Tostada
Flat fried crispy tortilla; topped with beans, meat, lettuce, cheese, crema. Open-faced, eaten like a pizza. Technically a flat open sand...
Los Antojitos de Masa
Tostada de Tinga
A flat plane with no walls: a corn tortilla fried until it shatters, smeared with beans, crowned with smoky chipotle chicken tinga, and eaten in a forward lean before the wet topping wins.
Tostada de Cueritos
Tostada with pickled pork skin (cueritos).
Tlayuda
A 30-to-40-centimetre dried corn round, brushed with asiento, layered with black beans and quesillo, folded over a meat, and set back across the wood-fired comal until the cheese ropes melt.
Tlayuda de Tasajo
The beef-led Oaxacan tlayuda: a white-corn tortilla past 40 cm, brushed with asiento, floored with black beans and quesillo, crowned with smoky charcoal-grilled tasajo, folded over the coals.
Tlayuda de Chorizo
Of the Oaxacan tlayudas the chorizo one is the greasiest in the way you want: the sausage renders and its red fat runs down into the black beans, seasoning the base before you reach the meat.
Tlayuda de Cecina
Oaxaca's meter-wide toasted tortilla layered with asiento, black beans, and stringy quesillo, topped with thin chile-rubbed cecina grilled hard over coals, then folded over the heat.
Sope
Thick corn masa base with pinched edges; topped with beans, meat, lettuce, cheese, crema. Like an open-faced gordita.
Sope de Tinga
A sope de tinga sets smoky chipotle-braised chicken inside a fried masa wall over a bed of beans, the rim built to hold a sauce that would otherwise flood the plate.
Sope de Chorizo
The sope de chorizo is run by rendered fat: Mexican chorizo fried loose until its red grease sinks through the beans and seasons the thick masa rim from above.
Picada
A Veracruz picada is a thick corn-masa round with a thumb-pinched rim that pens in a loose salsa, finished with queso fresco and onion, eaten hot at a Gulf-coast breakfast stand.
Pellizcada
The pellizcada: a thick griddled corn-masa round, its rim pinched up into a low wall, topped open-faced with lard, salsa, crumbled queso, and onion. The pinch, from pellizcar, holds the load.
Memela
Thick oval corn masa base; topped with beans, salsa, cheese. Similar to sope but different shape/region.
Huarache
The huarache is a long, flat oval of corn masa named for a sandal, dressed across its whole surface so the base is half the eating rather than a wrapper for the topping.
Huarache con Suadero
The huarache con suadero sets confited rose-colored beef on a sandal-shaped masa oval, a form Carmen Gómez Medina invented at a Mexico City canal stall in the early 1930s.
Huarache con Bistec
The huarache con bistec is the steak build of the sandal-shaped masa platform: thin beef seared fast and chopped small, pinned to a long bean-smeared oval of corn.
Gordita
A gordita is a plump corn-masa round split along the edge into a hot pocket and filled; the older closed cousin of the tortilla, named for its thickness and made across central and northern Mexico.
Gordita de Horno
Baked gordita; Northern style, wheat-based.
Gordita de Chicharrón
The gordita de chicharrón fills the split masa pocket with pork crackling stewed soft in salsa, so a wet, gelatinous, porky core meets a firm warm corn shell that must hold it without dissolving.
Chalupa
In USA: boat-shaped fried flatbread with toppings. In Mexico: different regional preparations—Puebla chalupas are smaller, flatter, toppe...