My favorite Mexican place makes its own tortillas, and frijoles cooked with lard
More than 100 restaurants in Western New York sell tacos.
Only one makes tacos like Taqueria Los Mayas.
Housemade tortillas. Carefully finished fillings. Curated salsa and topping bar.
As testament to its drawing power, Taqueria Los Mayas doesn’t take reservations. Regulars show up early to make sure, get their name in, and retire to the bar or their cars to wait for the call. They are largely sanguine with this arrangement, because they know what they’re waiting for.
Since 2017, this Cheektowaga restaurant has been the closest thing to a Mexican taqueria in Western New York.
Jorge Anguiano was born in Mexico, and spent years working for Mexican restaurants in the United States that made money serving gringo Mex. You know the deal: Canned queso, factory tortillas, three kinds of salsa, and two main taco fillings, ground beef and chopped chicken breast.
In Cheektowaga, his family found a restaurant to make the tacos they wanted to eat. Serving through the pandemic, Taqueria Los Mayas won a steady audience. Its cheerfully hustling staff play as a team, and are determined to please. The devil is in the details, but so are the angels, and when plates land, the hosannas soar.
Revelations start with fresh corn tortillas, cradling meats carefully cooked. Most local places scoop limpid taco fixings from steamtable to tortilla. At Taqueria Los Mayas, the al pastor ($4.25), chile-marinated pork with pineapple, arrives caramelized at the edges, properly finished on the plancha.
Lengua ($5.99), tongue, arrives as impossibly rich pot roast. A breakfast taco, of chorizo, queso fresco, and a fried egg ($4.75) can be ordered all day long.
Birria con consomme are dipping tacos, braised beef or chicken in tortillas fried in fat from the braise, with cheese. They’re served with braise broth for your dunking pleasure, intense soup whose leftovers I pour over my rice.
Buche, tripe with the barnyard braised away, gets crisped in fat to set its funk against racy chorizo ($4.75). One bite triggers a beatific moment of carnivore zen, and respect for the cooks determined to honor more of the animal. If that’s not enough, it has something of a reputation as effective hangover medicine. (Your headache may vary. Prior performance is no guarantee of future results.)
Besides, you might be avoiding offal. Or pork. Or animals entirely. Taqueria Las Mayas has thought of you, too.
Nopales & papas ($4.50), offer you a chance to eat some cactus, which reminds me of roasted green bell pepper, with homefries. Another vegan taco is zucchini & corn ($4.50), seared and charred on the plancha. Vegetable fajitas are also available, and El Vegan burrito ($16.99), with zucchini, corn, guacamole, and rice.
Which is relatively slim pickings for vegetable-based lifeforms. But you do want to consider another Taqueria Los Mayas difference: its broad-spectrum, well-tended salsa and toppings bar.
Mexican tacos are handed over plain, filling on tortillas, for the customer to dress to their liking.
Not just chopped onion and cilantro, lime wedges, red sauce and green sauce. Onions pickled with habaneros. Five salsas, from cool avocado-based to roasted and chile-involved numbers that should probably be applied with an eyedropper.
You can make that cactus and potato considerably more interesting, if you want. Do not neglect your pilgrimage, for it confers the final blessing on your taco. If you don’t feel like making the schlep, a friend can fill plastic ramekins to your order.
Mexican taco culture empowers eaters to chase their own dragons, not accept one-size-fits-all formats. Accents and accoutrements, a paintbox full of flavors and textures to customize that trophy tortilla, is what makes tacos shine.
Here, the choriqueso is chorizo sausage ($11.99) and actual cheese, which is why you get Instagrammable cheese pulls with each chip. Queso out of a can, engineered for pourability, won’t do that.
Frijoles charros ($10.99) are beans enriched with hot dogs, bacon, and sliced jalapenos, topped with queso fresco.
As befitting a place that draws a blue-collar crowd, Taqueria Los Mayas offers lunch specials at $11.99-$13.99, from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday. Papas con chorizo ($12.99), one lunch plate, is the laborer’s friend. Potatoes fried with chorizo, fried egg, rice, beans corn or flour tortillas. That’s a lot of carbs, but remember, that salsa bar is waiting to take any dish halfway to saladhood.
Chilaquiles rojos ($18.95) take housemade tortilla chips and soaks them in sauce, with queso fresco, rice and beans, and a fried egg.
My usual plate is Los Cuates ($19.99), a pair of burritos, chicken and beef, in rojo and verde. Taqueria Los Mayas’ versions of green and red taste better than usual, brighter herbal accents in the green, and deep, resonant chile notes in the red, with some chipotle smoke in the back.
Margaritas and cervezas flow from the full bar, with $28 margarita pitchers. Agua frescas ($5.99), Mexican soft drinks, are available in flavors including tamarindo, and the rice-pudding-shake-like horchata. Jarritos fruit sodas ($3.55) are offered in 10 flavors, including guava, mango, strawberry, and grapefruit.
Flan ($6.99) in bittersweet caramel, fried ice cream and achingly sweet tres leches cake (both $7.99), and churros ($8.99) are sturdy, straight-up sweets that get the job done.
I doff my sombrero to Anguiano and his posse, and to the orneriness in him that wasn’t going to settle for making a living at gringo Mex. In Taqueria Los Mayas, that spirit has blossomed into something we call all celebrate: the blessing of better tacos for Buffalo, New York.
3525 Genesee St., Cheektowaga, taqueria-los-mayas.co, 716-906-3730
Hours: 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Closed Sunday, Monday.
Prices: tacos $3.75-$5.99, lunch specials $11.99-$13.99, entrees $15.99-$32.99
Parking: lot
Wheelchair accessible: yes
Gluten-free: ask server
Vegan: tacos in corn and zucchini, cactus and potato, El Vegan burrito
#30#
