In Mexico, it seems you are where you eat. Mexico City’s young professionals dine at a mix of modern, formal restaurants and old-school informal street stands. Investors are opening a new wave of world-class restaurants in many neighborhoods in Mexico’s capital city, targeting the growing budgets of the city’s upwardly mobile young professionals. But the formal economy isn’t robust enough to provide jobs for the entire workforce. Like meat in an over-stuffed taco, many people don’t fit into the formal sector and fall out to the sidelines.

Standing in front of his bright orange truck as doctors from a nearby hospital and businessmen in suits walked by, Soto explained that he didn’t need to seek out loans to start his business. “We had the resources to invest in the trucks,” he said. Other would-be entrepreneurs aren’t as fortunate, however.

“In Mexico it’s hard because there is no real legislation for food trucks, so it’s hard to get financial resources from a bank. The money usually comes from individuals,” Soto explained. As he talked, a waiter set down a sandwich stuffed with unctuous shredded pork for a customer seated at a stool in front of the van’s narrow, stainless-steel lunch counter. A sandwich and a drink cost $1.90.

For food truck vendors, even securing the right to use a particular space involves careful navigation of formal and informal channels. “You try to get a permit from the city government, but if you can’t, you reach out to informal leaders to rent out a space,” Soto said.

Informal businesses, whether they are operated out of rented spaces on the sidewalk or are run as itinerant enterprises, are not officially registered and do not contribute social security payments for their employees. Although the unregistered food vendors do not pay taxes, they do serve as an important source of employment in a country where only four out of every 10 workers are employed in formal-sector jobs. “It’s an informal business, [but] the government tolerates us,” Soto added. Up the block and around the corner, customers stood in front of white metal shacks, eating hamburgers, shrimp cocktails, and a wide variety of different tacos. Each shop has its own improvised electricity connection. The wires rise up into an elaborate tangle before connecting to the grid.

A few blocks down Orizaba, in the heart of the Roma neighborhood’s main strip of trendy gastropubs, Alexis Arce, a 27-year-old chef, sat down at a table near the sidewalk entrance to his seafood restaurant, Pacifico 7. As waiters shuttled plates laden with fried fish burritos and golden-brown fried shrimp tacos al gobernador, Arce eyed the torrents of rain crashing on the sidewalk outside. “You can make good money with a taco stand, but it’s not as glamorous as having a restaurant,” Arce said. As groups of young professionals hurried in from the storm -- a daily part of life during Mexico City’s rainy season -- Arce explained, “We could have made a food truck, but that doesn’t give you space to seat people when it rains.”