at medium.com, Mike Sula wrote:I basked in this warmth in its ancestral home last summer, walking with Juan from his old house in La Barca to the mercado, a stroll that would’ve taken a fraction of the time if he didn’t stop and chat with nearly everyone he encountered. From Ambrosio at the corner store and the shoeshine guy in the zocalo, to the birrerios that operate on the perimeter of the market, they all knew him as a kid; his dad was a well-known professional boxer and baseball player. “I couldn’t get away with anything,” he says.

But it’s inside the market where Juan, as an adult apprentice, learned his trade. Like Birreria Zaragoza, Birreria Miguel is a family operation, led by 64-year-old Miguel Segura, who stables his goats in a pen behind the killing floor adjacent to his home.

We arrived there one afternoon to observe the process, which included building the Encino oak wood fires in conical clay ovens, butchering goats, salting the meat, rubbing it with brick-red mole, and wrapping it in maguey leaves. The chivo was stacked in the oven, sealed with a thick, layer of wet, gray earth. The next morning, the meat was taken out of the oven, wrapped in butcher paper, and trucked to the mercado.