FROM JUNE 2024 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

Even when Taqueria el Pastorcito first popped up on Bloor Street West a few months ago, it was almost always full, bustling with diners and music. If owners Rocio Lopez and Carlos Castro are working, there’s usually traditional Norteño or Banda playing at a respectable volume. If one of their children is in – eldest Carlos, sister Keiry, or the youngest, Julian – it’s usually reggaeton at a slightly louder volume. On the weekends, a mariachi group, Los Aventureros, plays impromptu sets, serenading customers for tips.

There are only a handful of tacos on the menu, including the popular open-faced volcánes, filled with either chorizo, sirloin, mushrooms or lengua (beef tongue), best topped with queso fried on the plancha. But most of the Latino clientele comes for the restaurant’s namesake, the el pastor-style pork cooked on the trompo, or “spinning top.”

Most histories trace the origin of el pastor, or shepherd-style, tacos to Lebanese immigrants who arrived in Mexico at the turn of the last century, bringing along their tradition of cooking meat on a vertical spit.

The robust flavour of the guajillo and morita chiles in the marinade comes through in the slow-cooked pork, shaved off to order. Don’t be daunted by the unctuous braised lengua, cooked down, more tender than the sirloin, and worth a try.

Lopez is originally from Irapuato, a city in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. There, she ran her own el pastor-style taqueria for 10 years. Castro’s father, Arturo, also ran one, for 35 years. You can taste in the couple’s homestyle food all the lessons learned from those years of service.

Lopez says that while you can find el pastor tacos everywhere in Mexico – “in Jalisco, Calisco, Oaxaca, Tijuana” – each place finds a way of doing things a bit differently. She chalks part of that up to salsas and marinades, calling salsa the crown of the taco.

After placing an order at el Pastorcito, a server brings out an array of brightly coloured ones to the table in cold metal bowls. There’s a salsa verde made with serrano chiles, tomatillos and cilantro; a creamy guacamole; a balanced salsa roja made with morita chiles and tomato; a bright yellow pineapple salsa with flecks of red habanero pepper; and a bright orange, very spicy salsa that is a distinctly Irapuato style that Lopez calls chimichurri, made with a mix of arbol chiles. All of these are complimentary. As one customer puts it, “Free guac is a political statement.”

When dishes come to the table, they’re accompanied by another delicious little touch: marinated grilled jalapeno and onions.

In their search for a space, Lopez and Castro were drawn to the intersection of Bloor and Dufferin. Toronto’s West End has a Little Jamaica, a Little Italy and a Little Portugal, but if any area were worthy of the title Little Mexico, it would be this one. As Lopez explains, Mexicans have their own name for the area. “They call it DFerin,” she says with a grin. “They say, ‘I’m going to take a walk on DFerin,’” noting that the DF stands for Distrito Federal, Mexico City’s official name until 2016. There are Mexican grocers like Latin World nearby, she points out, money transfer businesses that are used to send money home, and proximity to the Dufferin Mall, where one can often be served in Spanish. Nearby St. Anthony’s Parish, the Roman Catholic Church at Bloor and Rusholme, offers Mass and confession in Spanish.

The violinist Sebastián Martinez, at 26, the youngest member of Los Aventureros, has been a mariachi since he was 17. Martinez has been in Toronto for 11 months, after moving from Matamoros in northern Mexico, close to Brownsville, Texas. “It’s an adventure being here, because it’s something new for us. We love when we see people so excited when they see us playing music,” he says, shortly before being stopped for a photo, which happens frequently.

But what he likes best about playing el Pastorcito is the familiar crowd.

“There’s a lot of Latin people and Mexican people dining, and they love Mexican music. When they are so excited, of course we are so excited too. They usually say that we remind them of when they were younger,” Martinez notes. “Or sometimes they say we remind them of their parents, or their grandparents.”

Lopez adds that she also has customers from El Salvador, Colombia, Peru and a handful of other Latin American countries. Some make a considerable trip for a meal there. “I have people that come from Richmond Hill, from Markham, the airport, even Waterloo,” she says. “They come once a month.”

“The taste of that meat is authentic, and that’s because all the people that work there are Mexican,” Sebastian says. And the regulars can’t seem to find these flavours, and the memories they bring up, anywhere else.

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