In the May issue of Gourmet magazine, Austin is one of the American cities named and identified as having a so-called typical street food.

The comestible featured was not the breakfast taco. No taco trucks and no office and construction-site deliveries of tacos in baskets and no Arandas and no Taco Shack (“home of the Shack Taco”) and no name-your-own longstanding Austin traditional favorite source. There are many who would say that the breakfast taco is certainly one of the national foods of the free and independent city-state of Austin; among them are many who would say that it is the national food of Austin, more important to student survival and nutrition than even ramen.

So the article goes on at length about elotes. But elotes are ears of corn on the cob. What the feature describes and what the picture illustrates are esquites, also corn, but cut from the cob and seasoned slightly differently, usually incorporating epazote.