Salsa, Limón, Cebolla, Cilantro: How to Customize Food Without Holding Up the Line

Con todo is presented to learners as if it were a definition. It is not. It is a local agreement, and it changes depending on which cart you are standing at.

At a taco stand it means onion and cilantro. On an elote it means mayonnaise, cheese, chile powder and lime. On a hot dog outside a bar at 2am it means something else again, involving bacon. Same two words, three different dinners.

So the first thing to learn is not a modifier. It is a question.

The one question that settles it

Traer is doing something nice here. Literally to carry, it is the standard verb for what a dish comes with. ¿Qué trae? is how you ask what is in anything, from a torta to a cocktail.

• ¿Qué trae la torta cubana?
  What comes in the torta cubana?
• ¿Trae picante?
  Does it have anything spicy in it?
• ¿Esa trae queso? Es que no como lácteos.
  Does that one have cheese? I don't eat dairy.

The four questions, in order

Almost every counter in Mexico runs the same short script. Once you know the order, you stop being ambushed by it.

1. uno ¿Qué le damos? / ¿Qué va a llevar? What can we get you? Answer: number, de, filling. Tres de pastor.
2. dos ¿Con todo? With everything? Answer: sí, con todo. Or con todo pero sin cebolla. Or sin nada.
3. tres ¿Para aquí o para llevar? Here or to go? Answer: para aquí, or para llevar. Two words, no sentence.
4. cuatro ¿Algo de tomar? ¿Es todo? Anything to drink? Is that everything? Answer: una horchata, and then es todo, gracias.

That is the whole interaction. Four questions, four short answers, and none of them require a full sentence. The reason people freeze at Mexican counters is not vocabulary - it is that they are trying to build grammar while somebody waits.

Number first, and never say “tacos”

The ordering syntax is compact and it is not what a textbook teaches you.

The word tacos disappears entirely. You are at a taco stand; everyone knows what you are counting. The de carries the whole load, and dropping it is the single clearest tell that someone is new.

Worth knowing what you are ordering, too. Al pastor - the vertical spit, the pineapple, the whole ritual - came out of Lebanese migration to Mexico in the early twentieth century, where the shawarma technique met pork, achiote and dried chiles and quietly became the most Mexican thing on the street.¹ Puebla still has tacos árabes, which are the closer cousin of the original.

The modifier words

There are five, and between them they cover almost everything you will ever want to say.

Harto is the one most people never learn, and it is the exact opposite of tantito. Con harta salsa means with loads of it. It sounds informal because it is, and it is completely at home at a street counter.

And one bonus: doradito. Crisped. Bien doradito, porfa works on tacos, quesadillas, tortas and anything that meets a griddle. It is a small request that consistently improves your food.

Limón is a lime. It has always been a lime

If you ask for limón expecting something yellow, you will be handed something small, green and much sharper.

Mexico grows two varieties, and they split the country’s production between them: limón mexicano at roughly 70 percent and limón persa - the seedless one, grown largely for export - at about 30 percent.² Neither of them is the yellow lemon that English calls a lemon. If you genuinely need that, ask for limón amarillo, and prepare to be disappointed in most places.

This matters more than it sounds, because lime is not a garnish here. It goes on tacos, soup, fruit, crisps, beer, michelada rims, and anything that seems to be having a slow day.

About cilantro, and the soap thing

Sin cilantro is a completely acceptable request. It is just a rarer one here than it is where you came from, and there is real research behind that.

A 2012 genome-wide study of nearly 26,500 people found a variant, rs72921001, sitting in a cluster of eight olfactory receptor genes on chromosome 11 - one of which, OR6A2, binds precisely the aldehydes that give cilantro its smell. People carrying one version were more likely to report that cilantro tastes like soap.³

Two honest caveats, because the internet usually skips them. First, the effect is small: that variant explains only about half a percent of the variation in whether someone reports the soapy taste. Genetics nudges this; it does not decide it. Second, and more relevant if you live here, the same study found that Latino, East Asian, South Asian and African-American participants were all significantly less likely than European participants to report the soapy taste at all - a pattern a companion study had already found across ethnocultural groups.⁴

Which is a scientific way of explaining something you have probably already noticed: in Mexico, sin cilantro gets a small nod, and occasionally a look.

Say it in one breath

Eat Mexico’s phrase guide makes the same practical point from the other direction: the toppings are standard, so the words for adjusting them can be tiny.⁵

• Me da tres de pastor, con todo, salsa aparte, y una horchata.
  Three al pastor, with everything, sauce on the side, and a horchata.

Fourteen words. It orders the food, sets the toppings, controls the heat and gets you a drink, and it does not slow the line by a single second.

That is the whole skill. Not fluency - compression.