Mexico, and particularly Mexico City, prides itself on being a foodie destination, full of  fresh flavours and regionally diverse dishes. But the country that brought tacos, salsa and enchiladas to mainstream diners around the world has a lot more to offer than these well known dishes.

Dave and I were extremely keen to do a food tour in Mexico City – both of us consider them a great introduction to not only a country’s cuisine but to its history, its people and its current political climate, not to mention the fact it helps ease any traveller into a new country’s dining etiquette very quickly!

After some extensive research, we decided on Eat Mexico due to its outstanding reviews and local approach to a rapidly popularising tour niche. Established in 2010, Eat Mexico was the first company of its kind in Mexico City, and just this week was promoted in the New York and Los Angeles Times, so they’re obviously onto a good thing.

We could not narrow down our choice to just one tour, so decided on two – the first was the Mexico City Street Food tour, the second called Late Night Tacos and Mezcal. We booked the Street Food one for our first full day in Mexico City (Tuesday) after flying in from Las Vegas on the Monday evening, figuring it would be handy to have a guided first impression of the famous street side vendors. So, here we go….

Street Food Mexico City Walking Tour

Our tour meeting place was about a 20 minute walk from our Roma Norte Airbnb accommodation and with the help of a handy app called Citymapper, we easily navigated the streets and arrived just ahead of our scheduled tour start of 9am.

Our Eat Mexico guide was a bubbling Mexican City local (commonly referred to as a ‘Chilanga’) called Anais. After a quick round of introductions (it was only Dave and I plus another couple on the tour), we set off down one of the side streets and were straight into the tour!

As we were soon to discover, corn is the basis of nearly all of Mexican street food, and most dishes start with ‘masa’, a kind of dough made from ground corn and limestone (yep you read that right, limestone!) that is then worked into a million and one different meals, depending on what shape it is, how it is cooked and what toppings it has.

First stop was the typical Mexican breakfast or morning snack of a tamale. Tamales originated in Mesoamerica as far back as 5000BC and were commonly used by both the Aztecs and Mayan civilisations (as well as many others) as an easily transported source of food for their armies, as well as for their hunters and gatherers. Tamales are made from masa which is then wrapped in either a corn husk or a banana leaf, and steamed.  The vendors prepare these tamales by adding in different flavour fillings such as meat, salsa, cheese, chillies or even sweet sauces for a different taste, and then keep them in big metal drums to keep them fresh until they’re all sold out.

Tamales

We tried the tamales wrapped in corn husks and you can see them in the above photo all sitting in the metal drum waiting to be chosen. We tried three different flavours – red chilli, green tomatilla and a sweet one, called dulce. They were incredibly rich and filling, with a texture of a dense, crumbly sponge. My favourite was either the chilli or the tomatilla, both were delicious. Here I am next to the tamale vendor – you can see the unwrapped tamales resting on the bench.

After the tamales we walked about five minutes to a local market where there were beautiful vibrant flowers on display out the front – I love all the colours and couldn’t help but stop and take a quick photo before we went into the actual market.

Local market

Inside the market itself was, as expected, rows upon rows of fresh local produce from the yellow corn-fed chooks (Anais told us that as all Mexican chickens are fed corn, their flesh is yellow, and Mexicans feel strange when going overseas and seeing white chicken flesh – to us, the yellow looked weird!), to the huge range of fresh chillies, to the cactus (yep, they eat cactus, and quite a lot too!) to the more standard fruit and veggies.

Below is a cactus plant, with the thorns cut off obviously, I think it is what we know as prickly pear… we ate this later on in the tour.

Whilst in the market we visited the ‘hombre de chichirrone’, or in English, the pork crackle man! Chichirrone is essentially pork rinds/pork crackle and the Mexicans love it as a salty snack and it is sold at lots of the local stalls. We tried some crispy chichirrone but unfortunately I was too enamoured and forgot to take a photo.

Next up was a tiny little tortilleria where (usually the poorer) Mexican families churn out hundreds of fresh tortillas every day. Unlike what we are used to, Mexicans always buy fresh tortillas direct from the tortilleria much like we would buy fresh bread from a bakery – anything older than 48 hours goes hard and loses its taste, which when fresh, is soft and salty and very pliable.

The tortilleria buys masa dough from government regulated mills (as the country’s staple food, they want to ensure everyone can afford it so prices are regulated), then spends the day kneading the masa and then running it through a usually very ancient tortilla machine where it is cut, cooked and made ready for sale. You can see the two women working the machine below

Tortilleria

And here is Dave on the other side of the tortilla machine – you can see the tortillas being cut to shape, then they go along the conveyor into an oven style system which cooks the dough and they come out at the end hot and tasty. We tried the fresh tortillas with just a bit of salt added – delicious and so simple!

Quesadillas

After the tortillas we were back to the street vendors and at our next stop we sampled a few different quesadillas. Here are the two ladies – you can see the one at the back patting the masa into the shapes she wanted for the different dishes and the one at the front ladling the mushrooms over another dish.

We tried two types of quesadilla at this stall – the mushroom one and a cactus and cheese one – both very tasty, although personally I found the cheesiness quite rich and struggled to finish both.

I think it was here that we also tried gorditas which had compressed chichirrone served with cactus – by this point I was getting a little food drunk and it was getting harder to keep track (and to remember to take photos…)

Fresh Juices

Right next to the quesadilla ladies was a fresh juice stall – as Anais said to us, “us Mexicans have been doing fresh juices made to order for centuries, its only recently the rest of the world seems to have caught on”, and its true! I can’t remember exactly what was in our juices, but there was passionfruit, mango, papaya, beetroot, carrot – lots of beautiful fresh ingredients!

By this point I hated to admit it but I was already starting to feel half full, and it looked like we were just getting to the really good stuff! Next up was Tlacoyo quesillo, a stuffed, oval shaped taco served with green beans and cactus, another cheesy dish which was good, but not up there with some of the others. Again, i didn’t get a photo here.

Cemita Poblama 

After that we spotted our first bread! This street food was called a Cemita Poblama and was essentially a fresh roll, stuffed with filling of your choice. There was some mighty fine looking pork on display but Anais suggested we try the Oaxacan cheese one, and who were we to not follow her recommendations?! Here are the guys behind the stall ready to make our order.

I didn’t get a photo of the finished assembled product but it consisted of the oaxacan cheese (which is a stringy kind of cheese that reminded me of fresh mozzarella), avocado, a chipoltle mayo and had a really smoky taste. It was nice although I would have liked to try one with meat – the cheese was quite rich.

Speaking of meat, the next stop was one of both Dave and my favourites – carnitas! This stall was a popular one and it wasn’t hard to see why as we waited for ours to be made. Fresh pork shoulder cooked confit in pork fat, similar to duck confit – beautiful and tender and super tasty!

Dave dressing his carnita

Here is the finished product – tender pork shoulder, with fresh guacamole and onions pickled in chilli which were super spicy but in a tangy way, as well as lashings of the salsa verde, a green chilli salsa. SO GOOD.

Oh yeah, and here I am about to stuff my face with the carnita!

After the richness of the carnita, we were all pretty keen to try a local Mexican speciality, fresh fruit served with chilli powder, lime and salt, as a palate cleanser. Yep, it is not just tequila the Mexicans like their lime and salt with (actually, more about the tequila thing in the next food tour!).

Fruit with chilli powder, lime and salt

You can see the vendor  freshly chopping the mango, papaya and watermelon while we waited, then sprinkling the chilli powder and salt over it, finishing with a drizzle of fresh lime juice.

The chilli powder was not actually spicy, more smokey, almost like a smoked paprika – and whilst I didn’t think the flavour combo would work, it most certainly did and was very refreshing.

By this time, I was very nearly at capacity and we still had two more stops to go… won’t be needing lunch after this tour, that’s for sure! Our next stop was not too far away, and was called pambazo.

Pambazo with chorizo

This dish is made with bread (not masa for a change) and they shape it into an oval shape before adding some chopped up chorizo, potato and cheese to the hot grill to melt and mix together. The bread is fried to a crispy, oily, golden finish and the chorizo mix added, along with some lettuce and voila, that is done tasty ‘sandwich!’

Our final stop was for… wait for it… burritos! Dave and I make these so often back home, known full well that they are nothing like the traditional Mexican ones, so it was fantastic to be able to have something to finally compare ours with.

The couple who ran the burrito stall have been doing this for 25 years, and are regarded as the best in the business. And after tasting their wares, I can completely believe it! Anais again suggested we go for the no-meat option, and try the zucchini flower version, and we were pleasantly surprised. back home, zucchini flower is regarded as quite gourmet – not so in Mexico were they chop it up like lettuce and use it often as fillings. Look at the stunning colours of the zucchini flower below.

Burritos

And here is the man of the hour, prepping our burritos – fresh tomato and onion goes on the grill, and then cheese is added to it before the chopped zucchini flower as well.

The burrito wrap is heating up nicely, and while it all cooks, we are asked to choose our preferred sauce, or which all are home made and range in heat / spice level from 1 to 10.

As we were splitting the burrito with the other couple, we went for mid-way spice, at number 5.

And here we are, sitting perched on the side of the street eating a beautifully fresh burrito. As a special treat, the vendor actually melted cheese all down one of the burrito – this was a lovely gesture, but for me, the melted cheese overload was killing me – I don’t know how they do it!

The final stop on the tour was a sweets shop, I am not sure what else to call it – it had truffled, dried candied fruits and all sorts of other sweet foods. Anais went through and described the most popular as well as the most traditional ones and we each selected a few types to take with us – there was no way I was fitting anything else in me for a good few hours!

Sweets!

And that was it for our Eat Mexico Street Food Mexico City walking tour – what a fantastic introduction to Mexican street food, and we certainly ate our fill. Anais was a lovely guide and shared with us a lot of the inner workings of the local economy – how the Mexican gangs offer protection to the vendors in return for a ‘tax’ and lots of other interesting titbits.

Tour Cost: US$85 per person
Duration: Approx. 3.5 hours
Tour company: www.eatmexico.com