Oaxaca is well known for its mole sauces (pronounced mol-ay) and its unique cuisine. For any of you who have visited Salt Lake City, you may have eaten at our local dive Mexican Restaurant, The Red Iquana. The Red Iguana is famous nationally for its mole sauces. So the food is one reason we have always wanted to visit Oaxaca. More info on mole sauces HERE.
We really enjoyed the mercados, or markets, where people sold food and all kinds of things.
Chicken have feet?
I don’t know what animal this is, but I have had wonderful ox-tail soup.
Live Chickens…
and live Turkeys. Thanksgiving?
The Mercado had a guy selling Sal de Gusano , also known as Worm Salt. It is used in salsa, cocktails, and on the rim of the glass of Mezcal. Apparently you can buy it at specialty gourmet stores in the US, and at Amazon.
I asked to see inside his blue tupperware container.
We went to three different mercados in Oaxaca, and one outside town in Ocotlán de Morelos. We really enjoyed having lunch in the mercados, where you could have a wonderful lunch for 4-5 dollars, with cervezas of course. Here is one of these lunch stands, in the Mercado de 20 de Noviembre.
This was our lunch place in the Mercado Sanchez Pascuas. This is the opposite of Fast Food. It is slow food because everything was prepared fresh. And it was wonderful.
Here Susan ordered a Oaxaca specialty, called a tlayuda, which is a large, thin tortilla covered with a spread of refried beans, asiento (pork fat), lettuce, shredded meat Oaxaca cheese, and salsa. Sometimes folded in half and grilled. One web site says Mexican Tlayudas Are Better Than American Pizza.
For dinners, we went to regular restaurants, and the food was fabulous. It seemed that the best restaurants were mostly in the Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzman neighborhood. This was good, as it was near Casa Murguia where we were staying. And this Church was much prettier, to our eyes, than the Catedral de Oaxaca at the Zócalo.
At two of the restaurants, our waiter prepared fresh salsa at our table. How spicy do you like it?
The salsa was delicious.
At this restaurant I ordered the Tostada de Insectos.
Susan was grossed out. She normally wants to try everything I order, but here she would not even take a single taste. I thought it was great! Notice the avocado carved into little flowers.
You think I am weird? Well, check out what the New York Times and NPR have to say!
For my main course I had Black Chichilo Mole with Rack of Lamb.
It was a work of art, and it tasted wonderful!
We will be happy to come back to Oaxaca for the food!
Happy Thanksgiving!
I’ve read both Diana Kenney’s “My Mexico” and “Oaxaca al Gusto” and have never attempted a recipe from the Oaxaca region because the recipes typically call for local ingredients. What a treat to sample so many dishes. I never was confident that the Red Iguana did justice to a traditional mole.
We have a 2-week trip planned to Merida and Vallodid in early January with a week tacked on to stay with friends at their condo in Puerto Adventura.