The Tlayuda Trail: A Tour of Mexican Pizzas

by

There’s not a newly minted driver’s license-holder, gaggle of buddies in the backseat, nowhere to go in awkward underage-ness save suburban drive-throughs, nor a college-age stoner, worth his or her weight in Grateful Dead Dick’s Picks discs, or even an early adult barfly, in possession of the Grubhub app, who hasn't had a moment, maybe even something resembling a full blown affair—unseemly pant seat stains, GI stress, a burning of the heart—with the Taco Bell Mexican Pizza.

Even if you haven’t, consider the guilty pleasure little monster: two crisp pizza shells, mashy refrieds, seasoned ground beef, a creamy three cheese blend, BBQ-ish, Mexican-inspired pizza gravy, tomatoes. It covers the texture gamut, it is crackly, saucy, sodium-packed, pleasantly messy but edible on-the-go. Processed running queso rivulets dangle seductively between bite edges. Then consider the weird fourth meal hours, the flexed schedule it finds itself plopped in the middle of, the mix of excitement segueing toward yawning regret. It’s all a bit like having a baby. 

Maybe the magic is in the joyous sum of the over-salted parts, or the conditions within which it is usually—hopefully always—consumed. Or possibly it’s just the fact that “Mexican Pizza” is as pleasant a term combo as might exist this side of “Open Bar.”

But then ponder the sound Tlayuda—that rough consonant collision leveling off with a pleasant oooh of an old-timey car horn, coming back up with the ahh of satisfaction. This Oaxacan specialty is the spiritual inspiration behind the aforementioned corporate calorie conglomeration. Which, despite munchie merit, is a white-washed bastardization, one on par with Doritos Locos Taco, Charlton Heston’s portrayal of a Mexican DEA agent in Touch of Evil, or your drunk uncle’s Cinco de Mayo celebrations. When made with real ingredients though, a diner can expect a fresh, oily, shimmering, seared tortilla crust holding, or pocketing, some sort of earthy meat-and-bean band, half-melted cheese layers letting mouth warmth finish the cooking task. It’s usually topped off by clingy clumps of avocado, maybe a flourish of cream velvetiness, crowned with some sort of chile pepper pop.

Often served close-faced, the tlayuda in this form can come across as the more successful, well-rounded cousin of the quesadilla. It’s maybe a bit fatter, but in a doing-alright-for-myself kind of way, as the ingredients melt and tumble and spill together like late night at a wine mixer. In the fold of protein, cheese, crusty carbs, some bites can resemble those of a smushed, airless calzone. Or there is the version that harkens closer to an actual pizza, with manageable wedges, a segregation of flavor proponents, proper ratios, never too much crust. 

No matter the iteration, there is a time in adulthood for refinement, for proper exploration and broadening horizons, for consciously eschewing Big Box pig-outs. At the very least, in the hopes of smoothing some rough primitive urges for sopping grease and base beef pleasure points, here’s a tour of Milwaukee’s finest Mexican “pizza.” Because there’s also a time to admit, in most all cases, Taco Bell is actually quite bad.

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  • 1

    2522 W. Greenfield Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53204
    414-672-1943

    Of the multitude mistakes I’ve made in life, leaving Villa’s with a tlayuda hastily ordered “to go” ranks somewhere between studying journalism and beginning the previously hinted-at affair with Taco Bell. The foil-wrapped half-moon shaped monster was heavy enough on the passenger seat that the Honda thought it needed to turn on the airbag. I wondered if I should buckle the big guy in. By the time we got home though, it was all accident anyway: a mushy, soggy mess, impenetrable by fork, cooled and coalescing.

    Yet, two indicators instinctively led me to the ridiculous conclusion that I would again be on my way west on Greenfield Avenue, in a matter of days really, for a return to the scene of the calorie crime. One, like any conscientious father concerned about poisoning and decent palate-making, I stole a monitoring bite of my daughter’s quesadilla. Then another. It was a bursting, beautifully golden crisped tortilla, packed with oozing, overflowing cheese, bits of which had touched the flat top and become blackened with a delicious bit of caramelization. Then there is the salsa. Probably a front-of-classroom sort of MIAD student could name the color that is the orange-ish, yellow-ish, burnt grass-looking stuff in the squirt bottle, but it seems too abstract to try, like trying to describe a feeling in a dream. Singular in taste too, it is a sauce at once punchy and inviting, scorching and addictive.

    My return was also hastened by the pleasantness of the place: the blue-on-blue floor and table motif, the warm orange walls, the Easter decorations, fake flowers and plants, the Packers ceiling fans. Mostly, I enjoyed the tuba pop bumping from the kitchen, competing with the Mexican soap operas. It’s nice to remember that there are people back there, people working, rocking out at work too, just like me and you. Maybe working harder though, based on the mass of the $14 tlayuda. It is sized to emasculate, dropped at your table with a smirk like it’s a very big joke. It’s large enough for sustenance for somewhere between three meals and the time you just get sick of it or forget it’s in your refrigerator.

    The closed shell is crispy and oil-shimmering, fresh out of a bath it seems. And while takeout was a disaster, there is something within where it only keeps getting better as it sits in front of you, gathering itself as you eat, the chorizo settling, the queso warming and gooping, becoming happier, friendlier with the other ingredients, even with the subdued beans, which need some coaxing out from under their shell home. There’s actually almost enough lettuce to make you feel something approaching responsible life decision-making. But then you are cracking the chippy skin again, and there’s no turning from the fact it’s a plate of sheer fried bombast.

    Why does it need to be so big? It’s a question along the lines of “where do we go when we die?” Which, if you eat a whole one, you may find the answer to sooner than later. Or, if like me, you eat half with way too much of the salsa—unable to stop with the squirting—you have a more certain destination: A late afternoon siesta with just a brief stop in bathroom purgatory.

  • 2

    3433 W. National Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53215
    414-206-6702
    Website

    There are few places in town where the gulf between expectation and execution is wider: the overly bustling corner of 35th and National feels like a frenzy, what with the packed lot of Asian restaurants, beaters speeding too fast, trying to make the light, and crowded bus stops. Inside, there’s a grimy tile floor, Mexican soap operas at uncomfortable volumes and a gaudy neon-centric color scheme that reeks of schmaltz and Breaking Bad’s Pollos Hermanos. But most importantly, there’s a tiny counter with a smiling woman and a cash register, offering a chance to request happiness while yielding free whiffs of endlessly grilling chicken.

    It’s the specialty, if you couldn’t tell by the royal name. And it is best in whatever form allows the most usage of the deep, dank reservoir of a salsa bar. Within, explore the neon verde, cool and pepper-y Mexican relish; the onion and habanero pickled mix of capsaicin angst; the bright tomato with a sneaky spice finish; the dark rojo, both hellish and earthy; the thick, emulsified light-green cream that I would like to request one day be splashed around my gravestone on a weekly basis. You have to ask for salsa cups, so be reasonable, just get cinco.

    The tlayuda more than fits the order for framework in this case. Coming charred and burnt-smelling, it is folded into a form that is almost sandwich, almost panini, almost three-piece erector set. The bites are crackly, foundationally threatening for those not paying attention, but there is still a doughy, chewy finish that renders it something like wood-fired Roman pizza. Creamy black beans are front and forward, mixing nearly half with the shredded, orange-hued chicken. Incredibly moist, it’s nice to be reminded how good poultry can be when it’s not a menu afterthought. It smacks of salt, time, care and a red hot grill. The lettuce and cheese are thusly overshadowed, wilty, while the avocado is mostly buried. But that seems all the better, creating a blank pollo slate, one buttery with beans, crisp with a cracker corn crust, allowing the salsa to shine like your favorite 'za toppings. All in rotation with every bite.

  • 3

    1105 W Lincoln Ave, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53215

    This rolling red doll house parked down 27th street from St. Luke’s Hospital—looming like both health warning and some security—offers probably Milwaukee’s finest take on the pizza form of tlayuda. The corn crust is a bit floppy, lightly oiled and griddled, a consistency of an every-corner New York City slice, strong enough but needing some second-hand assistance. There’s lettuce and tomato for body, a smidge of a smear of refried pintos, and sour cream to smooth it all out. Queso warmly hugs the shell, cilantro flutters about like pleasantly unchecked flora sprouting between salty sidewalk cracks. It’s a beautiful, colorful site, sitting there in it’s styrofoam home on your passenger seat. It can also be aesthetically enhanced by the dark red, smoky salsa, everything enticing enough for me to risk listeria from a recent avocado recall, the hunks sitting on top so soft and green and fatty.

    But really, it is all in nonintrusive service of the bountiful meat of choice. Chorizo, which often makes the best filling, almost always makes the best topping, as it also would and could on many Americanized sorts of pizza—say, the meat-lover’s special. It is crumbly, salty, satisfying in a crisped sausage way, but better, garlickier, more chile-pepper exotic. Here, it comes perfectly charred, black but juicy, generously bountiful.

    “Seven minutes” was the quoted wait time from the happy man in the little window, a timekeeping call met, showing he knows how this all goes, that it is far from his first tlayuda rodeo. Back in the car, it becomes one of those dishes you look at, and even on an empty lunchtime stomach you think you’ll have at least half to save for later. But then, maybe barely longer than it took to finish your order, maybe emboldened by some clean test results at the hospital, or perhaps hungered from a foliage eye feast at the nearby Domes, there is nothing left but meat-hued carnage, some debris almost forming a police chalk outline of a greasy front-seat crime. There’s also more than enough satisfaction to realize that taco trucks are the true, adult form of the drive-through window.