Mexican street corn cup.
Esquites is elotes in a cup — the same corn, same mayo, same cotija, same chili and lime, but the corn is cut from the cob and served in a vessel with a spoon. It was designed for the same street cart market as elotes but for people who did not want to deal with the cob. In Mexico City you hand a vendor a cup and they build it in front of you from a giant pot of hot corn kept simmering all day in butter and epazote. The epazote is what separates esquites from just being corn in a cup. It is an herb with a flavor somewhere between cilantro and mint with a slight medicinal edge that disappears when it cooks into the corn. The result is corn that tastes like itself but more so.