"If you have a hangover, that's going to wake you up," Luis Martinez said of the salsa roja he had just splashed on his pork adobado taco. "It's going to hit you little by little, and at the end you'll be sweating."

The pork adobado is Martinez's favorite at Taqueria del Sol, a food truck in an unassuming gravel lot on Hendersonville Road, next to a whitewashed cinder block building offering bilingual tax and insurance services.

This little truck also happens to be Martinez's favorite taco spot in Asheville, in part because it reminds him of home. The people who cook the food there come from Michoacán, Martinez said, about 25 hours by bus from the town in which he was born, Santa Catarina Loxicha.

"The taste is like back in Mexico. It's really raw; it's nothing fancy. But it has a nice flavor and you can taste it, that this guy learned this from someone else — this is family-style food."

Taco Map: At least 41 taquerias

Martinez, a graphic designer and marketing and tech professional at Whitney Commercial Real Estate, has made it his mission to map out the best authentic taquerias in Asheville. His project, Taco Map AVL, launches July 1 at tacomapavl.com.

Through the project, Martinez points out some of the best tacos you've likely never heard of.

There are tiny trucks like Del Sol and The Local Buggy. There are taquerias tucked in mercados, like Los Nenes Bakery, which has an astonishing selection of pan-Latin sodas and juices. All told, there are 41 taquerias on the map so far.

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Los Nenes also serves the best carnitas in Asheville, but only on weekends, Martinez said, sitting in the tiny dining room. The business is dominated by groceries: an impressive array of meat, pinatas hanging from the ceiling, a panoply of baked goods in a case.

But behind a tiny counter to the right, you'll find an ever-rotating selection of things to stuff in tortillas. On June 19, it was the standard — but not standard-tasting — chorizo and some excellent al pastor. There was earthy beef cheek studded with fat, lengua, carne asada, marinated chicken with roasted vegetables and thinly sliced beef ribs.

The tortillas were not house-made, but Martinez said that doesn't always matter. "The tortillas are key. If they make a handmade tortilla, it could be good, but it could be bad. Sometimes, handmade is not better."

The tortillas at Los Nenes are made in a bakery in Georgia, Martinez offered. As he promised, they were indeed excellent.

"When you go to Mexico and eat tacos, most of the tortillas are made in a machine. The thing is what kind of corn they use, and how they do the processing ... there's tons of different paths."

Martinez is clearly a taco expert, and though he's spent most of his life eating tacos, they weren't a specialty of his community, where only about 500 people lived at the time of his birth.

"When I was growing up, we didn't really have a lot of money, so for us it was something we ate only once in a while — it was like a ritual," Martinez said.

Tacos were something his family saved up to eat, a reprieve from life in a violent time in Mexico, he said. "Every single time where you were eating tacos, it was a special occasion. Going to eat tacos was a luxury."

All the tacos

Life is different now, and Martinez can eat tacos whenever he wants — and does. He'll tell you with a tinge of pride that the taco project has earned him an extra 10 pounds.

But he'll also tell you this project is not just about finding the best carnitas, though having one spot for information that's generally shared by word of mouth in the Latino community is indeed valuable.

Martinez wants to bring that privileged information to everyone while highlighting local, immigrant-run businesses. Martinez, who immigrated to California to be a farm worker and became a U.S. citizen last year, hopes to use this project to build bridges. "Tacos don't represent us in a big way, but they are part of the culture, and it's something that we do often."

Go to an authentic taqueria, and you'll come face-to-face with Asheville's thriving Latino culture, he said.

"There is a lot of Latino population here, but you don't really see them because they're always working. For me, more than anything, the map is to create a bridge through Asheville and Hendersonville to let people know, 'Hey, we're here, we have small businesses, and sometime these businesses create beautiful food and amazing stuff — and nobody knows.'"

Until now.

Martinez's top 10 taco spots, ranked

1. Taqueria Del Sol: 2606 Hendersonville Road, Arden.

2. Taqueria Mexicana El Paso: 112 Sugarloaf Road, Hendersonville.

3. Los Nenes Bakery: 1341 Parkwood Road, Suite 110, Asheville.

4. Rosita's Taqueria: 555 New Leicester Highway, Asheville.

5. Taqueria La Potosina: 678 N. Louisiana Ave., Asheville.

6. Taqueria El Toro: 5360 Hendersonville Road, Fletcher, in Smiley's Flea Market.

7. Tacos Mexico: 4175 Hendersonville Road, Fletcher.

8. The Local Buggy: 819-803 Old Fairview Road, Asheville.

9. Tacos La Rancherita: 4221 Boylston Highway, Mills River.

10. El Limon: 70 Old U.S. 70, Swannanoa.