How to Order at a Taquería in the US: A Glossary of Meats

Asada, al pastor, lengua, buche, campechano. What each cut is, how the counter actually works, and the four words that get you through the whole order.

A taquería is not a Mexican restaurant with a shorter menu. It is a different kind of business: a counter, a griddle, a vertical spit if there is one, and a board of meats listed by name with a single price. Our US directory lists 241 of them among 630 active Mexican restaurants, and they are the places where visitors most often order badly — not because the food is intimidating, but because the menu assumes you already know the vocabulary.

Here is the whole transaction, in order. You read the board, you say how many of what, you pay, you wait for your name or your number, and you dress the tacos yourself at the salsa bar. Nobody is coming to your table. The tacos arrive small, two or three bites each, usually doubled up on two tortillas, and three to five per person is a normal order.

The board, translated

On the board	What it is	If you have never had it
Asada	Grilled beef, usually skirt or chuck, chopped on the griddle	The safe first order. Ask for it with onion and cilantro.
Al pastor	Pork marinated in chile and achiote, cooked on a vertical spit (trompo) with pineapple	Order this if the spit is turning. If there is no trompo, it is griddle pork with the same marinade.
Carnitas	Pork simmered in its own fat until tender, then crisped	Ask for maciza (lean) or surtida (mixed) if they offer the choice.
Chorizo	Fresh Mexican pork sausage, crumbled, deep red from chile	Nothing like Spanish chorizo. Fattier, softer, spicier.
Suadero	Beef flank confited slowly, soft and faintly sweet	A Mexico City staple and the sleeper pick on most boards.
Barbacoa	Slow-steamed beef or lamb, often weekends only	If you see it on a Sunday, order it.
Lengua	Beef tongue, poached then griddled	Tastes like the richest pot roast you have had. Not gamey.
Cabeza	Beef head meat, steamed; sometimes broken out as cachete (cheek)	Soft, gelatinous, deeply beefy.
Tripa	Beef small intestine, fried crisp	Strongly flavored. Order one, not three.
Buche	Pork esophagus, chewy and rich	For the second visit.
Birria	Chile-braised beef or goat, served with consomé for dipping	The quesabirria version adds melted cheese.
Campechano	A mix, usually asada plus chorizo or tripa	The answer to "I cannot decide".
Pescado / camarón	Battered fish or shrimp, Baja style, with cabbage and crema	Common on the West Coast and in Texas border cities.

The four phrases that cover the whole order

You do not need Spanish, and in most of the country the counter speaks English. But four phrases make the order go faster and get you what you want. Con todo means with everything, which at a taquería means chopped white onion and cilantro, nothing else — not lettuce, not cheese, not sour cream. Sin cebolla means hold the onion. Doble tortilla asks for two tortillas per taco, which matters if the meat is wet. And para llevar means to go.

Two more worth knowing: a gringa is al pastor with cheese on a flour tortilla, and a mulita is meat and cheese between two corn tortillas, griddled. Neither is on every board, and on the boards where they appear both tend to be the most food for the money.

The salsa bar, and why it is not a dare

Most taquerías put out two to five salsas plus pickled onions or carrots, radishes, limes and sometimes a bowl of cooked nopal or whole roasted green onions (cebollitas). The red salsa is not automatically the hot one; a red made from dried guajillo is often mild and a green made from raw serrano can be brutal. Spoon a little on the edge of the plate and taste before you commit a taco to it.

Lime goes on everything, in small amounts. Radishes and the cold pickles are there to reset your mouth between meats, which is the whole reason people order three different tacos instead of three of the same.

What the prices on these places look like

Taquerías are the cheapest segment of the Mexican directory in the US. Of the 630 active restaurants we list, 224 sit in Google's lowest price tier — the single dollar sign, which is Google's own scale and not ours — and taquerías are heavily represented in that group. Nothing about the price tier says anything about the kitchen: some of the highest-rated rooms in the directory are also the cheapest.

City	Taquerías in our directory	Of which in Google's "$" tier
Chicago	16	13
Dallas	14	8
Las Vegas	12	11
New York	10	5
Miami	10	5
Los Angeles	9	4
Austin	9	7

Three things that are not rude

Pointing at the board is fine. Ordering one taco to try a meat before committing to three is fine, and the counter has seen it a thousand times. Asking what today's barbacoa is, or whether the al pastor is off the spit, is a normal question and often gets you a better answer than the board — many places run weekend-only meats that never make it onto the printed menu.

What does cause friction: ordering at the salsa bar instead of the register, taking a seat before paying at a counter-service place, and asking for substitutions inside a taco that has a fixed build. Al pastor comes with onion, cilantro and pineapple; a request to remove the pineapple is fine, a request to add cheese and lettuce turns it into something the kitchen does not make.

Tipping is normal at a counter — a dollar or two per person in the jar, or the standard percentage if there is table service. Many taquerías in our directory are small family operations where the person taking the order is also cooking.

Where to practice

A few taquerías from our directory, with the Google rating and review count exactly as Google reports them — we have not eaten at them and we do not rank them: Tacos My Guey in Orlando, 4.9 (4,920 reviews); Tacos Amuco in Orlando, 4.9 (987 reviews); Rreal Tacos in Atlanta, 4.8 (15,815 reviews); Tacotarian in Las Vegas, 4.8 (1,738 reviews); Space City Birria in Houston, 4.8 (1,737 reviews); Autentica Taqueria in Miami, 4.8 (1,671 reviews).

The full list is in our US restaurant directory, filterable by city. And if you would rather build the same tacos at home, start with Tacos al Pastor, Carnitas Tacos and Suadero Tacos.