Dish finder in Monterrey

Young goat roasted slowly beside an open fire, the city's signature dish. Order by the cut at a cabrito restaurant, with tortillas and salsa.

Grilled beef, often arrachera or ribs, at a Sunday family barbecue that can run all afternoon. An invitation to one is how you know you have settled in.

Shredded dried beef scrambled with egg, tomato, onion and chilli, rolled into flour tortillas. The northern breakfast.

Monterrey's take on spit-roasted pork, usually without pineapple, on small tortillas from evening taco stands.

In the north, wheat tortillas are as common as corn. Buy them warm by the dozen from a tortillería.

Pinto beans simmered with bacon, sausage, tomato and chilli, served alongside any carne asada.

Diced beef cooked in a tomato and chilli sauce, a lunch-counter staple with rice and beans.

Mixed meats, bacon and sausage cooked together on a plough disc over a fire, filled into flour tortillas. Party food.

A tripe and hominy soup in red chilli broth, eaten on weekend mornings, often as a hangover cure.

Soft goat's-milk caramel rolled with pecans and wrapped in red cellophane, from Linares in Nuevo León.

Corn kernels with mayonnaise, cheese, lime and chilli, sold from carts outside parks and shopping centres in the evening.

Thick corn pockets split and filled with beans and cheese, or nopales and potato. Ask which fillings are meat-free.