Barbacoa is everywhere in Mexico. You can find some version of it in almost any market, any town, any Sunday morning worth getting up for. Which makes the question not whether to eat it, but where. After twenty-five years of having a home in San Miguel de Allende, the answer for us has never changed.

Rodriguez Barbacoa sits in an open cinder-block building behind a Pemex gas station. It started years ago as a canopy over some tables. The building came later.

The lamb goes into the pit the night before. A hole in the ground, stones heated until they glow, the meat wrapped in maguey leaves. The pit gets sealed and the lamb cooks in its own heat and juice for hours, low and slow, until the morning. What comes out is falling-apart tender, rich, crisp at the edges.

You order from a woman behind a small wooden table near the entrance. By the kilo, or a portion of one. While she writes it down, you watch the butchers behind her working the meat, chopping and arranging it into portions, fast and certain, no wasted motion. At the back of the room, women are pressing tortillas one by one on a hand press, each hitting the comal with a soft slap, puffing, and then stacking them in a cloth. Oranges are being cut and squeezed.

Everything comes to the table, family-style. The tortillas arrive hot to the touch. The meat comes piled in a plastic basket lined with foil. On the side: diced white onion, fresh cilantro, and salsa. A chipped mug of consomme, the broth that dripped off the lamb overnight into a pot below the pit, cooked down with potatoes and onion until it is dark. To drink: Coke, or agua de jamaica, or fresh orange juice squeezed while you watch.

You eat at white plastic tables on white plastic chairs, the kind that say Corona on them. Some Sundays, we order large quesadillas and pile on the meat. Nobody blinks.

Go on a Sunday morning after the churches let out. The crowd is the whole point. Families in good clothes, workers, regulars who were coming here when it was still just a canopy. San Miguel has gotten fancier over the years, pulled upscale by too many design hotels. Rodriguez feels untouched by it.

Rodríguez Barbacoa, San Miguel de Allende. Sunday mornings. Cash. Get there early.