An al pastor negro taco, seasoned with the charred chili paste recado negro, imported from the Yucatan peninsula

It’s after 4pm, and I’m sitting in a booth at the Omelette Factory, the egg-centric breakfast restaurant that’s been operating in Santee for some 28 years. Of course, nobody’s eating omelets at 4pm, and no American-style breakfast diner put a specialized ceramic dish on your table to provide four different kinds of salsa. Yet here I am, watching Daylight Savings extend the sunlit hours, sampling the spice levels of salsas green, brown, red, and bright red.

That’s because at 4pm, an hour after Omelette Factory ends its daily service, the building reopens as Al Pastor Town, a Mexican restaurant with a full menu headlined by three different kinds of al pastor.

Don’t be deceived by the French spelling: Omelette Factory isn’t a fancy place. It offers a large diner space with colorful booths and plenty of tables that may be pushed together for large parties. Like virtually all San Diego breakfast eateries, it serves Mexican breakfast options including chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, and machaca.

Four different salsas, served in what is usually a breakfast booth

But Al Pastor Town is a different entity altogether, reportedly launched by an Omelette Factory cook and his son after their food truck shut down due to the pandemic. Judging by the laminated menus, Al Pastor Town is more than a pop-up. And more than a ghost or dark kitchen, since it includes table service.

Its namesake, al pastor, is Mexico’s famed spit-roasted street food, influenced by Lebanese migration in the 19th century. Meaning, it’s analogous to shawarma, except usually made from pork rather than beef or lamb, and seasoned with a blend of spices more likely to highlight chili pepper and the Maya spice achiote than, say, allspice.

A breakfast restaurant, with an evening taco shop built in

And that’s exactly what we get with the restaurant’s signature al pastor rojo, which presents like the al pastor pork we’re accustomed to seeing, whether in San Diego, or Tijuana for that matter. But the winning quirk of this place is that it serves three different preparations of the dish, easy to distinguish by their different colors.

A second, al pastor verde, less reliant on achiote than by ground nuts. There is little surprise finding the occasional pipian (green pumpkin seed) on my taco, but is that pistachio I see? It’s a pretty tasty alternative.

An al pastor rojo mulita, sort of a cross between a taco and cheese melt

But most interesting is the black al pastor. This draws on a different product of old Maya country: recado negro. Far different from black mole, this is a spice derived from charred chili pepper, made into and in this case shipped as, a paste from the Yucatan peninsula. Made with a recado negro rub, the black al pastor looks, in effect, blackened. However, rather than cajun flavors, it combines smoke with somewhat diminished chili heat, along with a mix of spices, such as achiote, cloves, and cumin, that are actually pretty typical of a typical red al pastor.

An al pastor verde taco, seasoned in part with ground nuts

Though not exactly on every menu, a vigilant tourist may find dishes prepared with recado negro while visiting the Yucatan, most likely a saucy turkey dish called relleno negro — my last trip, it turned up in a rather addictive black salsa I’ve tried to replicate at home.

Though I’d hoped to find something like it here, black salsa was not one of the four options brought to my table. That said, I definitely have not found recado negro elsewhere in San Diego, which certainly makes seeking out Al Pastor Town worthwhile to Mexican food enthusiasts county-wide. Each al pastor dish is served on tacos ($4), mulitas ($5), tortas ($9), or in the style of carne asada fries ($12).