The smell hits you first — woodsmoke, dried chili, and something floral underneath that you can't quite name. I followed it down a narrow alley in Oaxaca's Barrio Jalatlaco just after seven this morning, past painted walls the color of marigolds and rust, until I found her: a woman in her sixties crouched over a clay comal, pressing masa with practiced indifference to the hour.
I ordered two tlayudas without knowing what I was getting. She looked at me the way people do when they've decided whether to like you before you've opened your mouth. I must have passed some test, because she pointed at a low wooden stool with her chin, and I sat.
The tlayuda arrived on a clay plate wider than my outstretched hands — crisp tortilla, black beans spread thick as paint, tasajo cured and charred at the edges, cheese that pulled and didn't apologize for it. I ate slowly. There's a discipline to eating slowly when you're alone and the food is this good, because your instinct is to rush before it ends.