Guadalajara’s tortas ahogadas will fix your hangover

Every Sunday morning, thousands of Guadalajara residents engage in a ritual that is every bit as sacred as Mass. Before, after, or instead of slinking into church, they brave the scorching midday sun to find a hole-in-the-wall eatery where they can chow down a torta ahogada and sweat out the previous night’s tequila.

The city’s signature dish, the torta ahogada (literally a “drowned sandwich”) is essentially a pork-stuffed baguette seasoned with salt and lime juice, garnished with raw slices of onion and swamped in so much spicy salsa that it must be eaten with a spoon. Unique to Guadalajara, Mexico’s second biggest metropolis, it is considered a potent hangover cure.

“We get more customers at weekends when people come in to recover from a night of partying,” says Armando Segura from Betos, a family-run restaurant in the heart of Santa Teresita, a colorful working-class neighborhood reminiscent of small-town Mexico. Bunched around the tables and perched on the unvarnished log bench out front are half a dozen local families and several disheveled partygoers still up from the night before…

Click here to read this feature in full at Vice Munchies.