When Bertha Garcia was a kid, she used to help her aunt sell barbacoa on blue corn tortillas at an open-air restaurant on the road just outside La Marquesa National Park. Situated between Mexico City and the satellite city of Toluca, it was a rustic, woodsy spot where they also made bone marrow tacos grilled on the plancha with marjoram, earthy epazote, or minty yerba buena. They also griddled tlacoyos, which, back then, were ovoids of the same masa azul, hand-pattied and stuffed with creamy requesón cheese and mashed fava beans, topped usually only with guajillo salsa, onions, and cheese.
And then, suddenly, six months after opening, Garcia was gone, back to Mexico to tend to her sick father. She’d handed the business off to a part-time employee, who switched meat suppliers and raised the prices, and by the time her father had recovered and she’d returned home, the new boss had had enough: “He told me he didn’t want the place because he was not making the money.” Garcia’s father, then recuperating in Texas, urged her to get back in the game.
In tune with the times, Garcia builds pyramids of protein, lettuce, onion, tomato, cotija, and lashes of crema on the flat, chewy masa, its equator a thin layer of refried pintos rather than favas or black beans.
5200 S. Archer 773-498-6679 xocome-antojeria.business.site
