Oaxaca, Mexico
If I’m completely honest, I wasn’t completely sure how to pronounce it either. But it’s ‘wahaca’, the same as the chain restaurant in the UK, and like Wahaca, it’s known as a great place to get some fairly authentic Mexican food. And this is precisely why we headed there.
We based ourselves in the budget-friendly Casa del Sótano, with a nice view of the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán cathedral from our little rooftop pool, and a short walk from most of the restaurants we’d earmarked to try.
Our first was Criollo. As we left to walk to dinner, we’d noticed dark storm clouds gathering, but didn’t think much of it. We arrived and sat at the chefs’ table, and tucked into a selection of local foods, all prepared in a fantastically pretentious way. I lost track of how many courses there were, but we ate tacos, tostadas, and croquetas aplenty. It was some way between course number four and five when the heavens opened. Crashes of thunder, torrents of rain, and winds that whipped the outdoor curtains into a frenzy. Water was soon pouring under the front doors, the lights were flickering and then went out entirely. The waiters quickly lit candles, and we ate by candlelight for the second half of the evening.
We dashed back through the rain to the hotel, only to be greeted by large pools of water in our room. Luckily the worst of the water had been absorbed by Nicola’s clothes that were left on the floor. She was less than impressed and set about hanging them up to drip dry overnight.
The next morning, the storm had passed, and we wandered down into the main square of Oaxaca, to be stopped by a barricade of police tape and activity. The largest tree in the main town square, a vast laurel, had come down in the storm and locals were clambering over the barrier to take a twig or a fistful of leaves as a souvenir. Clearly it had not been a normal storm.
Another restaurant we treated ourselves to was Casa Oaxaca, where we sat on the terracotta tiled rooftop and dined on local delicacies in the warm evening air. We tried a range of moles – guacamole seems to be the main one that’s made its way to the UK, but there’s a whole host of other moles – rich, unctuous sauces which we soon decided tend to smother the other flavours of the dish. A slightly pointless but enjoyable bit of showmanship was when a chef arrived at our table to make fresh guacamole with a pestle and mortar. We sat awkwardly, watching on and gently nodding in encouragement as he took a lifetime to make this guacamole, Nicola or I occasionally breaking the silence with a hesitant “ahh, that’s when you add the tomato”.
Eating insects is a fairly normal thing for Mexicans. Food markets across Mexico sell the critters by the bag and people seem to wander about munching on bugs. So, our most adventurous food was at Los Danzantes, where we ate grasshoppers, ants and all sorts of insects. It was undoubtedly touristed up for us, but I think a sanitised restaurant version was the perfect intro to insect eating. It was election day in Mexico, so there was a ban on selling alcohol, which meant we could justify spending our wine budget on artisan bugs instead.
Once the elections were over, we headed to La Mezcalerita to try the famous local spirit. Now I’m told it’s very different to tequila, but I’m not sure I would notice the difference if I did a blind tasting. But there’s something very enjoyable about sitting for a tasting. We were given a range of mezcals, with advice to look for the notes of honey, the flavour of fruit, spice, herbs and all sorts of things. In an increasingly busy world, I found it immensely relaxing to sit for an hour or so, paying very close attention to something as simple as a tiny drink.
Although we sampled some of the pricier restaurants and mezcals in town, some of my favourite foods in Oaxaca were a lot cheaper, like the slow-cooked stew filled tacos we got from the little vendor on the corner of Quetzalcoatl and García Vigil streets, Tacos de Cazuela del Carmen Alto, or the tlayudas we bought from the little smoky stand at Tlayudas El Negro. Tlayudas are a crispy open tortilla, absolutely rammed with meat, vegetables, and Oaxaca cheese, a stringy, mozzarella-halloumi hybrid in flavour and texture. I’ve not been able to find it in the UK since being back.
As well as the food capital of Mexico, Oaxaca is apparently the prime spot to pick up trinkets, so Nicola spent not an unreasonable amount of time browsing the stalls in the trinket market. She came away with a motley selection, including a little skeleton man with a backpack and some tin puppet things which will undoubtedly come in very useful indeed.
Proud of her new souvenirs, Nicola pressed them between the pages of her travel diary, alongside a few crinkled leaves from the fallen Oaxaca tree, and we headed off to our next destination in Mexico: Yucatan.
