Lorenzo Boturini, Venustiano Carranza

Lorenzo Boturini is a magnificent street of taco stands in the east of Mexico City. It spreads across a couple of neighborhoods. But if you pass under Metro Line 4 into the colonia Lorenzo Boturini, you’ve actually gone too far. Just south of the Parque de los Periodistas Ilustres, at least this stretch of the street can feel like the Times Square—of tacos.

Nighttime revelers have been hitting up the several blocks after the Sur 111/Lázaro Pavia intersection for generations. The late hours and the terrific food have made the street into a must-stop for motorists and revelers who need a bite to eat before finally calling it a night.

Many, if not all, these taquerias have been featured in the multiple hyperbolic documentary films about Mexico City’s favorite food. Most of them open late, after roughly 2 p.m. They close even later, most at around 4 a.m.

Curiously, both the street and the neighborhood both draw their name from the 18th-century chronicler of New Spain.

• Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci (1698–1749) was an early ethnographer, historian and antiquarian. He was long known for the work he’d done promoting the Virgin of Guadalupe and the religious following associated with La Villa. But in more recent years, experts and historians have recognized his contribution to the earliest ethnographic and historical collection he built during his years in North America. He amassed a vast collection of paintings, maps, manuscripts, and codices. His collection was rounded out by his own drawings and transcriptions made from indigenous sources otherwise entirely lost to history. Boturini’s arrest in 1743, and the confiscation of the collection, mean that the contents of the collection are only partly known to modern researchers.

Recent years have seen the more traditional Mexican food stands complemented by coffee shops and even more exotic eateries. Some of these cater just to the local neighborhood. Most of the taquerias really depend on through-traffic for the bulk of their business. That makes them positively, happily, open to everyone. And the thoroughfare is one of the most Iconic Streets in all Mexico City.