A tlayuda from Doña Favia in Oaxaca, Mexico. All photos courtesy of Catherine Tansey. Few foods are more Oaxaqueño than the crisp, chewy tlayuda. Affectionately called “Mexican pizza,” tlayudas are large crispy tortillas, warmed on a comal and brushed with smoky asiento (pork lard). Toppings vary but usually include a smear of velvety black beans, shredded lettuce, and some type of salty meat like tasajo or cecina; the…
Q&A: Javier Ornelas, a Mexican Chef in Globalized Tulum
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“Bubbles eventually pop, and we, as a community, have to figure out how to sustain a middle-class while maintaining Tulum as a vibrant tourist destination.”—Javier Ornelas, of Hotel Ginger in Tulum
Mexico’s food culture is increasingly global.
As the influx…
Monterrey's Weekend Ritual: Cabrito
All photos by Lydia Carey
It’s mid-morning in Monterrey, Mexico, when Humberto Villareal—“Beto”—picks me up, but it’s already blazing hot. The air-conditioning running, his car is laced with the smell of cigarettes, and his gravelly northern accent takes me a minute to get accustomed to. Beto…
A pseudo-camouflaged sign sits at the entrance of No. 29 on Mexico City’s posh Avenida Presidente Masaryk. Inside, the security guards will probably ignore you, but all the way to the left-hand side of the lobby sits a woman who will direct you to the elevators, up four floors, and into an empty elevator-bank hallway. You’ll hesitate, confused; walking out what looks like an emergency exit, you…
In every region of Mexico, you will find barbacoa steaming on streetside stands, taking center stage at family gatherings, and being sold by the kilo to hungry market goers. Barbacoa is Mexico’s Sunday brunch, its method is as old as time immemorial, and its recipes continue to evolve at the hands of each barbacoa master, who adds his or her special touch to one of the country’s
Forget what you may have heard about the Merced Market, in Mexico City. In my opinion there is only one real danger: You will, inevitably, time and time again, come home with bags full to overflowing with unnecessary items that you found impossible to resist. Personally, I have at various times and with varying degrees of regret purchased 3 kilos of sliced nopal cactus, a frog tamal, a…
I wrote this piece, about spontaneously spending el Día de los Muertos with a family in Oaxaca, several years ago; it’s based on an experience in 2004, when we spent six weeks backpacking around Mexico. Six years later, we returned to Oaxaca to study its cuisine and found Rafael, having saved his business card (see at bottom). Lots of hugs and mezcal were shared…
Yucatecan food—even that found along the so-called Riviera Maya, the coastal corridor between Cancún and Tulum—is markedly different from “Mexican food” as most of us know it, as we learned while traveling the region last week. One reason is, of course, the pronounced Mayan influence, but many more groups have left their mark on the cuisine here as well, from the British and Spanish to the Lebanese and…
Wake Up & Smell the Tacos:
3 Reasons to Wake Up Early While Traveling
Tacos for breakfast in Tulum, clockwise from top: cochinita pibil, lechon, relleno negro de pavo
Traditionally, Scott and I are stay-up-late, wake-up-late kind of people. This all changed a year ago, of course, when our son was born and the definition of…
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more perfect snack food than the taco. It's cheap, it's portable, it's can comprise a wide range of ingredients—meats, veggies, cheese, salsas—and textures (if you've never had crunchy chicharrón atop your taco, drop everything and go find some). We love tacos all across the U.S.—carne asado in L.A., egg-potato-bean in…