Among those who have lunch between two and four in the afternoon –people from Mexico City tend to do this—there is a hunger that emerges around seven in the evening, which is usually after the rain in this tempestuous city. This initial night-time hunger is not yet a hunger for dinner; it is something that comes before, light, full of craving. It is a hunger that could be cured with esquites: a small cup of boiled corn kernels, prepared in different ways. There are many famous esquites in Mexico City, probably as many as there are neighborhoods. The esquites in Polanco are practically an institution; they could be part of the city’s government if the government were up to some good. They’re on the corner of Moliere and Ejército Nacional, in front of the pharmacy in Polanco neighborhood. They open every day at seven in the evening and, although they start serving around eight, there are always people in line beforehand. The queue tends to be impossibly long. You should order the “esquites campechanos”: half grilled and half boiled, and served in their own broth, with a generous helping of butter and mayo: two happy and opposing fats. Also famous are the esquites with bone marrow on Eje Central and Xola in Álamos neighborhood. A blog called these one of the “street stalls you must visit before you die.” And people seem to know this. The queues are reviled day in and day out, but they are also overcome. This stall has some great ideas. Esquites served with beef nerves, chicken gizzards and livers. They’re delicious, well-served, rude and talk back. Doña Mari’s esquites, which are sometimes in La Lagunilla and at others in Plaza de Santo Domingo, in Centro Histórico, are not as famous but they do have a local following. The good ones here are the ones with chicken legs, which you must suck all the way to the phalanges. Phalanges could take over the world. The Buenavista subway esquites are a curiosity less for their culinary contributions, and instead for their service: they’re served in half litre tumblers. (Esquites are usually served in small 187 or 225 millilitre cups). I once read that the esquites at the Patera Metrobús station, in the Vallejo neighborhood, have “ingredients you could never have imagined: shrimp and chorizo.” Perhaps we had not imagined them, but once they made their appearance, they seem natural, almost inevitable. Think of this: we now see mayo as a given, but there was a time—when industrialisation first arrived in 1944—when it was an “ingredient you could never have imagined”. In Mexico City, esquites are a canvas for the imagination.