Tacos de Camarón Empanizado al Estilo Tijuana

This taco is from Tijuana. Baja California, the Pacific coast, the border. Not from Mexico City, not from Yucatan, and not from any restaurant claiming to serve generic Mexican food. Baja's coastline made this dish, and the cooks at the carretas of Tijuana, Ensenada, and Rosarito are the ones who perfected it.

The shrimp is breaded in panko. Yes, panko. Baja's proximity to the Pacific and to the Asian fishing communities that have worked the coast for over a century left a mark on the cuisine, and the panko-breaded camaron is one of the clearest signatures of that exchange. Use regular breadcrumbs and you will get a soft crust. Use panko and you get the loud, crisp, irregular shell that crunches when you bite into a Tijuana taco at three in the afternoon with the ocean two blocks away. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Baja's cocina has the Pacific in it.

The build is the build: warm corn tortilla, chipotle crema, white shredded cabbage, fried shrimp, pickled red onion, lime. No yellow cheese. No sour cream. No flour tortilla pretending to be something it is not. The tortilla is corn because in Tijuana the camaron empanizado lives on a corn tortilla, and the cabbage is white shredded fine because lettuce wilts under the heat of the shrimp and ruins the texture. Every part of this taco does a job.

My mother never made these. She was from Jalisco and her seafood was different. I learned this taco standing at a carreta on Calle Sexta in Tijuana in 2009, watching a senora bread shrimp with one hand and ring up customers with the other. She told me her crema had to be Mexican crema, not American sour cream, and that the onion had to sit in lime for an hour or it was not done yet. I wrote it down on a napkin. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.