Cuisine & Restaurants

This southern Mexican state is famous worldwide for its vibrant, inventive, and diverse cuisine. Not only has Oaxaca made significant contributions to the culinary world, but Indians from Oaxaca invented two cooking utensils that are essential in Mexican cooking: the molcajete (stone utensil used to crush and mix spices) and the comal (metal utensil for heating and baking). Pre-Hispanic ingredients like chocolate, squash and the great variety of chillies are critical in Oaxacan food. Yet the imaginative combination of indigenous ingredients and methods of cooking. Oaxaca is full of restaurants for every class, style, and price range offering some of the worlds most inventive and delicious foods every created. One of the biggest events in Oaxaca is the “Food of the God’s” food festival held annually in October within the city. The festival lasts a week and it is all about exploring the cuisines of Oaxaca both pre-historic and some interesting modern variations. The festival is well known as Oaxaca has 17 indigenous Indian groups from Oaxacan valleys, mountains and coastal regions. The festival offers things such as… Cooking classes, dine-around’s, Traditional chocolate making demonstration, market tour, salsa and empanada classes, ice cream and exotic fruit tasting, mescal tasting, and craft village tours. Even the hotels in the area that are participating in the events offer great deals on accommodations for the duration of the festival. Some of these hotel partners are Camino Real, hotel Victoria, Hotsal de la noria and the Holiday Inn Centro Historico. Also available through the hotels are tours you can take throughout the festival. Some of the most popular tours are the walking market tours, tours of Monte Alban, chapel tours, and mescal tasting tours (mezcal is a type of local drink). With festival highlights like hands on cooking classes, market and village tours, seminars, lectures, and demonstrations, and of course everyone’s favourite, Taste Testing!!  The food festival is vastly becoming a tourist hit, with an exciting, safe, eventful week long party almost everyone is going to have a good time.