Guide · Tacos
Types of Tacos: What Each One Is, How It's Cooked and Where It's From
Al pastor is a method. Canasta is a basket. Lengua is a body part. Once you know how tacos get their names, any taquería menu makes sense. The chart below has 16 of them.
A taco is a corn or flour tortilla, filled, then folded or rolled. Mexico's big food dictionary, Larousse Cocina, calls it the most eaten antojito, or snack, in the country, and gives the rule behind everything below: a taco is usually named for its filling, its texture, or the way it's made or sold.
| Taco | What it is | How it's cooked | Where it's from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al pastorOn our menu | Pork in a chile-and-spice marinade, stacked on a vertical spit and shaved thin. Pineapple, onion, cilantro. | Vertical spit | Roots in Lebanese immigration to Mexico. Monterrey calls it de trompo |
| Árabe | The same kind of spit pork in a soft pita-style bread instead of a tortilla. Salsa and lime at the table. | Vertical spit | Puebla |
| CarnitasOn our menu | Small pieces of pork cooked in the pig's own lard until soft. | Cooked in lard | Michoacán |
| Carne asadaOn our menu | Beef grilled over charcoal or on a griddle, then chopped. No single required cut. | Grilled | Northern Mexico |
| BirriaOn our menu | Meat rubbed with chile marinade and cooked slowly. Goat or lamb in Jalisco, usually beef in the dipped taco. | Stewed | Jalisco. The dipped taco is from Tijuana |
| Suadero | Fatty beef from just inside the hide, kept in its own fat on a domed griddle, browned and chopped. | Cooked in fat | Eaten across Mexico |
| Barbacoa | Lamb or goat wrapped in maguey leaves and cooked in an earth oven. | Earth oven | Central Mexico: Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla and nearby |
| Cochinita pibil | Pork rubbed with red achiote paste, traditionally cooked underground and shredded. Pickled red onion on top. | Earth oven | Yucatán Peninsula |
| Pescado | Battered, fried fish, made as you order. Shredded cabbage and salsa on top. | Deep-fried | Baja California |
| Canasta | Tortillas filled with potato, beans, chicharrón or adobo, packed in a covered basket so they steam themselves. | Steamed | Sold by bicycle vendors in Mexico City |
| Cabeza | Steamed meat from a cow's head: cheek, snout, tongue. Small tortillas, onion, cilantro, green salsa. | Steamed | The Bajío, in central Mexico |
| Lengua | Beef tongue boiled until very soft, peeled and sliced. Usually the priciest of the head-meat tacos. | Boiled | Across Mexico |
| Dorado | Rolled or folded and fried crisp. Chicken, barbacoa, beef or potato inside; cream, cheese and lettuce on top. | Deep-fried | Across Mexico. Sinaloa serves it in tomato broth |
| FlautaOn our menu | A very thin fried taco, 8 to 16 inches long in the dictionary's count, named for the flute. | Deep-fried | Across Mexico |
| Campechano | The word just means mixed: two or more fillings on one taco. | Varies | Across Mexico |
| Hard shell | A U-shaped fried corn shell with seasoned ground beef, cheese and lettuce. | Deep-fried | United States |
Where does the word taco come from?
Probably from a silver mine. Historian Jeffrey Pilcher's explanation is that Mexican miners wrapped gunpowder in paper and pushed the charge into a hole in the rock, and that charge was a taco. A tortilla rolled around a little filling looked a lot like one, and miners took those into the shaft for lunch.
Pilcher tells the podcast Gastropod that the food word first shows up in the mid-1800s, at a mine called Real del Monte, about 60 miles northeast of Mexico City. People had been wrapping food in tortillas long before there was a word for it. The Mexica called the tortilla tlaxcalli.
Corn or flour?
Corn is the default across most of Mexico. Flour tortillas are the most common kind in the north. Larousse dates the arrival of wheat to 1543 and says flour tortillas probably started late in that century, mostly outside the old Mesoamerican world where corn already ruled. A standard tortilla runs about 5 to 7 inches. Taquerías often use smaller ones, called tortillas taqueras, which is why you order several.
The crunchy taco has a New York paper trail
Nobody can say who fried the first crisp taco. Fried tacos were already around in Mexican American kitchens, and different sources credit different people. But the first patent for making the shell is clear. On July 21, 1947, Juvencio Maldonado, a Mexican restaurateur living in New York, filed for a "form for frying tortillas to make fried tacos." He got US Patent 2,506,305 on May 2, 1950. The fast food chains came later.
Which taco should you try first?
These are our picks, and you can argue with them. If you want something sweet and a little spicy, get al pastor. If you want rich pork with crisp edges, get carnitas. If you like a dip, get birria and read how to eat it with consomé. Fish is the one to pick when it's hot out. Cabeza and lengua are worth it once you stop thinking about the word. And if you only know the hard shell, don't give it up. Just try one soft taco next to it.
Want the longer story on a single taco? We have guides to carne asada, carnitas and quesabirria.
Which of these can you get on our roof?
A short list, so most of this chart you'll have to find elsewhere. You won't find suadero, cabeza or lengua up here; for those, go find a taquería. The list changes when the kitchen changes it.
Three corn tortilla tacos per order, with creamy zucchini sauce, chile de árbol sauce, onion, cilantro & lime. Flour tortillas +2.
On Tuesdays: Unlimited tacos, $25 per person for 90 minutes, with a live DJ on the rooftop. How Taco Tuesday works, and ask us when you book which tacos are on the list.
Taco questions
How many types of tacos are there?
There's no fixed count. Tacos are named for the filling, the texture or how they're made and sold, so the list keeps growing. This page covers 16 you're likely to meet on a menu in Mexico or the US.
What are traditional Mexican tacos?
A small corn tortilla with one filling, usually meat, plus chopped onion, cilantro, lime and salsa. Al pastor, carnitas, suadero, barbacoa and canasta are all traditional. Larousse Cocina calls the taco the most eaten antojito, or snack, in Mexico.
What's the difference between a taco and a burrito?
A taco is usually a small corn tortilla, folded and open. A burrito is a large flour tortilla, about 12 inches across, wrapped closed around the filling. Larousse places the burrito's origin in Ciudad Juárez, on the US border.
Are hard-shell tacos Mexican?
The U-shaped shell with ground beef and lettuce is a US tradition. Mexico does fry tacos, but tacos dorados are usually rolled and fried with the filling inside, which is a different thing.
What is a street taco?
On American menus it usually means the Mexican taquería style: a small corn tortilla, chopped meat, onion, cilantro, lime and salsa. In Mexico nobody needs the word.
Which tacos do you serve at Cantina Rooftop?
Right now: Birria, Al Pastor, Carne Asada, Carnitas and Taco Vegetariano. See every taco with prices.
