Factory Tamal owner Fernando Lopez noticed that few if any tamale shops or stands in New York were making the traditional steamed masa dish entirely by hand. Even though it’s an extremely laborious process, Lopez wanted to bring the Mexican tradition with him to the city. “The way we make them here at Factory Tamal is the way my grandparents and their grandparents and generations after generations made them.”

Lopez uses white corn exported from Mexico for the ancient Mesoamerican