You can find yourself in Mexico in the heart of Annandale, in the Columbia Pike car park of El Gran Palenque restaurant. It's there that the Elotes Asados Minutas van is parked, cooking and selling sweetcorn smothered in mayo, chili sauce and that pungent grated Mexican cheese that can make your nostrils flare and your lips curl.

Line up behind the men and boys chattering among themselves, and, if you're not also male, staring furtively at you. Of course they aren't speaking English. But you can assume from the laughter and the sidelong glances that it might be a good thing if you don't understand Spanish. The woman behind the counter certainly doesn't speak English. So you point to what the men are eating and when she presents your prepared corn on the cob to you, she in turn points at the extra bottles of hot sauce on the counter.

Sit and chew it and watch the mariachi band members who play at the El Gran Palenque turn up and spill out of a tiny car, their massive black felt sombreros blossoming out of it as they emerge head first in full uniform, brass buttons glinting up the legs of their trousers, dazzling white shirts tightly contained inside rib-high jackets.