The Main Course Travels to Oaxaca, Mexico

This year, for what I called a “get away from winter” vacation, I rented a studio apartment, and, with my LDC (wife and Lovely Dining Companion), spent three lovely, warm weeks in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Oaxaca, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is an historic colonial city of 260,000 people in the south central highlands of Mexico, boasting a small expat community of Americans and Canadians. 

They are attracted to Oaxaca not just for its warm, rain-free climate, but also for its vibrant, kaleidoscopic cultural life—its arts and crafts, its mariachi and marimba music (played daily in the central plaza), and its cuisine.

Oaxaca is especially known for its famously spicy and flavorful varieties of local chile peppers, its seven different mole sauces—particularly the dark brown chocolate-based mole negro, and for its heaps of chapulines (fried grasshoppers), which are sold on street corners and in open-air markets. They are an important source of protein for the large, indigenous Zapotec/Mixtec population.

As a tourist and food writer, I was interested in trying the native foods offered by the many restaurants of the city, as well as any international cuisines. As for the latter, there are only a few: two good Italian restaurants that made good pasta dishes and pizzas, an excellent Spanish restaurant and a Thai restaurant.  And then there are many kinds of street food sold from small carts in the open. 

In all cases, I was very happy to find the ingredients to be uniformly fresh and very flavorful, especially the salads and vegetables, which are all supplied locally daily.

The familiar foods of Mexico are here: tacos, burritos, tortas, tortillas, enchiladas, chili rellenos, refried beans and more. Then, there are Oaxacan specialties, such as mole negro chicken, and various dishes made with the chile peppers unique to this region.

We had breakfasts on the patio just outside our studio apartment, but more than a few restaurants serve desayuno (Mexican-style breakfast), and a few places offered an American-style breakfast. 

There are also numerous coffee house cafés, even a chain like Starbucks with many locations. The region cultivates and roasts excellent quality coffees. And the region produces some wonderful chocolates, sold from stores that specialize in chocolate products, including a refreshing chocolate and vanilla malteado (blended iced milk drink).

Lunches are the main meal for local Oaxacans.  Many restaurants are open during the day to serve “comida corrida,” a three- or four-course meal served from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., which is a real bargain, at a fixed price of 40 to 85 pesos, which equates to about $4 to $8 per person. 

Most restaurants have an inner patio, and feature elements of old colonial Spanish architecture, which is found throughout the city. The architecture provides for a delightful midday ambiance, coolly shaded by lush, flowering trees, climbing vines or umbrellas.

In the evening, more restaurants are open for dinners at still reasonable prices of $11 to $19 for entrées.  Some include music. But don’t sit at a table in front, or you will be repeatedly approached by native vendors—peddlers of cheap wares— or by beggars in the form of sad little ragamuffins and decrepit hags.

Beyond the many pleasing dinners of Mexican cuisine, I enjoyed a superb meal of paella at the Spanish restaurant Casa Olivo, and two excellent dinners at Casa Lombardo, an Italian place around the corner, where I had a good pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni. And on my next visit, I had a fabulous salad, which unusually combined slices of sweet cantaloupe, asparagus and smoked salmon over spring greens. 

One night, we went with another American couple to the Hotel Azul, where we had a haute cuisine gourmet dinner featuring duck carpaccio and baked red snapper with mango-lime sauce—it was truly exquisite.

To give you a much more vivid picture of these dining experiences in Oaxaca—a better idea than words can provide—see the photos that show many of the dishes mentioned, which I think you will enjoy.

To contact Mitch Davis, e-mail him at MdavisMainCourse@aol.com.