Mariscos La Guerrerense

On a busy corner in Ensenada, a few steps from the fish market that supplies it, a cart under a striped awning serves some of the best seafood in Mexico for the price of a bus ticket. Mariscos La Guerrerense is the work of Sabina Bandera González, who has been opening clams and spooning sea urchin onto tostadas here for decades. There is no dining room, no menu board worth the name, and no reservation that would put you at the front of the line. You queue on the pavement like everybody else, and you eat standing up.

The tostada is the format. A fried corn tortilla, a slick of something cold and briny, and then the sea itself: pismo clam sliced thin, raw oyster, shrimp, and the cart's calling card, sea urchin, laid on with avocado. The condiments are what separate this cart from its neighbours — salsas built on peanuts, toasted chiles and, most memorably, a fierce habanero, all spooned over at the last second. Order one of everything, because each tostada is two bites and the point of a cart is to keep going until the count of empty plates becomes embarrassing. A cup of pismo clam broth is the local way to finish.

Come early, because the best of the catch runs out, and come with cash. Weekends bring a line of locals and, increasingly, food pilgrims who have read the same articles you have. The prices are tiny. The quality is not.

Andrew Zimmern pointed Bizarre Foods at this cart and found the thing the show was always chasing: an uncompromising cook, a market that writes the menu, and food that would embarrass most restaurants charging ten times as much. La Guerrerense is proof that the best cooking in a city often happens outdoors, on a corner, in the open air.