Los Tacos: The Family From Mexico City That Mills Its Own Corn in Raanana

The machine in the back room runs all evening, and you hear it before you see it: a soft slap, a pause, another slap, as discs of wet masa drop onto the belt and come off the heat puffed and speckled. A cook lifts two of them with bare fingers, stacks them, and spoons on lengua that has been braising since the afternoon. Out in the courtyard the light is low. Garlands loop through the branches of the trees, plastic chairs scrape against stone, and a speaker works through a Mexican playlist at a volume that makes everyone talk louder than they meant to. A queue has folded itself around the counter and nobody standing in it looks impatient. This is a Tuesday evening at HaShuk 5, in a courtyard that most of Raanana walked past for years without looking in.

Everything at Los Tacos runs downstream of one decision: the corn. Sarah and Yonatan Obsiovitz bring it in dried, in sacks, from Mexico, mill it on the premises into masa, and press the tortillas to order on a machine they shipped over along with the recipe. That is the whole argument of the place, and it is audible from the counter. A tortilla pressed four minutes ago has a pliancy and a faint sweetness that no packaged one can fake, and it carries a toasted corn smell that lifts off the plate as the taco is handed across. Each taco is built on two stacked tortillas rather than one, the Mexico City insurance policy against a shell that collapses in your hand halfway through.