Mexico City’s responsibly minded, irresistibly fun Eat Like a Local (ELAL) tour is founded by 37-year-old food blogger Rocio Vasquez Landeta. An abuse survivor, Rocio was inspired to start ELAL to support local women. Charlotte McManus joins one of their food tours.
It’s bright and early in Mexico City. I’m sipping my third café cortado of the morning in the leafy neighborhood of Hipódromo, somewhat delirious from altitude sickness and jetlag.
The coffee shop door opens and in bounces Panda, grinning from ear to ear and brimming with energy. “Buenos dias, chicos!” she exclaims. “Let’s get ready to eat.”
Panda, also known as Andrea Oggario, is our tour guide for Mexican Food 101, a half-day experience ‘for the food obsessed’, combining history and sightseeing with the chance to meet the people behind the tastiest morsels of the bustling markets and street food scene. The tour is an initiative of Eat Like a Local (ELAL for short), a boutique, all-female tour group dedicated to responsible food tourism within the Mexican capital, Ciudad de México (CDMX).
Our group is small, featuring just me, my husband Sam, Panda, and Rodrigo, a Brazilian. We take the metro to Mercado de Jamaica, Mexico City’s traditional flower market. As Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is just days away, the flagstone aisles are thronged with shoppers stocking up for the holiday. Scented stacks of marigolds—the flower of the dead—are piled high on the back of trucks, whilst stalls groan with sugar calacas and calavera (decorative, edible skulls and skeletons).
However, we’re here for the food. In an email sent before the tour, we had been told—in no uncertain terms—not to have breakfast: “Under ANY circumstance. Your life depends on it!”
The advice is no joke. Over the next four-and-a-half hours, we consume more food than I thought was ever possible to eat in one go. Spiced, sugar-rolled pan de muerto (sweet yeast bread, or pan dulce, baked for Día de los Muertos). Corn kernels fried in lard. Quesadillas oozing with stringy Oaxacan cheese. Warm chicharrón (pork belly). Chapulín—grasshoppers—flavored with chili. Tiny, rainbow-colored candies filled with tequila.
I lose track of the number of tacos we have—each one hot, fresh, and delicious, filled with chorizo verde (specialty sausage), cochinita pibil (braised pork) carne asada (grilled steak), mixiote (pit-barbecued meat), and more. Then, jicaletas, or root vegetable fingers daubed with chamoy and dipped into flavored sugar. Each snack is washed down with Modelo beer, fermented pulque (fermented sap of the agave plant) or—best of all—smoky mezcal margaritas.
“My mom is a chef and as a kid, I often cooked with her or worked at catering events. At one wedding, I made drinks with food coloring to make them look cool.”
- Ro Vázquez Landeta, ELAL founder
It’s soon clear that ELAL isn’t your average tour operator. As we weave our way through the clusters of stalls, I notice Panda discreetly tipping every vendor we stop at. If our group is ever approached by a poverty-stricken local asking for money, she offers to buy them something to eat.
“We are trying to make the world a better place, bite by bite,” Panda explains. “It is our responsibility as consumers to be aware of how we affect the whole ecosystem here in Mexico City. The only way to help local communities is by moving along with them.”
The days that follow our tour turn into weeks, and then months, yet I still find myself thinking about our ELAL experience. Hungry to learn more, I seek out its founder, CDMX native Rocio Vázquez Landeta, to discover the story behind the initiative—which turns out to have more twists and turns than I’d anticipated.
Starting as most good stories do, at the beginning, she tells me how she’s been in the food industry since I was a baby. “My mom is a chef and as a kid, I often cooked with her or worked at catering events,” she says. “At one wedding, I made drinks with food coloring to make them look cool.”
While Rocio’s early career path ranged from PR and advertising to sex shop management, Rocio maintained her passion for food. She became one of CDMX’s first-ever food bloggers, anonymously reviewing restaurants via her blog, Sin Mantel. As the blog gained pace, she began running restaurant-based food tours for locals, as a “fun side hustle”.
It wasn’t until she hit 30 and took her first trip outside the Americas as a solo traveler, that the idea for ELAL began to take form. Arriving in Istanbul, she was “horrified” at the state of the city’s exploitative and unimaginative tourist industry.
“I didn’t know anything about traveling—or anything about anything,” recalls Rocio. “I wanted to talk to people, but couldn’t meet any locals, because I was stuck with the tourists.”
Thoroughly disillusioned after 15 underwhelming days, a chance encounter outside the Galata Tower changed everything.
“I was waiting for an Uber when this homeless guy approached me and asked if I would like to have wine with him and his friends. They showed me around the city, and I saw a lot of street food,” says Rocio of her time in Istanbul. “The guy taught me what different things were, and we shared mussels, fish sandwiches, and beer. I was completely blown away. I thought, ‘This is how I need to do it—and I can do it better.’”
Later, a visit to Vietnam opened Rocio’s eyes wider to the oft-unsustainable nature of global tourism. “I saw people living in poverty. They didn’t make money off tours; they relied on tips,” she tells me. “I was shocked, realizing how unfair tourism was. I understood that it didn’t make sense for food tours to go to restaurants. They need to go to the street. That’s where the people need us.”
“Seeing the impact of the company reflected in everyone’s faces, from the guests to the vendors interacting and feeling appreciated. Every time I go to a market, I feel like Miss Universe in a parade. It fills my heart with joy.”
- Ro Vázquez Landeta, ELAL founder
Back in Mexico City, Rocio got to work reshaping her company in line with her new vision. As a one-woman venture, the early days weren’t plain sailing. Having started with few connections, business was slow, and money was tight. Some 18 months later, events took a darker turn. Not long after escaping a toxic relationship, Rocio met a new love interest who appeared to be the answer to her problems.
“He said, ‘you should move in with me to save money while your company is still growing.’ As a business decision, it made sense, but as soon as I did, it became hell,” she says. “He would ask me why there were men on the tours, or why I drank mezcal with them. Every day was a struggle. He made me feel that I wasn’t good enough as a woman; I was always doing things wrong. He became increasingly violent, until, one day, he tried to strangle me because he thought I had a secret boyfriend. I had seen the signs but always made excuses. But now my life was in danger, I knew I had to leave.”
Secretly calling up best friend Panda and sister Lorenza later that night, Rocio hatched a plan to escape. The following day, the trio hastily packed up Rocio’s belongings and fled the scene, with Rocio’s dog, Mateo, in tow. Though the boyfriend was later apprehended by the police, he was never charged.
“He chased me for months after. I was terrified and alone, my self-esteem destroyed.” She pauses as we chat. “I thought, if I’d had money, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have moved in with him—and even if I had, with money I would have been able to leave immediately, hire a lawyer, and rent an apartment. I realized that every woman needs money to be safe.”
Fueled by her revelation, in March 2017 Rocio began transforming her solo tour into a new, all-female travel company. After an intensive period of research, negotiation, quality checks—and plenty of eating—she gradually established relationships with vendors. By the June of the following year, she had a team in place, Panda and Lorenza among them.
Today, ELAL hosts up to 120 tours per month. Clients—from enthusiastic foodies to top restaurateurs—come from all over the world. Itineraries include everything from mezcal-tasting brunches and nighttime street food experiences to ‘Badass Mexican Women,’ inspired by stories of the women who shaped the country’s history, culture, and food scene. What’s more, ELAL offers its employees some of the best wages in the industry, along with numerous benefits, such as workshops, field trips and mental health check-ups.
“I’m now thankful that I’ve been through that experience because it allowed me to create ELAL,” she says. “The women that work with me are free, living full, happy lives, and accomplishing their dreams.”
Ever mindful of the learnings from her travels, Rocio is keen to maintain a high standard of responsible tourism within her business, saying: “We have a close relationship with our vendors. We promote fair wages while staying conscious about gentrification because we live in the city too. Our tours are small so that they are not disruptive to the community.”
That said, she expects clients to hold up their end of the bargain: “Travel is a privilege, not a right. It’s important to have patience and empathy.”
Rocio has also founded 80IQ, a program dedicated to broadening the horizons of young girls from the areas around Tacubaya and La Merced Market. Its name references computer scientist Alan Kay’s assertion that “a change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points”. On weekends, 80IQ children practice English on tours while learning about the world from their international guests. Additionally, mentoring and workshops cover subjects as diverse as finance, human rights, and sex education.
With ELAL sparking so much positive change within the CDMX community, I ask Rocio what she finds most rewarding about her initiative.
“Seeing the impact of the company reflected in everyone’s faces, from the guests to the vendors interacting and feeling appreciated,” she says. “Every time I go to a market, I feel like Miss Universe in a parade. It fills my heart with joy.”
After spending many fascinating hours in conversation with Rocio, I decide to reach out to Panda again, as the person who first drew me into the world of Eat Like a Local. After all, as an ELAL employee, what does she get out of her job?
“I love the connection you can develop with someone from another part of the world, just by sharing food,” she replies. “If world leaders could sit down at a table together and discuss their issues over tacos, there would be no wars.”
***
Adventure.com strives to be a low-emissions publication, and we are working to reduce our carbon emissions where possible. Emissions generated by the movements of our staff and contributors are carbon offset through our parent company, Intrepid. You can visit our sustainability page and read our Contributor Impact Guidelines for more information. While we take our commitment to people and planet seriously, we acknowledge that we still have plenty of work to do, and we welcome all feedback and suggestions from our readers. You can contact us anytime at hello@adventure.com. Please allow up to one week for a response.
Charlotte is a freelance journalist specializing in travel, food and drink, and design. Based in London, though often globe-trotting, she was previously Associate Editor of Sphere and Editor of Raffles Hotels magazine. She is also a regular contributor to Wallpaper*. Now freelance and committed to responsible travel, travel plans include fall in Italy, New Year in Japan, and spring in South Africa.
