tania Apolinar: So was I like, damn, dude. No, I respect you. You know? [LAUGHS] You know what you're doing. 

Ham El-Waylly: How much relief did you feel when you made the first al pastor and you tasted it and you were like oh it’s good, thank god?

Giovanni Cervantes: I felt like everything was worth it, like it was — I knew people were going to be happy and I knew that all this effort that we were putting into this that was making sense.

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Ham El-Waylly: The trompo on the weekend is 150 pounds of cut up pork shoulder. 

Sohla El-Waylly: But it's like the size of a person?

Ham El-Waylly: It's 150 pounds of meat.

Sohla El-Waylly: Dude ...

Ham El-Waylly: But it's really compact. It's really wide. It's really special.

Sohla El-Waylly: How tall is it?

Ham El-Waylly: It’s about two and a half feet tall.

Sohla El-Waylly: So kind of like our dog, like ...

Ham El-Waylly: Yes.

Sohla El-Waylly: Our bulldog Clementine, she's very, very dense.

Ham El-Waylly: Very dense. Like you look at her and then she looks like she'd be pretty easy to pick up, but then it's like trying to pick up a cement block. So they get the pork shoulder and then with a long, sharp knife, they kind of cut folds into it. So it's almost like a book. And then they butterfly ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Wait, wait. Cut folds into ...

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Like a zig-zag?

Ham El-Waylly: Like a zigzag. And then they keep opening it up. So it's like you're butterfly, this entire pork shoulder. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Ohhhh. So you take one pork shoulder and you turn into one strip of pork.

Ham El-Waylly: One sheet. 

Sohla El-Waylly: That's crazy. 

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. So they're going for two to three millimeters thick. Like the knife skills that it takes to make that trompo is like sushi level knife work. The biggest difference between how Gio makes his al pastor and how I used to make the one at Empellon … We’d use a deli slicer to cut the pork shoulder into thin even slices, a lot like the grocery store slicer when you go up and get a quarter pound of mortadella. It took the knife skills out of the equation.

Sohla El-Waylly: And with a slicer, anyone can do it. So you have all these long sheets of pork shoulder and then that gets marinated in like a giant cambro or something.

Ham El-Waylly: Not even. So they add the salt on it, kind of like a quick dry brine — oh, you're a big proponent of dry brining.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] I love dry brining.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, it like — it kind of soaks up some moisture, turns into a liquid brine, and then gets reabsorbed back into the meat, which seasons, tenderizes, and improves browning.

Sohla El-Waylly: You've heard this spiel from me so many times.

[LAUGHING]  

Ham El-Waylly: And then you do a liquid marinade. So their marinade is 85 percent vinegar. And all that acid is also gonna do a lot of work on the protein strands. And then they build the trompo on the vertical spit. It takes them four hours to build one trompo.

Sohla El-Waylly: Your arms must get so tired. Four hours of just reaching.

Ham El-Waylly: I feel like that's a good, that's a good workout. We'll call it hot trompo.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS]

Ham El-Waylly: Everyone has like a little steak that comes out into the ground. We all sit on the floor.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: And instead of trompo, it's like sheets of felt. So it feels really nice on your hand ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Hey ....

Ham El-Waylly: And it's really soothing.

Sohla El-Waylly: That sounds nice.

Ham El-Waylly: And then you just — you layer and then you slowly build your own — your self-healing trompo.

Sohla El-Waylly: It feels like it would be very calm ...

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Meditative. And you get like a good arm workout.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. It's perfect.

Sohla El-Waylly: It's perfect.

Ham El-Waylly: I'm gonna write this down.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: Please keep this out. This is gonna be a personal business plan.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

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Ham El-Waylly: Gio’s big thing is that you slice directly from the trompo right into the tortilla. 

Giovanni Cervantes: We wanted to make it exactly how I like it to be done and how I remember it. Not many people does it that way be because it's way easier just to slice it and put it on a grill or put it on a flat top, like a griddle or whatever, and just like leave it, ending up it being cooked there. And I feel like it just ... it just cancel all the charming of the whole thing. You know, like ...  

Ham El-Waylly: Totally agree with you. That's how I feel about fried chicken. There's some people who are like, no, we just fry the chicken and then you finish it in the oven. It's not fried chicken. It's not fried chicken anymore.

Giovanni Cervantes: Yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: It's fried, then baked chicken. 

Giovanni Cervantes: Yeah. 

Ham El-Waylly: If it's fried chicken, you fry it all the way, 

Giovanni Cervantes: It tastes so different. 

Ham El-Waylly: It's so different. So al pastor, if you’re gonna hit it on the flat top, you're just evaporating all that work that you ...

Giovanni Cervantes: Exactly.  

Ham El-Waylly: Took to put into it.

Giovanni Cervantes: Exactly that.

Ham El-Waylly: You've heard my rant on fried chicken many times before.

Sohla El-Waylly: Many time.

Ham El-Waylly: Almost as many times as I've heard you talk about dry brining.

Sohla El-Waylly: Many, many times. [LAUGHS] And every time, it's with the same passion and vigor. He really hates fried, then baked fried chicken.

Ham El-Waylly: I hate it. It ruins it. It ruins it. So the pineapple ...

Sohla El-Waylly: My favorite. I've been dying to know.

Ham El-Waylly: Really, the only part of the pastor that you care about.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh.

Ham El-Waylly: So they — at Ramirez, they have like this giant knife, almost machete like, and then they use the tip to cut, like a flat slab of pineapple that they put on top. It's almost meaty when you bite into it.

Sohla El-Waylly: Hmm. I think I'm gonna like this taco.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, I really think ... I ... Now that ... now that I'm thinking about it, it does respect the pineapple.

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh. [LAUGHS]

Ham El-Waylly: In a lot of places, people do treat it kind of like just a garnish.

Sohla El-Waylly: Like a salsa or something.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah. Where you just like, here's a little strip, here's a delicate tender dice. Here's a brunois of pineapple. No, this is a chunk that you can bite into.

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Ham El-Waylly: What are your thoughts on pastor now? 

Sohla El-Waylly: I think it's my favorite taco even before this, right?

Ham El-Waylly: We don't travel for a lot of things. We will travel for a good taco and a good pizza. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Those are the two things that we'll leave our neighborhood for.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, so I can feel that you're a little mad at me.

Sohla El-Waylly: You had tacos without me.

Ham El-Waylly: Yes. I understand, but it was for research. It was for for research. And it wasn't just me. Everyone here had tacos without you. We all did. We all had tacos without you.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] Clearly, I'm the only one that didn't have tacos.

Ham El-Waylly: We're gonna fix that.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay, that's good.

Ham El-Waylly: We're gonna fix it.

Sohla El-Waylly: I don't think that we could move forward otherwise.

Ham El-Waylly: In our relationship?

Sohla El-Waylly: Uh-huh

Ham El-Waylly: So I'm making some al pastor tacos when we get home over charcoal El Tizoncito style.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay. I'm excited.

Ham El-Waylly: But we're also gonna try a shawarma and some al pastor tacos from Taqueria Ramirez ...

Sohla El-Waylly: Oh, bonus!

Ham El-Waylly: Side by side. So we can also see where it started, where it ended up.

Sohla El-Waylly: I'm so ready.

Ham El-Waylly: Are you ready? 

Sohla El-Waylly: I'm so ready. 

Ham El-Waylly: We’ll do that, after the break.

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+++ BREAK +++

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Sohla El-Waylly: Welcome back to Deep Dish, I'm Sohla. 

Ham El-Waylly: And I'm Ham.

Sohla El-Waylly: And hey, Ham! Did you know that I have a cookbook called Start Here?

Ham El-Waylly: You mean, the cookbook's that's perfect for both beginners and advanced cooks, because there's something to learn for everybody?

Sohla El-Waylly: Absolutely. Check it out where books are sold. All right, let's get back to the show.

Sohla El-Waylly: Ham, how’s the grill looking?

[GRILLING SOUNDS]

Ham El-Waylly: Checking on the coals, making sure they're nice and hot.

Sohla El-Waylly: You didn’t want to rig a vertical coal …

Ham El-Waylly: Like Doña Conchita?

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: No. [LAUGHS] So with the right marinade on your pork, if you cut it the right way, cooked over charcoal just gives it, you know, a little bit of smokiness, a little bit of extra pizzazz. You can easily do it in the broiler. It'll come out just fine.

[SIZZLING GRILL]

Ham El-Waylly: So I used Alex Stupak's recipe from Tacos, Recipes, and Provocations. But from all the research, I found out that achiote is a core part of the al pastor. And the recipe for this uses more of like a general adobo, which didn't have achiote in it. So I used that recipe but added achiote to it to make this al pastor marinade. So in the marinade there's some dried Morita chilies, some guajillo, apple cider vinegar, garlic, Mexican oregano, and the achiote — and boom. Tacos al pastor at home, baby.

Sohla El-Waylly: Boom. It looks really nice and red — very deep color. And that's the achiote?

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, that's the achiote

Sohla El-Waylly: So we make a lot of stuff at home, but we've never made al pastor. 

Ham El-Waylly: Yes, I'm making pastor at home, but this is not really something anyone would do in Mexico City. You can't compare grilling a piece of meat to, like, lightly curing it, marinating it and then stacking it and then cooking that all together because it kind of like is self basting and cooks really slowly. It's a completely different experience and texture.

Sohla El-Waylly: But if you don't have an al pastor place near you, this is a really good option.

Ham El-Waylly: Yes, that is a good point.

[GOING INDOORS]

Ham El-Waylly: While the meat’s resting I’m gonna chop up some cilantro and onions.

[CHOPPING CILANTRO AND ONIONS]

Sohla El-Waylly: You gotta see leaves.

Ham El-Waylly: You got to see leaves and like a little tender stem in there? There’s nothing wrong with that. So when I reheat corn tortillas, I like to give it a little splash of water before it goes on a nice hot surface, because that kind of helps it steam and warm evenly.

Sohla El-Waylly: Steam and a sear at the same time.

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

[HEATING TORTILLAS]

Ham El-Waylly: I'm building our tacos. We’ve got the Taqueria Ramirez al pastor, our home version al pastor, salsa Roja, spicy red salsa, some salsa verde, a guacamole-ish style salsa, some chopped up onion and cilantro, and a nice chunk of pineapple on top.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay, where do we start?

Ham El-Waylly: Let's start with the Ramirez.

Sohla El-Waylly: Ramirez, okay.

Ham El-Waylly: Start with the Ramirez. 

[PAUSE TO EAT]

Sohla El-Waylly: That’s really good.

Ham El-Waylly: Even reheated, it's so good. 

Sohla El-Waylly: I think this is easily the best al pastor I've ever had and it's reheated. It doesn't even make sense. The texture on the meat is so cool. You get that really nice crunchy char, but nothing has dried out because of that dry brine.

Ham El-Waylly: Right? Yeah, it's really ... It's really special. I feel like the texture on the meat is what really stood out to me. It's like whoa, it's like really pleasing to eat.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: It's, like, really fun to bite into.

Sohla El-Waylly: Okay, I get why everyone keeps telling me to go here.

Ham El-Waylly: It's so good. I've already eaten my whole taco. 

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS} Okay.

Ham El-Waylly: Hard act to follow, but ...

Sohla El-Waylly: It is. I'm sorry. 

Ham El-Waylly: Let's try. Let's try the home version. It's not bad. It gives you a hint of pastor.

Sohla El-Waylly: It tastes like a pastor-seasoned pork steak.

Ham El-Waylly: Yes.

Sohla El-Waylly: Because the flavor is really good, but the texture is just — it doesn't compare. This is like pieces of steak. Are we going into shawarma? 

Ham El-Waylly: Let's do it. So here we have a lamb shawarma. It's, like, pretty packed.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: There's a lot of meat in there. And then there's, like, a lettuce, tomato salad and a little tahini to pour on top. 

Sohla El-Waylly: The meat’s got that shreddy texture that you get with the al pastor.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah, like that shavings of meat.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: So this was definitely on a spit. 

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm.

Ham El-Waylly: You want to go in first?

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, I’ll do it. Okay.

Ham El-Waylly: Oh, that’s a big bite.

Sohla El-Waylly: [LAUGHS] It's good. But I think that after the Ramirez pastor, the meat is a little dry to me. 

Ham El-Waylly: Because you have that high bar.

Sohla El-Waylly: Yeah, yeah, but it's — it's really good. Like, if I ate it first, I wouldn't be feeling this way. We went in the wrong order.

Ham El-Waylly: We should've ended with Ramirez.

Sohla El-Waylly: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It is cool to see the inspiration. 

Ham El-Waylly: Side by side.

Sohla El-Waylly: Side by side, yeah.

Ham El-Waylly: Especially, looking at how the meat is cut.

Sohla El-Waylly: Visually, so many similarities. But obviously, this is lamb, so the meat fibers are different.

Ham El-Waylly: Mm-hm.

Sohla El-Waylly: But yeah, we can see the progress of history.

Ham El-Waylly: You can see it. It's like someone put this down there, like make that Mexican.

Sohla El-Waylly: Well, that's why it's like whenever people move to different places, they take their food with them and it's really cool how it evolves, just, like. naturally.

Ham El-Waylly: Yeah.

Sohla El-Waylly: So this is like a perfect evolution. It's a totally different thing, but you see where it started. 

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Sohla El-Waylly: So I guess I forgive you for not taking me to Taqueria Ramirez ...

Ham El-Waylly: Huh?

Sohla El-Waylly: You brought it to me.

Ham El-Waylly: I brought it to you. I brought it to you because what do you — what's the one thing you like more than pastor tacos?

Sohla El-Waylly: Staying at home.

Ham El-Waylly: Not leaving the house.

[LAUGHING]

Ham El-Waylly: Thanks to Inga Hernandez, Omar Gonzalez Lopez, Giovanni Cervantes, and Tania Apolinar. And if you’re in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, make sure to check out Taqueria Ramirez. If you want the recipe for the homemade version of tacos al pastor, we’ll put the recipe up on our Instagram. You can find me on Instagram @hamegram.

Sohla El-Waylly: And I’m @sohlae.

Ham El-Waylly: We’ll be back in two weeks for our final episode of Deep Dish. Follow or subscribe to The Sporkful, so you don’t miss that episode. And while you’re waiting for that one, check out The Sporkful’s episode on why Hibachi is so complicated. That’s in your feed right now.

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