Discover the best tortillas and elotes in Mexico City.

It’s not difficult to find a hot, fresh tortilla in Mexico City.

There are thousands of family-run tortillerías that open onto the streets, where a half-dozen might cost the equivalent of a quarter. They seem delicious to someone like me, who is used to buying tortillas in a plastic bag at an Atlanta grocery store.

But, for the most part, the tortillas sold on the street and in stores in Mexico’s capital are made from a processed corn flour mix. They may seem like the real thing, but they are about as removed from the grain that has long sustained this country as a bucket of American popcorn is.

The real thing is what I had come to Mexico to discover.

My first lesson starts early. Rafael Mier, a middle-aged intellectual and farmer whose family manufactures chocolate, picks me up just after dawn one late-summer morning in Colonia Roma, west of the historic city center.