Travel: This guide can show you how to eat like a local in Mexico City

Mexico City has a rich, layered history you can explore by studying an ancient colossal head sculpture in the city’s world-renowned anthropology museum, kayaking the canals built by Aztecs or admiring the political murals of artists like Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

But Mexico City is also a food lover’s paradise. On my honeymoon with my wife, Gia, we had consistently phenomenal meals (and cocktails) at restaurants like Lismoneros. Still, to get a genuine taste of the city — the food and the culture — you need to eat like a local. And to do that, you should go on the walking tours of Eat Like a Local.

Rocio Vazquez started Eat Like a Local a decade ago after traveling to Istanbul. She loathed the tours and tourist traps and was miserable till she went drinking with some residents. She returned home, created tours focused on Mexican street food, eventually quit her advertising job and gradually hired more guides and added itineraries. (All tours have a maximum of seven people.)

Gia and I took two tours: the Street Food at Night Tour started in Condesa before going to the lesser known San Rafael and Santa Maria neighborhoods and included tastings of pulque and mezcal, two culturally significant native drinks; the Hidden Gems tour took us to San Rafael and the Tacuba Market, ending at a small tortilla factory. Both were fun, informative and filled with incredible food.

“This company is about getting people to see beyond both the stereotypes and the fancy neighborhoods of Mexico City,” said our Hidden Gems guide Carla Obregon. (She’d also stop on the street to show us things like the crumbling Art Deco masterpiece Cine Opera, explaining its role in San Rafael’s history.)

Our Night Tour guide, Fernanda Castro, started us at Tortas Al Fuego, a staple in the Condesa neighborhood for nearly 40 years. The restaurant slow cooks its pork for six hours then adds Oaxacan cheese, chilis, fried beans, onions and tomatoes to the flavor-packed tacos.

What amazed us was how many different tastes we found in the tacos (all soft shell) we sampled across these two tours. The taco al pastor at Tacos el Betin was inspired by Lebanese shawarma, albeit served with pork instead of lamb. The cinnamon and clove provide “a Middle Eastern memory,” Fernanda said, while the chili pepper and pineapple add local flavor. At El Paisa, the brisket is so juicy, owing some of its deliciousness to being cooked in lard. (This is not a tour for the weak of heart — Gia noted with alarm how often Fernanda used the word lard.)

Our first on the Hidden Gems tour was a favorite: chilorio de sinaloa, pork in a red sauce from dried chiles, bay leaf and spices like cumin and a generous squeeze of lime.  “A taco is not a taco without lime,” Carla said.

That taco was made from a handmade flour tortilla, a rarity in a city where corn tortillas dominate; 80 years ago, the restaurant’s original owner, a professional wrestler, reached back to his Monterrey roots to make tacos northern Mexico style; the family that took over the business continues the tradition. (Vazquez asked that I not name the Hidden Gems stops to protect these small businesses from being overrun by tourists.)

That tour also took us to the city’s only taco stand to earn a Michelin star. Carla explained that it thrives on simplicity, cooking the steak only in lime and salt. It was remarkably tender but Carla rightfully recommended the rib, which had even more flavor, enhanced by red salsa.

It wasn’t all tacos, of course. The former wrestler’s restaurant also makes magic out of gorditas, small pancakes to dip in fried beans and melted cheese. The gorditas  are actually sweet enough that I couldn’t resist eating one (OK, two) plain.

In the Tacuba Market, Carla steered us to a fruit stand for a bag of jicama, papaya, pineapple, cantaloupe and watermelon jazzed up with salt, spices and Chamoy sauce, an Asian-influenced sauce that blends dried apricots and plums with chili peppers and hibiscus flowers. These markets are so packed we never would have discovered this on our own nor would we have known what to order.

At Tamale Cintli, where we loved the tamale mole con pollo, Fernanda introduced us to atole, a thick and fresh pre-Hispanic corn flour-based drink. At La Canica we also sampled pulque, a traditional pre-Hispanic alcoholic drink “and one of my favorite subjects,” Fernanda told us as she served it to us plain and flavored — with tangerine, red wine, strawberry, and, my favorite, pineapple. The liquor comes from sap extracted from the center of agave plants (which also yield tequila and mezcal).

We learned that the Spanish conquerors tried banning and then taxing pulque, while the dictator Porfirio Diaz sneered at it as a drink of the poor and beer companies slandered it as being fermented in cow dung. But it survived and now is making a comeback.

We also had a mezcal lesson and tasting later at Bello Cafe, but the drinks paled compared to our final stop, La Galeterie in Santa Maria. There we indulged in churros: dulce de leche for Gia and chocolate for me … and when Fernanda offered, I said yes to seconds. (She and Carla always offered extra drinks or tastes but you need to pace yourself; dessert, for me, is always an exception.)

Even more memorable was Hidden Gems’ finale. In Tacuba Market, Carla bought cactus salad, avocado, fresh cracklings (far superior to packaged pork rinds) and Oaxacan string cheese. Then she gave us a tour of a tiny tortilla factory that sells 100 kilos of tortillas daily to residents and to stalls in the market and beyond. We learned about the 29 varieties of Mexican corn and how the limestone powder used in the process provides minerals and vitamins and maximizes the corn’s protein, allowing the simple taco to nourish a nation for centuries. Then as fresh hot tortillas slid off the machine we added the ingredients Carla had just bought to make taco placeros, “the working man’s taco.”

Fernanda and Carla were both knowledgeable about the food and history as well as warm and curious about their customers, creating a sense of intimacy and fun.

Their success stems from Vazquez’s unique approach. She takes guides to different countries each year to see “horrible mass tourism” and to understand good tours from the client’s perspective. ““You have to read the guests — if they don’t care about the history don’t bore them,” Vazquez says. “Don’t be one of those guides who says, ‘This is my script. I have to tell you everything.’”

Vazquez also pays her guides well and provides benefits. “They need to have a good life — if my employees cannot afford the life I have, then I’m doing something wrong,” she says.

More notable is the way Vazquez has built Eat Like A Local’s mission. Initially, Vazquez “just wanted to make money,” she admits, adding that she had no plans to build a company, much less a socially conscious one. “My tours were good, but they didn’t have a soul.”

She put some soul into a tour called Badass Mexican Women that celebrates the strength and resilience of her countrywomen. She took history lessons and hired a historian to find the right subjects like Antonieta Rivas Mercado, an influential arts promoter from a century ago and Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun and poet and feminist in the 17th century. (Each woman’s story is linked to a food.)

But her own story provided the most profound inspiration. In 2017, her boyfriend turned violent but she was not yet earning enough to easily flee. “I saw the signs and I didn’t leave because I couldn’t afford to,” she recalls. Then he tried to strangle her and Vazquez finally left, while realizing she needed to do more to help others in her situation.

So Eat Like a Local has been built to help her dozen female guides earn a good living but also to help younger generations. Vazquez has also created a program teaching younger women English and about topics like financial independence and sexual health. “We have to make a difference,” she says. “I now have a program director and this is the heart of my business.”

If you go

Eat Like A Local tours cost $120 per person and usually last three to four hours. The website cautions you not to eat much beforehand — take that seriously. For more information, go to eatlikealocal.com.mx/about-elal

Here are five Mexico City sightseeing tours to help you work up an appetite for Eat Like a Local:

• Kayak through the hidden canals of Xochilmilco: kayakxochimilco.com
• Tour the Teotihuacán pyramid: www.airbnb.com.sg/experiences/993168
• Tour Chapultepec Castle and the Anthropology Museum: www.viator.com/tours/Mexico-City/Chapultepec-Anthropology-Museum-and-Castle/d628-364896P1
• Historic downtown Mexico City walking tour: www.viator.com/tours/Mexico-City/Historic-Downtown-Walking-Tour/d628-41370P14
• Tour of Coyoacan and Frida Kahlo’s neighborhood: www.viator.com/tours/Mexico-City/Frida-Kahlo-Life-and-Neighbourhood/d628-136557P1