Mexican cuisine was inscribed on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2010, and it deserves the label for one specific reason: it is built on a continuous 9,000-year relationship with maize. Nixtamalization — cooking corn with lime to release its nutrients — is a pre-Hispanic technology, and it is why a fresh tortilla from a good tortillería tastes nothing like a supermarket one.
What is sold abroad as Mexican food is mostly Tex-Mex. Burritos are northern border food, nachos were invented for Americans, and chili con carne is Texan. Inside the country you get something else entirely, and it changes every few hundred kilometres.
The dishes that matter
- Tacos al pastor — pork marinated in achiote and chilli, stacked on a vertical spit that Lebanese immigrants brought to Puebla, shaved onto a small tortilla with pineapple, onion and coriander. The single best thing to eat in Mexico City, and it costs 15 to 30 pesos
- Mole — a sauce of twenty to thirty ingredients including several chillies, seeds, spices and a little chocolate. Mole negro from Oaxaca is the benchmark; mole poblano from Puebla is the famous one
- Cochinita pibil — Yucatán pork slow-cooked underground in banana leaves with achiote and sour orange, eaten in tacos with pickled red onion and habanero
- Tlayudas — a large crisp Oaxacan tortilla with bean paste, quesillo cheese and meat, grilled over charcoal
- Chiles en nogada — poblano chilli stuffed with meat and fruit under a walnut cream sauce, in season only from August to September
- Pozole — hominy soup, red in Jalisco, white in Guerrero, green in Puebla, eaten on Thursdays and Saturdays
- Birria and barbacoa — slow-cooked goat or lamb, weekend breakfast food, served with consommé
- Chapulines, toasted grasshoppers with lime and chilli, and escamoles, ant larvae. Both pre-Hispanic, both genuinely good
Regions in one line each
- Oaxaca: seven moles, tlayudas, mezcal, string cheese, chapulines. The country's best food region by consensus
- Yucatán: Maya and Caribbean flavours — cochinita, sopa de lima, papadzules, habanero everywhere
- Puebla: mole poblano, chiles en nogada, cemitas
- Mexico City: everything, plus the best street-food density in the Americas
- Baja California: fish tacos, Ensenada-style, and the Valle de Guadalupe wine region
- Veracruz: seafood with Spanish and Caribbean influence, huachinango a la veracruzana
- Jalisco: birria, tortas ahogadas drowned in chilli sauce, and tequila
Drinks
- Mezcal is made from any agave and is smoky because the hearts are roasted in earth pits. Tequila is mezcal's regulated cousin from one agave, blue weber. Drink both neat, sipped, never as a shot with salt
- Pulque, the fermented agave sap drunk since pre-Hispanic times, thick and sour, in pulquerías
- Aguas frescas — hibiscus, tamarind, horchata, cucumber-lime — 15 to 30 pesos a glass
- Michelada — beer with lime, salt and chilli sauce, and better than it sounds
- Chocolate, drunk here since the Olmecs, water-based and barely sweet in Oaxaca
How to eat well and safely
- Pick the stall with a queue. Turnover is the whole safety question — the risk is food sitting for hours, not street food as such
- Eat at market fondas at midday, when the comida corrida is freshly made: soup, main, rice and tortillas for 80 to 150 pesos
- Never drink tap water. Bottled is cheap; ice and salads in normal restaurants use purified water and are fine
- Salsa is served on the side so you control the heat. Green is usually tomatillo, red is dried chilli, and habanero in Yucatán is genuinely fierce
- Tip 10 to 15 per cent in restaurants; it is not included in the bill
- Two streets outside any hotel zone the same food costs a third as much