I HAVE A friend in the wine bidness, which is a good place to have a friend, for all the bottles and bottles of obvious reasons, and for one other reason. My friend's friends who he works with, these Mexican guys ... at the drop of the merest suggestion of any old even somewhat slightly "special" occasion (such as my friend's marriage or his kid's first birthday, to be exact), they'll knock over a whole damn pig and make carnitas.

And I'm there. Which is how I have come to appreciate carnitas even more than carne asada. Which is what I was telling my littlest little sister last night at Cuco's. "Pork is my new favorite thing to eat," I was saying, making love to a super fat carnitas burrito.

"What about chickens?" asked Orange Pop. That's my Cleveland sister, my latest and last in an especially long line of visitors this visitor season.

"Oh, chickens are still my favorite thing to eat, and always will be, but they're my old favorite. Pork is my new favorite," I explained. "They used to call it 'the other white meat,' but now they call it 'the other beef.' "

My sister smiled, and her traveling podner, the Prop Tart, just looked at me. Orange Pop and the Prop Tart are theater people, but they're behind-the-scenes theater people – so you don't have to hug them every time you see them.

"What?" I said.

They looked at me like, "the other beef?" – my sister adjusting the lighting, and the Prop Tart mentally fitting me for one of those propeller hats.

"Don't look at me like that," I said. "I know what I'm talking about. I'm a food guy. I'm in the know. Here."

How I knew about Cuco's, by the way, is someone wrote and told me. They said it was their favorite Mexican restaurant in the city, and I had to try the "roast pork" burrito.

Carnitas is not roast pork. Let me rephrase that: Carnitas is roast pork. It is also boiled pork, broiled pork, fried pork, toaster-oven pork, and solar-braised pork. Depending who you ask. I think they tell you what they think you want to hear. The wine guys, who can read me like a book, tell me the pig is boiled in its own fat, which sounds like fried, except they also mix in milk and orange juice, which changes the fry to ... let's call it a "froil." Sort of a slow, thick gurgle. I've seen it, but never from the get-go. Once these guys get to know me better, I'm sure they'll tell me they also dumped in melted butter, chicken juice, barbecue sauce, and presweetened iced tea.

On Haight Street I guess they like things baked. Which makes perfect sense, if you think about it, and I guess Cuco's thought about it, because that's what they call their carnitas: baked pork. The guy lifted the lid on the tin thing and showed me. "Baked pork," he said.

"Carnitas?" I said. It looked like carnitas. It looked 10 times better than any of the other meats in any of the other bins. It was the only bin with a lid on it, like some kind of secret.

"Carnitas," he said.

I think what carnitas might be, in restaurants, is pig meat simmered in lard and then baked to give a little crunch to it. In any case, it was some damn good pig meat. Best burrito I've had since the good old days at Cancun, and that's even though the tortilla (technically the whole burrito) was steamed.

Haight and Fillmore. It's more of a taquería than a restaurant, really, and it's tiny, with just a handful of tables. Atmospherically, you've got your MGD poster, a foresty nature painting, and a picture of a train wreck in Paris. Eclectic, in other words.

It's a real ma-and-pa joint with a real ma and a real pa. Real kids, too, the oldest of whom was running the cash register and, between customers, sitting in front of a TV watching The Simpsons. The other kids were in and out of the place, eating instant noodle soups in those cups they come in. Which raises very serious philosophical questions; namely, What the – ?