Oaxaca: Eight Essential Experiences for Food Lovers (Patreon)

Back at JKLA World HQ, we made a conscious decision that the winter holidays would actually be winter holidays. So despite my worst instincts, I mostly stopped writing and posting just before Christmas.

That part was easy in the week leading up to it. I took the kids to Boston and then New York to see my parents and ride the subway as many times as humanly possible (Wombat is really into subways).

We celebrated on Christmas morning with a chicken-and-waffle feast (Stella Park's buttermilk waffles and fried chicken from Popeye's) at the home of my old boss and colleague Ed Levine and my agent (and Ed’s wife) Vicky Bijur. That evening, we gathered at my mother's apartment for a reverse-seared prime rib and the potatoes.

After that, the kids headed to Colombia with their mom to visit cousins, and Tessa and I rang in the New Year in Mexico at a pace far slower than “four-year-old loose on the NYC MTA.”

I tried not to work. Tessa, however, still had to practice violin a few hours a day, which left me with plenty of time to eat, wander, and take notes.

As I write this, I’m sitting on a beach in Huatulco on the Oaxaca coast, with the flavors of Oaxaca City still rattling around in my head. It felt wrong not to write them down, and if I’m doing that anyway, I might as well share them here. This doesn’t feel like work, so I’m allowing it. (Sorry, Lena.)

Despite having been to Mexico a dozen or more times, this was my first trip to Oaxaca, which is honestly kind of shocking given how long it’s been at the top of my food wish list.

Why Oaxaca? Oaxacan cuisine has a reputation for complexity not because it’s flashy or fussy, but because it’s old—thousands of years old—and built through continuity rather than reinvention. Long before Spanish contact, Indigenous cultures in the region developed a food system centered on corn, beans, squash, chiles, herbs, seeds, insects, cacao, and fermented drinks. Corn, in particular, is everywhere, transformed through nixtamalization into tortillas, tamales, memelas, tlayudas, atoles, and countless hyper-local forms tied to place, season, and ritual.

When Spanish ingredients arrived—wheat, rice, sugar, garlic, spices, livestock, lard—they didn’t replace what was already there so much as layer on top of it. The cuisine evolved slowly.

Moles (a family of sauces made from ingredients mixed and crushed together) are the clearest example: pre-Hispanic chile-based sauces thickened with seeds and nuts absorbed Old World spices and sweeteners over centuries, evolving into complex preparations like negro (a black mole flavored with chocolate, chiles, and warm spices), coloradito (a red chile mole built on guajillo and ancho chiles, tomatoes, and subtle spice), amarillo (a yellow mole thickened with masa and flavored with chilhuacle amarillo or guajillo chiles, herbs, and often finished as a stew), and estofado (made with a combination of dried and pickled chiles, olives).

The techniques are just as important as the ingredients. Chiles carefully toasted and deseeded. Corn dried, nixtamalized, and ground fresh for masa. Chocolate stone-ground with sugar and cinnamon and frothed with water, not melted into milk. Quesillo stretched by hand into long strands. Metates and molcajetes still in daily use not for nostalgia, but because they give results modern shortcuts don’t quite match.

At El Sabor Zapoteca, a small cooking school in Teotitlán del Valle (an indigenous village outside of Oaxaca City), our host Reyna Mendoza told us that for big family gatherings, she and the other matriarchs might spend days grinding moles by hand—because Oaxacans will happily use any excuse to bring extended family together. (Meanwhile, the intricate weaving the town is also known for is done by the men of the family).

Geography plays a huge role too. Mountains, valleys, and isolated coastal regions have produced wildly different micro-cuisines, sometimes just a few hours apart. That fragmentation has preserved older traditions while letting new ones develop independently. The food I tried feels ancient and alive at the same time.

So What Did We Eat?

From a purely culinary standpoint, Oaxaca City is one of the most exciting places I’ve ever eaten. We ate street food, market food, home cooking, fancy restaurant food, and food in nearby towns. Virtually every bite was either deeply delicious, surprising, or rooted in a story I wanted to chase down. (Okay, there was one meal that was merely good, and yes, it was the cheffiest place we tried.)

I’m not an expert on Oaxaca. But I do know delicious when I taste it. So below are some of the bites that really stuck with me. If you want to go deeper, follow my friend Bricia Lopez and get her excellent book Oaxaca. And if you’re planning a trip, check out Oaxacking, a food tour run by Omar Alonso.

In the meantime, here are some of the best eating experiences we had during our trip:

1. A Cooking Class at El Sabor Zapoteca

At El Sabor Zapoteca, host Reyna Mendoza started the day by taking our small group on a guided tour of the market at Teotitlan, a local market that features a variety of indigenous ingredients and crafts, as well as some Post-Colombian staples. It's a small village and everyone seemed to know who Reyna is. The vendors were all happy to let us smell the unique ingredients and ask questions.

We picked up supplies then headed back to her hacienda—which also features a shop for traditional loom-weaving—and headed into the kitchen.

First on the menu was a black bean soup. The soup itself was extremely simple, nothing more than black beans cooked in aromatic chicken broth. It was how the black beans were prepared that brought the flavor and had me rethinking how I cook my own beans at home.

To start, we toasted the dried beans on top of a clay comal, heated on top of a live wood fire. We used a brush to push the beans around and toast evenly until their skins started to pop and split, releasing a nutty, toasty aroma.

Once the beans were toasted, we transferred them over to the metate and ground them into a fine powder. We then poured this powder into simmering broth where, within a matter of minutes, the beans were cooked, the soup thickened and took on a deep black hue.

It was mind-blowing. Beans that cook in minutes!Reyna served the soup with fried tortillas, chunks of avocado and cheese, and some red onions that we quick-pickled in lime juice with sliced habanero chiles.

The only problem is, how can I replicate this process at home? I don't have a metate home (and I'm not sure I can justify buying one). A regular molcajete or mortar and pestle won't do the job. I even tried grinding some beans in my Indian wet mill fitted with rolling stones, but they weren't powerful enough. I've decided that the closest mechanical aid I could think of is a metal burr coffee grinder, so I plan on getting an inexpensive one to test it out on.

We also made a mole de pipian, a nutty, creamy mole made by toasting pumpkin seeds and grinding them with sesame seeds, onion, garlic, tomatillos, chiles, epazote, which we painstakingly ground to a fine paste on the metate before searing in a hot clay pot and reducing with chicken stock. Reyna typically serves the mole with simmered chicken legs, but this time we had it with pan-seared mojarra (snapper) as one of the guests was pescatarian.

To go with the mole, we made a simple salsa de molcajete with roma tomatoes roasted on the comal and chiles de agua (green chiles with a flavor similar to Anaheim chiles, but more heat), fresh corn tortillas, and rice cooked with chepiche, a mild grassy herb that I had not tasted before.

This day was one of the highlights of our trip. I always like to take local cooking class when traveling, and this is one of the most special and eye-opening classes I've ever participated in.

2. Memelas From Memelas San Augustin

Memelas are the Oaxacan equivelent of a sope: a slightly-thicker-than-tortilla disk of masa cooked over a comla, then pinched up around the edges to form a shallow boat shape that is then topped. The typical base includes a smear of asiento, which is caramlized rendered pork fat, as well as a layer of smooth, saucy refried black beans.

After that, the choices are yours. I had mine with shredded nopales (paddle cactus), quesillo (the local hand-stretched, mozzarella-like cheese), questo fresco, and a couple of different salsas.

3. Charcoal Grilled Meat from El Pasillo del Humo

You'll smell it before you see it in the confusing labyrinth of Mercado 20 de Noviembre. Pasillo del Humo is a long, smoke-filled passageway lined with vendors , each one working over their own charcoal grill, all cooking variations of the same things: tasajo (thin-sliced marinated pork), cecina (thin-sliced salted beef), and chorizos, along with the occasional specialty. Locals seemed to have their favorites, but we didn’t get a chance to compare—we went with the stall that looked the smokiest.

A waiter swept us away through the market to find seats for us that seemed distant enough from the passageway that we were worried our food may never make it through the crowded, narrow spaces, but we didn't need to worry. Our server returned with a large paper-lined straw basket piled with meat, fresh tortillas, and the sides we'd ordered off the menu (cucumbers, limes, grilled chiles de agua, and a couple salsas. Because the meat is sliced so thin it’s cooked well-done by necessity, but the salting and marinade keep it juicy, with an intense, straightforward smoke flavor. We washed it down with a jamaica (hibiscus) aguafresca, and passionfruit juice.

The market itself is crowded and loud and feels chaotic at first, but what stood out, especially to us as New Yorkers used to crowded streets turning tense, was how calm it all felt—lots of bumping and squeezing, but no arguments or scuffles at all. Just people eating, shopping, laughing, and chiling.

4. Drinking Chocolate from Rito Cholatería

In Oaxaca, drinking chocolate is an everyday thing—more like coffee or tea than a treat—and Rito makes that immediately clear. It’s a small shop where you can buy Mexican drinking chocolate to take home or have it prepared on the spot. The chocolate is stone-ground cacao blended with sugar and spices, and you can choose whether it’s made the traditional way with water, which keeps the flavor sharp and cacao-forward, or with milk for something richer and rounder. They also offer a variety of other chocolate-based drinks and treats. The drinking chocolate is not too thick, nicely foamy, and only mildly weet, with a deep cocoa flavor and gentle bitterness. It feels less like “hot chocolate” as we know it in the States, and more like a daily, comforting drink that just happens to be made from cacao.

5. A Meal at Levadura de Olla

Levadura de Olla is a woman-owned restaurant that focuses on Indigenous Oaxacan ingredients and cuisines, with both traditional recipes, as well as thoughtful modern spins on indigenous dishes — no reinventions for their own sake. Of everything we ate on the more “cheffy” end of the spectrum, this was the place that felt the most visionary and the most precisely executed.

A standout was the tomato salad: several varieties of tomatoes alongside tomatillos and tomate de árbol, laid over a beet purée and dressed with a house-fermented fruit vinegar that tied everything together without overpowering it. (Vegetables are a welcome sight in the meat- and lard-heavy cuisine of the area.)

The tamal was equally memorable—made with a mix of pork and chicken and very roughly ground nixtamalized corn, topped with a chile purée and served in a bed of smoldering corn husks that added a gentle, aromatic smokiness. Dessert was a burnt milk and corn pudding paired with cactus fruit sorbet.

The food is served on beautiful local ceramic plateware (pottery is a regional specialty) which. It inspired us to drive out to nearby San Bartolo Coyotepec to pick up black and brown clay pieces to bring home.

6. Tacos or Tostadas de Lechon from Lechoncito de Oro

Though slow-roasted pig isn’t really an Oaxacan specialty, multiple people independently told me that the lechón tacos at Lechonería de Oro were the best taco they’d had—not just in Oaxaca, but anywhere—so of course we went. The menu is intentionally tiny: tacos, tortas, and tostadas filled with juicy, slow-cooked shredded pork leg, optionally mixed with some richer pork belly, plus one fiery green salsa, drinks, and nothing else. That’s it. The pork is deeply flavorful and unabashedly porky, and the sharp, spicy salsa cuts through the richness perfectly. It’s a real lesson in how good things can be when you focus on doing just a couple of things extremely well. There’s was a long line, but it moved steadily and had a genuinely fun, convivial vibe as everyone waited their turn.

My only wish would have been fresher tortillas, but when reheated with enough pork juice and fat, they became perfectly supple flavor sponges.

7. Tacos and Empanadas de Amarillo from Tacos del Carmen

At Tacos del Carmen, the focus is on a short menu done with a lot of confidence, especially the rolled tacos and the empanadas de amarillo. The tacos are large, tightly rolled, and filled to order. The empanadas are built around mole amarillo—a bright, spicy yellow mole typically made with yellow chiles (like chilhuacle or costeño), masa for body, tomatillos, and herbs such as hoja santa and epazote. Here it comes with stewed chicken in a folded tortilla with avocado leaf, but you can also add the mole to other tacos on the menu (as well as their three free salsa selections).

I went with a rolled chicken taco, a mole amarillo empanada stuffed with quesillo and beans, and a squash blossom quesadilla with more quesillo. Everything was rich but balanced, especially when paired with the mole amarillo and pickled onions with roasted chile de agua, which brough heat and acidity, tying the whole spread together.

8. Late Night Tlayudas and Chocolate from Las Tlayudas de Mina y Bustamante

At Las Tlayudas de Mina y Bustamante, late night means a steady crowd and a nonstop rhythm of masa, smoke, and heat. They make tlayudas, often described in the U.S. as “Mexican pizza,” though they’re really closer to an oversized taco. A ball of masa gets pressed into an LP-sized disk and cooked on a comal until crisp on both sides. Nearby, another cook grills thin-sliced beef in a wire basket over charcoal until smoky and charred. The tortilla is spread with asiento and beans, topped with your choice of fillings—the standard combo is tomato, avocado, beef, and quesillo—then finished directly over charcoal until the outside is crisp and lightly charred, folded, and served with roasted chiles de agua and salsa.

The texture really does echo a good New York–style pizza: a thin, crisp, smoky edge with a bit of burnt char, giving way to a softer, doughier layer topped with melty cheese and beans. In the U.S., most places import tlayuda shells from Oaxaca and reheat them before topping and finishing. I like those just fine, but I had no idea what I was missing until eating one made fresh—night-and-day difference. Imported tlayudas are morning-after pizza; this is straight out of the oven.

We finished the night with chocolate again, this time as champurrado: hot, rich, and frothy, made with nixtamalized corn and chocolate, and exactly what you want after standing around a charcoal grill late at night.