It takes a bit of archeology to get to the meal at Perola’s. A small, orange sign protruding from the Mexican grocery, its entrance overflowing with anchos, chipotles and habaneros, is the only indication that there’s something to eat in the back. Walk past the bustle of Augusta Avenue, with Kensington’s crazy bird lady (who cruises on her low-rider bike with a bird on her shoulder) sneering obscenities at pedestrians, past the chamber of chilies. Continue past the cash register, the rack of pork rinds, the faded Buzz Lightyear piñata. Keep going past the aisles filled with tins of pickled okra, tamarind soda and Goya brand everything. Right at the back, next to the cleaning supplies, there’s a couple of folding card tables set up in front of a flat-top grill and exhaust, jerry-rigged into the corner. Very little, let’s say nothing, has been spent on flash.

They’ve never heard of marketing or design, just good, honest Mexican food.

Please don’t go there with a group of four for brunch or dinner. The only seating is on a few stools around a deep freezer. Ain’t no one fetching you a latte. Instead, stop in while shopping, order at the front cash register, hand Aime or Carla your receipt, take a seat and wait for your ’dilla.

Their quesadilla ($2.50) is a grilled tortilla crammed with so much delicious Oaxaca cheese that its juice (fat) begins to bleed through the shell by the time it hits the plate. A table of condiments taunts us to blend them all into one double-dog-dare bite: a giant mixing bowl of ragged cilantro and raw onions and roasted serrano peppers and two jugs o’ hot sauce, one burn-y, sweet and red, the other “kick in the schnutz” hot and green.

The tacos ($2.50) are not some crunchy, lettuce-filled novelty, falling apart like Walter Fielding’s dream house. These tacos are hand-sized tortillas grilled with cheese, cochinta (pork), tinga (chicken), chicharon (pork skin) or nopal (cactus). The pork and chicken are, predictably (once you’ve been standing next to the unlidded pot of aromatically stewing meat for a few minutes), outstanding, dripping with the tomato and chipotle they’ve been steeping in.

The chicharon is for pork-hounds only. Wads of pig skin, eluding their fate as footballs, glisten even in the unflattering grocery fluorescence. Their texture, rendered somewhat by deep-frying, retains a bit of spring. As we wait for ours, the signoras manage to unsell the chicharon to a couple of loud-mouthed gringos who’ve mistakenly ordered it. Nopales, the young stem of the prickly pear cactus fruit, are grilled to the tenderness of al dente asparagus and doused in lime. Soon everything bathes in hot sauce and onions and we eat with one hand while the other wipes our brow of sweat.
A potent, citrusy bowl of pozole ($3.50), ladled from dented, old pots sitting on hot plates, is teeming with half-sprouted chick peas of meaty texture. The tamales ($2), sweet ’n’ juicy mole chicken nestling on a cushion of polenta steamed inside banana leaf, are so addictive we could stack them like flapjacks, pour salsa over them and call them breakfast, lunch or dinner. Chili rellenos sit out, unfortunately, cooled of their once crunchy deep-fried exterior.

Part of Aime and Carla’s charm stems from not giving a fuck. For example, once we’re done eating, we spy what look like pupusas on the griddle. We’re told dismissively that they’re gorditos (pupusas are Salvadorean) and the ladies haven’t gotten around to writing them on the menu yet (meaning the dry erase board above the pile of napkins). We’re not leaving without trying them. While we wait, Aime slices hunks of Oaxaca cheese with a boning knife that thuds dully with each stroke while Carla plows through production of tamales and gorditos, always up to her elbows in cornmeal dough.

The gorditos ($2.50) turn out to be yet another permutation of corn, cheese and pork. This time the goodies are stuffed inside the disc of cornmeal dough. A crispy crust forms as they cook on the griddle and the savoury cake is drenched in hot sauce and sour cream. It’s the payoff, as if all the tacos assembled like Destructicons, to form Gordito, on some devastating action. We jones for another but would need to make an appointment with a cardiovascular surgeon first.