Every taco al pastor in Dallas traces back to a wave of immigration nobody puts on the menu. In the final years of the Ottoman Empire, as the empire crumbled and conscription, violence, and economic collapse pushed people out of the region, waves of Lebanese, Syrian, and Iraqi families left the Middle East for the Americas. A significant number landed in Puebla, Mexico, by the early 20th century, and they brought a cooking method with them that had nothing to do with Mexican food at the time: shawarma, meat stacked on a vertical spit and shaved off in thin, charred strips as it turned.
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