Anita Street runs out of their fresh tortillas often. Their hours have been fairly inconsistent lately, so be sure to check their Facebook page before heading over.

You can get 14” diameter, 9” diameter, or 5” diameter. Check out the actual-size display on the wall — it’s like an optical illusion.

The tortillas are differentiated from others by their stretchiness. Pair that chew with sour cream and the aforementioned red chile, and you have a sacrilegious, “inauthentic” mouthgasm that’s kept locals returning to Anita Street for years for their daily specials, charitable events, and grocery items.

BOCA originally opened making their own tortillas, but stopped due to space constraints. However, they moved to their larger location on Fourth Avenue and are back at making their own corn tortillas.

Enjoy the tortillas on one of BOCA’s many creative tacos, such as the Taco Dog, filled with a bacon-wrapped hot dog, grilled onions, beans, and pico de gallo.

Owners of Calle Tepa describe the restaurant as a “fast-casual Mexican outpost with a street-style twist”. The menu is influenced by family recipes and flavors from the owners’ hometown in Jalisco, Mexico.

House-made tortillas are made and cooked in their scratch kitchen in plain sight — flour tortillas can be exchanged for house-made corn tortillas and are perfect sides for their meats, salads, and soups.

Although the Sonoran dogs and Tortas are popular menu items, you’ll want to try the Chicken Fajitas with their fresh tortillas and a side order of Calabacitas. Pair your meal with a specialty margarita and dip into the salsa bar, which is superb as well.

El Chivo de Oro’s breadl-ike house-made corn tortillas are substantial enough in flavor and texture to stand up to their mouth-kickingly hot salsa and the goat birria dishes for which they are esteemed. The taco truck with awning-shaded picnic benches keeps long hours and is almost always parked near the intersection of South 11th Avenue and West Irvington Road.

It’s not listed on the menu, but try birria caramelos on corn tortillas, squeeze a bunch of lime on top, go light on the salsa, and you have what amounts to an inch-thick Sonoran beastly grilled cheese. Their asada, Lorenzo tostada, and breakfast burritos are also good, but note that they don’t make their tortillas de harina (flour).

This food truck features cuisine in the style of Ensenada, a fellow UNESCO City of Gastronomy.

While Baja California is most famous for fish tacos, Ensenada Street Food shines with their take on al pastor served on their house-made corn tortillas.

For something more indulgent, order El Sicodélico with cheese crisped onto the exterior.

As you enter the dining room, keep an eye out for the arched window with a view into the tortilla kitchen.

Use the fresh, pillowy tortillas to sop up the rich tomatillo and jalapeño gravy from their Chile Verde.

La Indita is also known for its health-conscious approach toward eating — specializing in indigenous Mexican dishes featuring unexpected items like spinach, pecans, and prunes. They use no lard in their gordita tortillas, nor in their refried beans, which involve smashing pintos for creaminess.

They make their gordita-style corn tortillas to order, so they come out beautifully irregular, some slightly blackened and charred, some thicker and chewier, but always playing a stand-up corn-rich host to the calabacitas or Michoacan-style mole or barbacoa on a bed of pretty red cabbage. Those can be made as sopes, tacos, tostadas, or fry bread.

The Quesadillas is a relative newcomer to the taqueria scene. Owing to its locale, which inches trepidatiously near the northeast side of town, a Puritan might be too quick to disavow The Quesadillas’ taqueria cred. But they’d be missing out on a flavor profile distinct from the rest, specifically a mesquite-infused smoky-flavored tortilla without preservatives.

The Barragán family hails from Guaymas and makes about a thousand tortillas a week for their restaurant. They are beginning to craft thick gorditas tortillas, which don’t fall apart in their Sonoran taco — a dish that harmoniously conjoins mesquite-smoked ribeye, cabbage, green chile, cheese, beans, and thick bacon.

Eastside Mexican restaurant, Salsa Verde opened in April 2018. This family-owned-and-operated restaurant not only make tortillas from scratch daily, but they also make tortilla chips, aguas frescas, and desserts.

The tortillas are light and fluffy and are made fresh each morning. The salsa ingredients are prepared fresh, too.

If you’re wanting to try the tortillas, order the Machetes — massive foot-wide corn masa tortillas filled with cheese and your choice of steak, beef fajitas, barbacoa, pork pibil, or chicken fajita — or Lorenzas — crispy corn tortillas with cheese, stuffed with steak or pork adobada if desired.

The Salazar family has run St. Mary’s Mexican Food since 1978. They keep things simple and comforting with everything made in house and most recipes including no more than seven ingredients.

“We’re here every morning making the masa, that’s one tradition we’ll keep going,” restaurant operating manager Luis Salazar said in a previous interview.

Order a Red Chile Burro while you’re there, then leave with bags of tortillas and frozen tamales to snack on throughout the month.

The health-conscious, family-owned Tanias 33 still uses the same flour tortilla recipe and iron pan as the original chef Tania did when she started a home-based tortilla-selling business more than four decades ago.

To the impartial diner, Tania 33’s homemade wheat tortillas are larger and thinner than those of most other taquerias. They are vegan, use more shortening, are not-so-stretchy, and are flakier. They hold up well under the infinite combination of ingredients that one can put in a Tanias taco or burrito.

To the original Tania’s granddaughter Erica Lira, it’s the family heritage that makes the tortillas special.

“It’s a personal thing,” she said. “It’s the memories – and the years of seasoning on that pan,” which is and always has been dedicated exclusively to their flour tortillas.

Tanias will package flour tortillas to-go and regularly sell out, but if you call ahead and ask owner/Erica’s dad Rudy Lira, he’ll set some aside for you (allowing you a 30-minute grace period if you’re running late). After that, your bag of goodness is fair game for the others in line.

Flat-out ignore the crispier wheat tortillas at Taqueria Pico de Gallo. They’re fine. But do as the locals do and opt instead for their homemade soft, wet, bright yellow corn tortillas, which the Pico de Gallo crew makes in-house early in the mornings. It’s almost as if they are steamed.

When it’s later in the day and tacos are loaded up with soupier items like birria. The tortillas tend to break down the middle under the heft of being picked up, but they hold up under lighter items like a dollop of frijoles or shredded meats.

When (very) regular customer Kenyon Newman was pregnant with her youngest, she admitted an addiction to Pico de Gallo for its corn tortillas. She’d been there three times in a week. She said she can’t exactly pin down why.

“The tortillas are fresh,” she said. “Maybe it’s the texture. They’re kind of crunchy. They’re kind of chewy. I can’t live without them.”