Where do you take out-of-town visitors with a serious Mexican food obsession? You take them to Barrio Café, of course, arguably the most famous Mexican restaurant in metro Phoenix. Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza's long-running restaurant on Calle 16 has been lauded for its distinctive take on regional Mexican cooking since its debut in 2002, and it remains an important local touchstone for Mexican food and culture. Many of the chef's dishes have become local classics, including her pomegranate-studded guacamole; creamy chiles en nogada; and banana leaf-wrapped cochinita pibil.

This long-running Mexican food truck has been a landmark on Buckeye Road for a decade. While it's certainly not the flashiest or trendiest food truck in town, Taqueria La Hacienda is one of the most reliable purveyors of consistently delicious food truck tacos. The meat selection is extensive — try the extra-spicy chicharrón taco, or the incredibly rich cabeza tacos. For a meal that will leave you satiated for hours to come, feast on the cheesy and spicy chile relleno burrito, a flavor bomb if ever there was one. The service at Taqueria La Hacienda is friendly and efficient, and the selection of house-made salsas is impressive. Be sure to bring cash.

Open until 1 a.m. on most nights (the exception is Sunday, when the truck closes down at midnight), Taqueria Tepehuaje is a longtime neighborhood food truck that's parked day and night near the corner of Central Avenue and Broadway Road. The selection of tacos, quesadillas, tortas, and combo plates is wide-ranging and uniformly strong. Highlights include street staples like vampiros — your choice of meat piled onto a thick, crisp, comal-toasted tortilla. Don't miss the tortas, which feature shiny, basted, extra-fluffy rolls stuffed with meats like the house-made birria, which has a thick, earthy succulence that's impossible to forget once you've had it.

Traditional southern Mexican cooking is still hard to find in the Valley. Thank goodness for Las 15 Salsas, a colorful Sunnyslope restaurant that specializes in homestyle Oaxacan fare. Appetizers include Oaxacan treats like memelitas con queso, thin corn patties topped with heaps of queso fresco and salsa. There's a whole menu of tlayudas — crisp, pizza-shaped tortillas lightly smeared with asiento (pork lard), refried beans, queso fresco, lettuce, and your choice of meat, including options like cecina (thinly sliced marinated beef). Other highlights include thick, dark mole negro; empanadas stuffed with melted Oaxacan cheese and squash blossoms; and a wonderfully cheesy, banana leaf-wrapped tamal Oaxaqueño.

The paths to breakfast burrito nirvana at Phoenix Burrito House are many, but however you choose, you'll end up in the same place. Machaca provides the fastest, warmest, and most direct route. The strings of beef have a robust animal flavor, the element that unites the many others jammed to dangerous capacity within the hot flour walls of this football-size meal. A toasting brings out nuanced flavors from the tortilla, and heady warmth. Salsa is cool and fresh. Potatoes are warm and give minimal resistance to your eager chomping. And the best thing about this breakfast roll-up might be its sheer size: There's enough there for breakfast, yes, and part of lunch.

Although many chefs are content to smother tortilla chips in red sauce, chef Doug Robson of Gallo Blanco takes a different approach with his chilaquiles recipe. Served as a short stack of oven-crisped corn tortillas, the Gallo Blanco chilaquiles are pasted together with a blend of melted Chihuahua and Oaxaca cheese, and then topped with two fried eggs. The tortillas soak up the kitchen's lovely, fire-roasted tomatillo salsa. To eat it, you slice into it like a round cake. The Gallo Blanco take on this classic Mexican brunch staple is decadent and not to be missed.

The salsa bar at Casa Corazon in central Phoenix is a thing of beauty. You'll find nearly a dozen house-made salsas and fresh taco garnishes, enticingly well-organized and bearing unique flavors that will have you making return trips during your visit. Don't miss the creamy, blended pineapple salsa, or the bracingly fresh serrano pepper salsa. For extra heat, try the smoky morita salsa. It doesn't hurt that the restaurant makes its own fresh tortilla chips, which is further incentive to make multiple trips to the salsa bar.

The cheesy rajas, beefy desebrada roja, and peppery picadillo get top billing at Tacos Chiwas, midtown Phoenix's beloved Chihuahua-style taqueria. But it would be a mistake to leave without trying the restaurant's excellent frijoles charros. Whole pinto beans are simmered in a broth flavored with bacon, hot dog slices, onions, and fresh cilantro. The result is a velvety, richly layered stew that's a meal all on its own. Beans are a staple of most Mexican restaurants, but they're rarely as memorable and delicious as they are here.

Guacamole doesn't get much more flavorful, fresh, and baroque than the rendition you'll find at this popular taco shop. La Santisima's ultra-fresh, chunky guacamole features a base of freshly smashed avocados, cilantro, onion, and tomato. Diced jicama adds texture and crunch, while diced mango and cranberries add pops of fruity sweetness. It's served with a side of thin, crisp tortilla chips, perfect for shuttling the creamy and delicious pastiche into your mouth.

The flour tortillas at La Sonorense Tortilla Factory in south-central Phoenix are fashioned out of four basic ingredients: flour, shortening, salt, and water. They are pressed into thin, par-cooked disks, which means they puff up enticingly when you warm them up over fire. Thin and pliable, La Sonorense's tortillas have the kind of richly buttery profile that makes them good enough to eat all on their own. Not surprisingly, many metro Phoenix restaurants and food trucks source their tortillas from La Sonorense. You can enjoy these terrific tortillas anytime by dropping into the factory's storefront on Central Avenue and grabbing a dozen (or two).