Mexican Food Boom

Mexican, everyday to elegant
It’s been a busy and expansive five years since South Philly got its first taste of taqueria food.

In just five years, the city’s Mexican population has surged indeed, a happy circumstance if you’d been craving chile-rubbed, roast pork tacos with the fresh-chopped cilantro and onions, or salad-topped chicken enchiladas with green sauce, or puffed sopes that have the body shape of an English muffin, but hearts stuffed with refried beans and a crumble of queso fresco.
The recent migration – estimates are that more than 12,000 Mexicans have settled here – has been something of a bank shot: After 9/11, New York’s dining scene stalled, propelling Mexican prep cooks and dishwashers to Philadelphia, where they were embraced by the city’s labor-starved restaurant kitchens.
Walk north from Geno’s on Ninth today, and you soon pass open-walled La Lupe, arguably the finest of the new taquerias; then a squawking live-poultry place; and, near Ellsworth, a Puebla-style taqueria specializing in spit-flamed, slivered pork that turns on a gyro-esque rotisserie, its peak spiked with a sweating pineapple.

For a fuller look at the map use Google Earth, available in the Goolge Pack.