Postcard from... Mexico City

The streets of Mexico City, population 20 million, are one of the world’s great incubators of snack-food experimentation, where street vendors slather mayo and cheese on grilled corncobs, and carve mangoes into flowering fruit bouquets.

Perhaps, then, it was only a matter of time before someone gazed upon a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, a product boasting 27 ingredients, and thought: these need more. That appears to be how Dorilocos – Crazy Doritos – came along.

“They’re good, but whoa, that’s a lot of different things all at once,” says Gabriela Doroteo, sampling Dorilocos for the first time at the behest of her 12-year-old son, Yael.

She holds a plastic fork in one hand. Her other cradles a bag of Doritos sliced open, heaped with grated carrots, jicama, cucumber, pickled pork rinds, peanuts, candies, lime juice, chili powder, and swirls of fruity syrup and hot sauce.

It is an insane asylum of sugar and spice. No one is sure of Dorilocos’ precise origins. Some say they are a northern invention concocted somewhere along the border. Others trace them to the rough barrios that ring Mexico City.

“They’re just a fad,” scoffs Carlos Gonzalez, a pushcart tamale vendor, watching young adults line up at the Dorilocos stalls across the street.

©Washington Post