Menudo, a traditional Mexican soup, is with tripe (usually beef) and hominy.

Before tucking into his meal of Mexican soup and cheese biscuits, he bows his head in prayer.

It offers traditional dishes like baby cactus salad and pozole, the filling Mexican soup made with hominy.

His father later opened a restaurant called Victor's Café, which was famous for its menudo, a traditional Mexican soup.

These tomato sauces are used to create the base for some Mexican soups and some Mexican dishes.

Green chili pozole ($5.50), a traditional Mexican soup, is tart and vinegary, thick with chorizo and hominy.

(Chitlins, if you don't know, are pig intestines, and menudo is a traditional Mexican soup made with tripe, or stomach.)

Pozole, a traditional Mexican soup made with hominy, is a meal in itself, served in a huge bowl with chunks of tender pork or chicken.

From HangoverCure (hangovercure.org): Whip up a pot of the Mexican soup menudo and serve it with tortillas.

Menudo is a traditional Mexican soup (also known as pancita) made with beef stomach (tripe) in broth with a red chili pepper base.

Some soups, like albondigas (meatball) are fine, but some Mexican soups are made with high-fat short ribs and cheeses.

It is typically made with chicken, tomato, fish, or seafood broth with local fresh seafood ingredients and, like other Mexican soups, cooked quickly in a thin broth.

In response to this impulse, here’s a not-really-authentic but nevertheless quite tasty version of sopa de lima, the restorative and delicious Mexican soup popular in the Yucatán.

The tomato-basil sopa Azteca, for instance, was a delicious spin off the classic Mexican soup, with submerged avocado slices and crisp tortilla chips, served au gratin.

As much as I like a good roast chicken, I have always had a soft spot for simmered and boiled chicken, from iconic meaty Mexican soups to down-home American chicken and dumplings, to the French poule-au-pot and beyond.

There is no culinary leitmotif here; the kitchen offers a little of everything, from Yucatan favorites like fried eggs over black beans with a mildly hot ranchero sauce, to a couple of northern Mexican soups, to spicy Tex-Mex food of all kinds.