Mechanics meet Mexican food - 4th August 2023

What do repairing cars and making tacos have in common? In Mexico City, the answer is actually a garage.

This workshop is a mechanics' workplace by day, and a taco restaurant – a taqueria – by night. The place has become a very common stop on the city's food tours and it attracts hundreds and hundreds of tourists each year.

Tonalli Palomino's job is to take foreign visitors around different taquerias.

Tonalli Palomino: "Suddenly the tourists stumble upon this really authentic and unique place, afterwards they leave having discovered something completely different."

The manager of El Vilsito finds it amazing that people come from so far away. And they simply want to try the restaurant's famous tacos!

Isidro Hernandez Trejo: "They come from all over the world; from the United States, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Colombia, from everywhere."

There's no doubt that the customers absolutely love the unusual set-up here at the garage. It makes it different from the other 2,800 taquerias around the city.

Rebecca Avila: "I’ve never experienced anything like this before, it is totally unique here."

Christian Avila: "It is a place that you would never have imagined to be something completely different in the daytime, from what it is at night."

Preparations start to build up in the afternoon. Only a metal curtain divides the two busy workplaces, but don't worry if your car's being repaired as the chefs and mechanics are different. There's no danger they'll replace cooking oil with motor oil! There's a whole team working in the restaurant kitchen.

Food tours are now big business in Mexico City, and if you visit this busy little stop, you can see why.