Why has this Mexican city held the title of Mexico’s foodie capital for centuries?

In 2002, local artist Francisco Toledo declared his plan to strip off all of his clothes in Oaxaca’s central plaza. His exhibitionist scheme revolved around an ongoing protest he was fomenting in the zocalo, the main square. Why?

McDonald’s had been attempting to install their golden arches in the 500-year-old square, an ardent affront to the proud city of Oaxaca de Juárez (or just ‘Oaxaca’ in the state of the same name) in southern Mexico. All those who rallied alongside Toledo were offered free steamed masa dough, and soon the square was run with cries of “Tamales, yes! Hamburgers, no!”. The megacorporation was almost instantly ousted.

The famous incident seems bizarre, even comical, outside of the state, even outside of its capital. But inside, it’s clear it sums up the stubborn city. Walking through the central district, you won’t see foreign brands bar one Domino’s. And nobody I spoke to even knew how it snuck under the radar—the only explanation I got was, “The people just really like pizza”.

You’ll barely even see Mexican brands that aren’t Oaxacan. Oaxacans are protective of their city and the unique culture they’ve inherited. With 16 native languages spoken across the state and the largest proportion of Zapotec (Indigenous people living in and around Oaxaca) speakers in Mexico, the city’s legacy is detached from the Aztecs to the north and the Maya to the south. Some of the state’s Indigenous groups are even dubbed Los Jamas Conquistados, meaning ‘those never conquered’, in other words, not colonized or culturally influenced by the Spanish.

Oaxacans speak in a different way. They celebrate in a different way. Perhaps most clear to the traveler’s eye, though, is that they cook a different way.

Since the introduction of the Michelin guide to Mexico in 2024, more eyes than ever are focused on the nation’s unique cuisine. Lauding 18 restaurants and a taco stand across four states and Mexico City, the first edition of the guide distinguished Oaxaca for its unique and eco-forward cuisine scene.

People from all over Mexico and all over the world, travel to eat in Oaxaca. The ‘foodie capital’ of a nation of culinary titans, Oaxacan food is distinct from its neighboring states. One could travel for months on end in Mexico and never encounter the foods I see daily in my walks through the myriad markets of Oaxaca de Juarez.

“Our customers have been regulars for more than 15, 20 years. Most of our customers are Mexicans, mostly Oaxacans. We’re not competing with other local restaurants—we’re competing with their grandmothers.”

- Claudia Lara, manager, Los Danzantes Oaxaca

It’s commonplace for visitors to gawk at the women hawking bags of deep-fried chapulins  (grasshoppers) or at the fermented cocoa forming the foam of a plastic pint of tejate, a non-alcoholic Mexican drink made from roasted corn, cacao beans and the pit of a mamey fruit (sapote).

Each day, there is at least one foreigner sat in the popular market Mercado 20 de Noviembre working out how to eat their giant, crisp tlayuda, a typically open-faced fried tortilla laden with beans, meat and cheese. Travelers taking an ice cream break at La Oaxaqueña Nevería, tired of church-hopping and resting in front of Basílica de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, confidently order a nieves atún (literally ‘tuna snow’), visibly disappointed when their Oaxacan-style shaved ice (a sort of water-based sherbet) bears no resemblance to canned fish.

Even Mexico’s most famous dishes take on new personas in Oaxaca. Huge volumes of mole are consumed in the state—the chilli and chocolate sauce that supersedes its status as an accompaniment, is a quintessentially Mexican dish. It incorporates different ingredients to craft variations, but each follows the same technique: Toast each component separately, ground them to a homogenous paste, fry it, loosen it with stock, and ladle it over your dish. Its seven variations common in Oaxaca all take on symbolic meaning.

“We eat the different moles at different occasions—they mark special events in our lives”,  restaurant manager Claudia Lara tells me over lunch at newly Michelin-starred Los Danzantes, one of only two spots in Mexico receive stars for both their culinary prowess and their abundant garden and commitment to local agriculture. I find out the herby amarillo mole is an everyday treat, often stuffed into giant empanadas and eaten streetside. The almost ashen chichilo mole, taking its taste from a charred and blackened base, is typically served during Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations. Sweet mole negro is dished up at weddings, and the fruity manchamanteles at parties.

“It’s tough to make a mole that can please the crowd”, Claudia tells me as I dunk sweet plantain-based chochoyotas, or masa dumplings, into moles ground by native volcanic stone and served in small hand-crafted ceramic bowls. “Our customers have been regulars for more than 15, 20 years. Most of our customers are Mexicans, mostly Oaxacans. We’re not competing with other local restaurants—we’re competing with their grandmothers.”

The restaurant gained global attention after the 2024 induction of Mexico into the Michelin guide, joined only by one other Oaxacan stalwart, Levadura de Olla. In the same way that the latter’s chef Thalíá Barrios Garcia designed her veggie-heavy menu as a “library of Oaxacan gastronomy”, the sights at Los Danzantes are firmly set inwards—typical, for Oaxacans. The team didn’t just win a star for their food; they also won another for their commitment to sustainability.

Most ingredients used are either grown in the restaurant’s own garden in the small town of San Agustín Etla, 30 minutes from their Oaxaca de Juaréz location, or sourced from farmers in the quiet agricultural towns that surround the city. Foragers bring whatever fungi they find in the mountains for the chefs to experiment with, and each dish incorporates endemic botanicals, bringing the floral flavors of the state into every bite.

The protection of Oaxaca’s prime agricultural conditions is integral to its surging food scene. The popular bakery Boulenc opened a separate sideshow, Suculenta, dedicated to fermenting and preserving favorite Oaxacan flavors. The dishes served at Alfonsina, set in chef Jorge León childhood courtyard, are based on whatever the local farmers had that day. And Los Danzantes’ garden is hydrated with recycled rainwater, one of the most crucial elements to creating a sustainable process in drought-plagued Oaxaca.

And that, climate change, is another challenge.

The dry season in Oaxaca brings with it barren fields and severe water shortages for both residents and agricultural businesses. In 2024, the state’s wells recorded their lowest ever levels and pipe companies sold contaminated water; it grew to be such a desperate supply issue that talk of a ‘water mafia’ began stirring in Oaxaca—but while widely discussed among Oaxaca locals, it’s admittedly hard to verify.

As the ramifications of global warming escalate, wildfires ripped through several hundreds of acres of agricultural property and crisping ancestral agave. It almost reached Santiago Matatlan, ‘the world capital of mezcal’, a town an hour from the city center which is highly dependent on its fertile farmlands. “We built our operation on top of a well”, Gerardo ‘Kaín’ Santiago Hernandez, the fourth-generation master mezcalero behind the brand Hedonista de la Fe, told me with a sip of espadín, the most common variety of mezcal. “My grandfather dug it, all the water that we use is underneath our feet.”

The iconic Oaxacan spirit is engrained in the culture of the state, distilled using methods unaltered since at least the 16th century, with just water, agave and fire. Generating enough water to sustain production is crucial to the social and economic fabric of small towns like Santiago Matatlan.

Oaxaca’s place at the center of Mexico’s world-class food scene is tied to this focus on local sourcing, on native ingredients, and on Indigenous recipes. As I’ve come to know the city over my first several months, I have also got to know the state through its flavors.

Working our way through the increasingly high-proof concoctions brewed by Kaín and his family before him, he stresses how many people the artisanal and agricultural industries support in this mostly rural state. “We provide so many jobs and affect so many families all over town. We only buy produce locally. We hire the same guys that grew up with me in my father’s field,” he says, waving to the workers shifting the sweet burning agave in its sunken oven.

Most mezcal operations in Oaxaca are small-scale; they brew enough to drink and sell in the surrounding villages, as Kaín did prior to taking his mezcal global. It’s a quintessentially Oaxacan indulgence. “It is a consistent in life—if you’re happy, sad, scared, mad, you take a shot,” he tells me, with a glug.

It’s a feature in every celebration in the state, handed out on the streets during every wedding, every costumed calenda (processions) parading daily through the city center. Dedicated drinkers string bamboo shot glasses around their necks, always poised to extend out for a shot. Famous around the world as a Mexican delicacy, Mexicans know it only as an Oaxacan one.

Though less woven into the cultural fabric of the state, whiskey distilled from native corn has also picked up as an industry in Oaxaca. Jonathan Barbieri, pioneer of whiskey brand Maíz Nation and a former master mezcalero, saw an opportunity to use Indigenous ingredients and agricultural methods to test new techniques.

While the Irish liquor might not fit quite in with the steadfastly traditional cuisine of the state, Barbieri’s version is built solely from native corn and grain from small-scale Indigenous farmers in the Sierra Mixteca, Sierra Juárez, Chinantla, and Costa regions of Oaxaca.

Fighting the influx of US-grown genetically modified corn that fouled the fields in the Sierra Norte, a wooded mountain range an hour north of the city, upon its arrival, Barbieri reflects on the fact that farmers couldn’t compete with the cheap corn flooding in from the US, Brazil, and Sinaloa.

“Native corn is adaptable, it can grow from the sea to the tops of mountains. The Oaxacan people have essentially been co-evolving with corn for 6,500 years,” he tells me as we stroll through his permaculture distillery in San Agustín Etla. Though his product is new to Oaxaca, an innovation next to the millennia-old recipes served in the city, Barbieri chats to me at length, over sips of white whiskey, about the homage owed to heritage, and to the ancestral producers of the valley.

The influence of farmers and small-hold producers in the small towns around Oaxaca is evident on every street in the city. Fresh food is sold on the pavement by women dressed in floral embroidery. Queues form around the corners for memelas—toasted corn cakes slathered in beans and Oaxacan cheese—and children clamor at their mothers’ skirts for streetside tamales, masa dough steamed in corn husk.

The native ingredients of the valley are integral to every classic dish. In the dimly lit cantinas, where cowboys and men nurse their drink, often wordlessley, while listening to ear-achingly loud storytelling songs called corridos, I couldn’t count the hundreds of bottles of local brand mezcals towering behind the bartenders.

Oaxaca’s place at the center of Mexico’s world-class food scene is tied to this focus on local sourcing, native ingredients, and Indigenous recipes. It’s little surprise that the Michelin guide so quickly set its sights on the proud creatives so carefully conserving their ancient traditions.

And as I’ve got to know the city over my first several months here, I’ve come to know the state through its flavors. Behind each sip of liquor poured from a nondescript plastic jug, there’s a story of a cunning route around a tricky water shortage. Behind every plate of rich, chocolatey mole is a recipe inherited through generations. Behind every soft tamal, a small-hold corn farmer is hauling produce between mountain market towns. Oaxacan food celebrates its heritage, unencumbered by influence—and, much like the city itself, it has no interest in bowing to the outside world.

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