Best Way to Go to Mexico Without Actually Going There

The city is full of Mexican restaurants, but hardly any of them are authentic. Most just sell us what Gringos think Mexican food ought to be -- flour tortillas with ground beef, orange cheese, lettuce and chopped tomatoes. But at El Pueblito, the meat is shredded or braised to a tangy crisp, and there's a long list of seafood items -- which are the real passion of Mexico's culinary artists. A bowl of posole looks and tastes as if it has been shipped in from a comida corrida in Guadalajara. But things really get real on Friday and Saturday nights in the summer. That's when the folks at El Pueblito fire up a portable vending cart and dish out tacos -- a mound of meat on a flat corn tortilla buried in cilantro, raw onions and blazing salsa -- until four in the morning. There, under the streetlights, it's just like old Mexico in every way but price.