By 9 PM on a Wednesday, most kitchens in Alamitos have gone dark. Not La Taquiza. At number 745 on Av. Santos Degollado, the lights are still up, the pozole is still going, and there are people who won't arrive until 10 o'clock, and that is fine. The smell hits you first: braised meat, chiles, something caramelized low in a pot that has been running all day.
The menu reads like a tour of western and central Mexican comfort cooking: birria, carne en su jugo, tortas ahogadas, bolillos. The tortas ahogadas deserve their own paragraph. They are bolillos split and stuffed with pork, then submerged in a chile de árbol salsa until the bread absorbs the heat from the outside in. The salsa stings. The bread softens but holds together. The table has a bottle of Tapatío standing by, which tells you the philosophy of the place: they expect you to push it further. This is food built for people who eat seriously. Everything comes in under 100 pesos. At close to a thousand reviews and a 4.4 rating, the verdict across all those visits has been consistent: traditional, reliable, the kind of cooking you come back to.
The carne en su jugo is what regulars talk about. Beef simmered in its own broth with beans, finished with fresh cilantro and white onion. Both simple and satisfying in the way that few dishes manage. People return for it partly because of the price, and partly because there is no other version in this neighborhood that hits the same notes. The birria draws the later crowd too, the supper people who show up after 9 and want something that sticks. The kitchen runs until 11 PM most nights, which in a city where the dinner window often closes by 9 is a genuine public service.
For the other side of the clock, there is Carnitas Muñoz on María Greever 444 in the Estadio neighborhood. This place runs on weekend logic. Weekdays, the doors open at 1 PM. Saturdays and Sundays start at 8 in the morning, and the timing is deliberate: that is when the meat is freshest and the crowd is most willing to eat properly. The weekend buffet is the draw: carnitas, barbacoa, birria, and flautas, with cold micheladas as the obvious pairing. The pork in the carnitas is cooked low and slow until it shreds apart, and the buffet format means you build your plate without negotiating with a menu. The rating sits at 4.6 across 336 reviews, which is high for a place where nothing costs more than 100 pesos. What reviewers keep noticing is the efficiency and hygiene. That sounds like faint praise until you have lined up at enough weekend buffet spots where the carnitas have been sitting since 7 AM.
The barbacoa arrives pulled apart and tender, piled into fresh tortillas with onion and cilantro. Lean, clean, the kind of meat that tastes like it was meant for this exact preparation. By 10 AM on a Saturday, the regulars are already seated and the good cuts are moving fast. Back on Santos Degollado that same evening, the bowl of pozole arrives wide and white: hominy floating in a chile-laced broth, shredded cabbage and thin radish slices scattered on top. Two different neighborhoods. Two very different hours. San Luis Potosí takes its food seriously from 8 in the morning through 11 at night, and these two kitchens are a significant part of why.
