“You like carnitas?” asked Mario-Alberto, my taxi driver.

“Yes,” I lied.

“You like barbacoa?”

“Yes,” I lied again. I only had a vague notion of what those dishes were. Carne means meat, so carnitas must be something meaty?

While Mario-Alberto changed the topic to how to pick up girls in English, I dwelt on my fabrications. I was in Mexico City on vacation. Why hadn’t I tried barbacoa (meat slow cooked over an open fire or more traditionally in a hole dug in the ground covered with leaves), and carnitas (a simple dish made from small bits or shreds of well browned pork)?

“Señor? Where do you like to eat carnitas and barbacoa?”

“Very good restaurant, Arroyo. In colonia Tlalpan. Is expensive, pero, is good.”

Authentic flavors delight tourists and residents alike.

Mario-Alberto writes down the address while driving, making me wonder if I will even live to seeArroyo — or any other restaurant.

Most guidebooks offer the same restaurant advice: each stylish boîte more cleverly designed than the next. If you are lucky, you might pick something authentic off the list. But even those restaurants are full of tourists trying to discover the “real Mexico.” So I started asking Mexicans: where do they find true sabor (taste) of Mexico?

Arroyo

My hostess, Helen, a good friend and intrepid traveler herself, was living in Mexico City for work. We decided to rendezvous there, since I’d never been to Mexico’s capital city before and Helen is a gifted guide.

Now, Helen and I are zooming toward the southern outskirts of the city, passing what looks like a straight-from-Cleveland mall and an unkempt Alcohólicos Anónimos (Alcoholics Anonymous) bureau.

Once we turn on to Avenida Insurgentes Sur, said to be the longest avenue in Central America with a length of 18 miles (28.8 km), things begin to look up.

It’s obvious from the tree-lined streets and smooth pavement that the government has poured money into Tlalpan, the largest of the 16 boroughs into which Mexico City is divided. Revelers from a nearby rodeo cram the pyramid of steps to Arroyo restaurant, which looks like a Mexican theme park.

Nine dining rooms, some of them open air, can hold 2,200 hungry patrons. There is a play area for piñata parties, a cockfighting pit and a mechanical bull, even a bullring. No surprise that Arroyo is thought to be the world’s largest single Mexican restaurant.

Rainbow-colored papel picado banners made from perforated paper hang from the restaurant ceiling, and giant chicharrón (pork skin) fryer stations dot the tile floor. Roving mariachi bands and caricaturists go table to table, and small children take over the stage area. Helen and I are dwarfed by long rectangular tables of 12, 16, 20 people out with their families for some tequila and barbacoa-fueled revelry.

The sopes, little circles of fried maize-based dough piled with refried beans, cheese, salsa, chicken and lettuce, are freakishly good. Arroyo’s barbacoa, is served with stewed young stem segments of the prickly pear cactus, called nopales, and corn tortillas. It has a bit of a wild flavor. The meat falls off the bone.