The Mexico Menu

Mexico City

Thin-shaved pork marinated in dried chiles and achiote, cooked on a vertical trompo alongside a pineapple. The taquero slices it directly onto doubled corn tortillas. El Huequito on Ayuntamiento has been perfecting this since 1959.

Oaxaca

Up to 30 ingredients — mulato, chihuacle negro, and pasilla chiles roasted then ground with chocolate, plantain, and charred tortilla. The sauce that takes three days to make and defines Oaxacan identity.

Guadalajara

Pork slowly confited in its own lard in a giant copper cazo until falling-apart tender. Michoacán is the heartland, but La Polar in CDMX and the Mercado Libertad in Guadalajara serve versions that will ruin all other pork for you.

Mérida

Pork marinated in bitter orange and achiote, wrapped in banana leaves and slow-cooked underground in a pib oven. The Yucatan's defining dish — served on Sunday mornings with habanero salsa and pickled red onion.

Oaxaca

A giant, partially dried corn tortilla spread with black bean paste and lard, topped with quesillo, cabbage, and your choice of tasajo, chorizo, or chapulines. Oaxaca's answer to pizza — eaten at night at the Mercado 20 de Noviembre.

Guadalajara

Hominy corn simmered for hours with pork in a chile guajillo broth — the pre-Columbian feast dish. Served with a full table of garnishes: shredded cabbage, oregano, lime, radishes, and tostadas. Thursdays and Saturdays only at the best spots.

Mérida

A Yucatecan chicken broth brightened with bitter lime, garnished with fried tortilla strips and shredded chicken. Light, aromatic, and entirely unlike any other Mexican soup. Best at La Chaya Maya in Mérida.

Mérida

Hard-boiled egg–filled corn tortillas draped in a sauce of toasted pumpkin seeds and epazote, topped with tomato salsa. One of the oldest dishes in the Yucatan — pre-dating Spanish contact.

Cancún

Fried tortillas stuffed with black bean paste, topped with cochinita pibil or turkey, shredded cabbage, and pickled habanero. Every market in the Yucatan has a panucho stall — eat at least four.

Cancún

Whole fish marinated in achiote and bitter orange, grilled or baked wrapped in banana leaves. A Mayan fishing village preparation now served at restaurants across the peninsula — order it at El Fish Fritanga in Isla Mujeres.

Mérida

A thin, crispy rolled wafer filled with Edam cheese and your choice of Nutella, cajeta, or jam. Yucatan's beloved evening street snack — the sweet-savory combination sounds bizarre until you try it and can't stop.

Oaxaca

Toasted grasshoppers seasoned with chile, lime, and garlic — a protein-rich pre-Columbian food sold by the bag at Oaxaca's Mercado Benito Juárez. Nutty, crunchy, and deeply savory. Eat them on a tlayuda or straight from your hand.

Oaxaca

Salt-cured beef dried in the mountain air, then grilled over charcoal until charred at the edges and juicy inside. Eaten at the Mercado 20 de Noviembre — one of Mexico's great meat-grilling experiences.

Oaxaca

Thick oval masa cakes griddled on a comal, spread with black bean paste and topped with quesillo. Oaxaca's morning staple — sold at market breakfast stalls from 7am until they run out.

Oaxaca

A pre-Columbian cold drink of cacao, mamey sapote seeds, cinnamon, and corn — beaten by hand until frothy. Sold from clay bowls by women in the Mercado Tlacolula on Sundays. Refreshing and ancient.

Oaxaca

Chicken in a sweet-savory sauce of olives, capers, raisins, and tomato — a colonial-era Oaxacan specialty that blends Spanish and Moorish influences. Found only at traditional fondas and Sunday markets.

Oaxaca

Single-village mezcal from wild-harvested agave, distilled in clay pots by palenqueros whose families have done this for generations. In Oaxaca, you drink mezcal straight, slowly, with orange and sal de gusano. Not tequila. Not a party shot.

Puerto Vallarta

Fresh raw shrimp cured seconds before serving in a blitz of fresh chiles, lime, and cucumber — more aggressive than ceviche, barely cooked, fiercely spiced. A Sinaloa original now found at every good seafood spot from Mazatlán to Puerto Escondido.

Puerto Escondido

Crispy tostadas piled with shrimp, octopus, and fish in lime juice, topped with avocado and habanero. Order a stack at Playa Zicatela — best eaten with sand between your toes.

Guadalajara

Slow-braised beef in a deep-red chile broth, served with consome for dipping. Jalisco's original comfort food, now a global phenomenon. Best at El Chololo in Guadalajara — open since 1956.

Guadalajara

A carnitas sandwich on a birote roll, drowned in a spicy tomatillo and chile arbol sauce. Guadalajara's signature street food — "drowned sandwich" — eaten standing at a counter with napkins stacked high.

Hermosillo

Thinly cut beef grilled over mesquite charcoal, served with flour tortillas, guacamole, and pinto beans. Sonora is cattle country — the beef is extraordinary and the flour tortillas are the best in Mexico.

Monterrey

Sun-dried shredded beef rehydrated and scrambled with eggs, tomatoes, and chiles. The ranching north's original breakfast — filling, intensely savory, and essentially unknown outside Mexico's border states.

Monterrey

Young goat slow-roasted on a spit over mesquite until the skin crisps and the meat falls from the bone. Monterrey's signature dish — Barrio Antiguo restaurants have been doing this for generations.