Oaxacan Restaurant Near Me in Corona: SR San Pablo's Late-Night Tlayudas

Every tlayuda on the menu at Tlayuda Oaxaqueña SR San Pablo costs $17, and the cart cooks them from 8 am until 4:30 the next morning. It stands at 102-25 Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, Queens, across from Corona Plaza and directly under the 103rd Street–Corona Plaza stop on the 7 train. If you searched oaxacan restaurant near me after a late shift in Queens, this is the rare Oaxacan kitchen in the city that is still firing its comal at 3 am.

SR San Pablo is a street operation. There are no walls, no host stand and no reservations. Seating, as The Infatuation described it in its August 2024 review, is a short plastic stool at a thigh-high table next to the cart, with hot sauce and pickled onions set out for you to serve yourself. That review scored it 9.1 and filed it under serious takeout operation and cheap eats.

In May 2026 the same publication kept it in its guide to the best Mexican restaurants in New York, which says a lot for a stand with plastic furniture. The cart takes its name from the Oaxacan tlayuda, and the menu barely strays from it. If you want a mole tasting menu or a mezcal list, you are in the wrong place. If you want one very large, very good thing, you are not.

The official online menu lists four versions, all $17. The cecina tlayuda uses thin sheets of dried, salted meat, while carne enchilada is pork rubbed with red chile paste. The chorizo version is the richest, and the combinada puts all three meats on one tortilla. In Oaxaca City these meats are the staples of the smoky grill stalls at the Mercado 20 de Noviembre, where they are cooked to order over charcoal.

A tlayuda starts with a wide, thin corn tortilla, spread with asiento, the rendered pork lard, and refried black beans, then layered with quesillo and cabbage before it goes over the heat. The Infatuation called the ones here hubcap-sized. That is not an exaggeration, so the honest call is to skip ordering one each if there are two of you. Split one, and add a second only if you are still hungry.

First visit, order the combinada. It shows you all three meats at once, and since every tlayuda costs the same $17, there is no reason to choose just one. On a second visit, the carne enchilada on its own is the pick for anyone who likes heat, because the red chile coating chars at the edges on the comal and seeps into the beans underneath.

Cecina alone is milder and saltier, and it is the version to get if you are bringing someone new to Oaxacan food. The chorizo is the heaviest of the four and works best late at night, after a few drinks on Roosevelt Avenue. Whatever you pick, use the pickled onions on the table. They cut the lard and cheese, which matters on a tortilla this size.

The cart's MenuStar ordering page lists the same hours every day: 8 am to 4:30 am. Delivery runs separately, from 10 am to 10 pm, with a delivery fee from $4.99 and a $15 minimum. The page also lets you schedule a pickup order in advance, which is useful because a tlayuda takes a few minutes on the comal and a crowd can build after midnight on weekends.

Bring cash. Food creators who film the cart say cash is the way to pay at the window, even though online orders are paid by card. The busiest stretches are the evening rush, when the 7 train empties onto the plaza, and late Friday and Saturday nights. A weekday mid-morning is almost always quiet.

Corona is one of the city's densest Mexican and Latin American neighborhoods, and the crowd at the cart reflects that: workers coming off late shifts, families on weekend evenings, and food crawlers who ride the 7 train out from Manhattan to eat their way along Roosevelt Avenue. The soundtrack is the train overhead, which rumbles past every few minutes and makes conversation stop mid-sentence.

The unspoken rule is to keep the stools moving. There are only a few of them, and if you have finished and are just talking, give your seat to the people standing with a hot plate. Many regulars order to go and eat across the street in Corona Plaza, the pedestrian plaza under the tracks, which has more room than the sidewalk.

If more than a dozen people are waiting late on a Saturday, order ahead on the MenuStar page and come back at the pickup time instead of standing in the crowd. If you would rather sit down for Oaxacan food with table service, Ruta Oaxaca at 35-03 Broadway in Astoria takes OpenTable bookings and is open until 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays, a short ride west on the 7 and the R.

In daylight, take the tlayuda for a walk. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, where the trumpeter lived from 1943 until his death in 1971, is at 34-56 107th Street, about half a mile north of the cart on a quiet block of brick houses. It is one of the few preserved homes of a jazz musician in the country, and the garden alone is worth the detour.

Keep going east for about a mile and you reach Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, home of the Unisphere, the steel globe built for the 1964–65 World's Fair. The park is free, and the lawns around the fountains are full of family picnics and pickup soccer games on weekends. The 111th Street station on the 7 takes you back toward Manhattan.

Address: Tlayuda Oaxaqueña SR San Pablo, 102-25 Roosevelt Avenue, Corona, NY 11368, across from Corona Plaza. Subway: 103rd Street–Corona Plaza on the 7, directly overhead. Hours on the official ordering page: daily 8 am to 4:30 am. Delivery: 10 am to 10 pm, fee from $4.99, $15 minimum. Seating: a few plastic stools at the cart, no reservations.

Prices from the official MenuStar ordering page: cecina tlayuda $17, chorizo tlayuda $17, carne enchilada tlayuda $17, combinada tlayuda $17. One tlayuda feeds two people with ordinary appetites. Bring cash for the window, napkins for the walk, and patience for the train noise. Ask the Karpo APP for a Roosevelt Avenue food crawl or a park plan in Flushing Meadows before you go.