It is Friday night, time to head to South L.A. for the weekly pop-up serving one of our city’s defining dishes. Among billows of mesquite, under a tent in a shrubbery-filled yard, Alfonso “Poncho” Martínez will be grilling and folding tlayudas in the style he grew up loving in Oaxaca’s Central Valley. He begins by swabbing his masa canvas (imported from his home state) with asiento before spreading over frijoles refritos, shredded cabbage and cheese yanked into short strings. Choose among three meats: chorizo; tasajo, a thin cut of flank steak salt-cured overnight before grilling; and moronga, a miraculously light, herb-laced blood sausage from a family recipe of Martinez’s wife, Odilia Romero. (She co-founded Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, which hosts the popup.) I like all three combined. Soft and crackling, fragrant and dense, this tactile masterwork coaxes all your senses into play. —B.A.

4318 S. MAIN ST., LOS ANGELES, (213) 399-4704 l PONCHOSTLAYUDAS.COM