Just for you, Lina!

As promised.



But the better 호떡, hodduk, makers were in Kangnam, who used some newfangled metal mold, so that the outside was perfectly crisp without being greasy, the inside chewy and sweet.



(For those of you who have never tried this, it’s a ball of dough filled with brown sugar and sometimes nuts. The sugar melts when the dough is flattened and fried and you end up with one of the best street food snacks in the world.)

Fighting malaise at El Tule

Last Sunday, eating an empanada de mole amarillo in El Tule, I realized that as long as I have an appetite, I will always be able to cheer myself up. There are those times when even I lose my appetite, like when No-No dumped me and I stopped eating for a week. But general malaise, pshaw!, I can easily get rid of just by going someplace I’ve never been in search for something good to eat.

Sunday morning, my last friends from ICO, who were also my neighbors, left Oaxaca. It had been a difficult, emotional time for them, and even watching them leave as a bystander was so exhausting, I considered forgetting my plans to go to El Tule and just getting in bed with “Black Lamb and Gray Falcon,” the book that will not end. I felt a little sad about being alone in Oaxaca and a little sorry for myself. But after I’d mopped the tiny footprint of my apartment, I was hungry, and I thought I should seize the opportunity to go try one of the famous empanadas de mole amarillo of El Tule, only available on Sundays.



El Tule is otherwise famous for its giant cypress tree, over 2000 or 4000 years old depending on who you talk to. I don’t know how tourism from the tree can be so lucrative when the entrance fee is 3 pesos, but the town seemed to be profiting well from the tree, as the buildings in the center were fresh and brightly painted, almost like Disneyworld, right down to the white-maroon-and-blue church.



I walked right by the entrance booth and around the church, looking for the empanada place recommended to me by my homestay mother, Patty, as “muy limpia.” I don’t know if it was the right place, but it was clean and airy, and I could imagine my middle-class homestay family eating there. It was little more than a straw-roofed shack with plastic tables and chairs, with an arcade attached to it playing loud American rock music, but it a pleasant place to sit on a sunny Sunday afternoon. There was a surly girl working the comal and an older woman swatting flies away from the chicharrones and a sweet-faced man watching a soccer game on TV. I sat down with a bottle of grapefruit soda, in a really good-looking bottle, and waited.



It was my fourth taste of mole amarillo, and if not the best, it was very very good. Instead of cilantro, it had the herby scent of hoja santa, the heart-shaped leaf. The mole sauce was thicker than at Iglesia de Carmen Arriba, but spicy, the kind of spiciness that doesn’t hit you right away but grows in the back of your throat. The tortilla vehicle was perfect, hot and toasty. I was so happy, I ate another empanada, of flor de calabeza and quesillo. I didn’t like it as much, but it didn’t matter.

I walked through the Mercado de Antojitos, or “Market of Appetizers,” across the street but was too full to eat anything else, but next week, I am eating barbacoa, or barbecued goat, for sure. Why don’t we have markets of appetizers in the U.S.? I’m sure it would do a great deal for depression.

Happy small finds in Mexico City

Sometimes, it feels like there’s nothing left to discover in New York. I know it’s not true, but given the number of people who care and the number of people nosing around, the odds are nothing really wonderful can stay a secret for very long. So it was a quiet relief to spend my last day in Mexico City just wandering around, relying on some tips, but mainly just eating what I found. Despite or perhaps because of memories of “Introduction to Art History” with Vincent Scully, I’d decided I didn’t need to go with Erin to Teotihuacan to see the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. Erin had the camera, but even that was a relief, too, just to eat.

I decided to go back to Coyoacan, the artsy neighborhood and former home of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, and Octavio Paz (the photos are from our trip there 3 days earlier). Acting on a chowhound tip, I started at the Pasteleria Esperanza right outside the General Anaya metro stop, planning to walk and eat my way west to the Miguel de Aquevedo stop on the other side of Coyoacan.

I ate a sugary dona, or donut, that wasn’t as light as I’d hoped, but it kind of grew on me. It was a Monday morning, around 9:30, but nothing was open and the streets were quiet with people walking their dogs. Coyoacan is what makes Mexico City seem so much like LA to me—a city that is completely oblivious to pedestrian needs (I almost had a car run over my toes at a busy intersection with no pedestrian traffic lights) but with quiet, well-off neighborhoods filled with sidewalk cafes and pink and orange bougainvillea flowing over the walls.



I found a branch of the popular coffee shop, Cafe El Jarocho, and sat on a bench with my café de olla reading Carlos Fuentes’s “The Death of Artemio Cruz” while watching people drive up, just like in LA, for their morning coffee. Coffee isn’t a religion in Mexico, certainly not in Oaxaca, but El Jarocho has good, cheap, strong espressos and cappuchinos.



I wandered on to Plaza Hidalgo with its adjoining smaller plaza and the fountain I love so much, two dogs playing in a spray of water. I saw a man and his grandson buying roast chickens on the northwest corner of the plaza, at a big grocery store called “America,” from a nice young man with a goatee. The sign in the window advertised empanadas de atun, empanadas de bacalao. I don’t know why, but whenever I see the word “bacalao” for salt cod, I have to eat it. This empanada turned out to be a flaky turnover filled with salt cod and onions. Yum.

Then I wended my way back to the Mercado to eat cebiche de jaipa or crab at El Jardin del Pulpo, “The Garden of the Octopus,” in a sundae glass with saltines and fresh wedges of lime. Nothing particularly memorable to report, but I love that name, the Garden of the Octopus.

I had eaten so much, it was clearly time to walk some more. I took the subway back to the center of town to the Mercado Artesanias and bought more souvenirs that I’ll struggle to carry home. As I walked back to our hotel near the Zocalo, through the part of town dedicated to selling bathroom fixtures, I saw a little plaza with some crowded food stalls. All weekend, I’d been seeing street food that I hadn’t seen in Oaxaca, antojitos typical of Verucruz or Michoacan or the Yucatan.

I walked back and forth dragging my tin mirrors behind me, and finally decided to eat a huarache, because the man already standing there looked so happy with his. Besides, they were advertised as “Rico Rico Rico Rico.” I have to take precise note of where it was, on Ayuntamiento near the corner of Aranda, a block from the major street of Lopez, next to the bank on the south side of the street, because the huarache was so good! I’d had huaraches before in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and knew them as long, flat tortilla-like things with taco-like fillings, but this oblong huarache was different, crispier, chewier, with a texture of masa ground more coarsely. The huarache got good and toasty because the cook repeatedly brushed both sides with oil. I ordered one with bisteck, a thin slice of beef he cooked separately on the grill, then added to the huarache already bubbling with red salsa. Topped with crumbled queso fresco, it was heaven. My fingertips burned as I tried to eat the unwieldy thing without getting it all over my face, but it was worth it.

And we still had dinner ahead of us at Aguila y Sol.

A jicama popsicle at Guelaguetza

Two weeks ago, when Erin and I were staying in a hotel in Mexico City, I watched vivid footage of buses burning in Oaxaca, as anti-government protests turned dangerous leading up to the planned “official” Guelaguetza 2007. I watched a group of five or six policemen pushing a man down to the ground and then begin kicking him, oblivious or careless of the news cameras trained on them. Finally, two policemen in different uniforms came in, grabbed the man, hugging him to their bodies, and hustled him away, possibly to beat him in private.

July 23rd marked the first day of Guelaguetza, Oaxaca’s indigenous folk dance festival and its biggest tourist attraction. Also called “Lunes del Cerro,” translatable as “Mondays on the Hill,” the official performance celebrating Oaxaca’s distinct regions and cultures takes place annually on two Mondays in July, at the Cerro del Fortin on the western edge of the historic center, with a beautiful view of the city and the valley beyond. Normally, these two Mondays frame a week of fun, as street food proliferates all over town, crafts vendors set up even more stalls throughout the zocalo, and tourists from all over Mexico and the world pour into the city. To gild the lily, the annual mezcal festival is held at the same time. If you threw a stone, you would hit a marimba band or a dance troupe, on stages around the Ex-Convent of Santo Domingo or just in the streets. To me, it feels like there’s always a fiesta or saint’s day celebration going on in Oaxaca, complete with deafening fireworks, but Guelaguetza just multiples the everyday feel by ten.

Last year, when APPO took over the center of the city in protest of the state governor, the official Guelaguetza was cancelled, for the first time in its history. This year, even as the governor spent millions in promoting and marketing “Guelaguetza 2007,” Ticketmaster promised a full refund if the shows didn’t happen. APPO called for a boycott of the official one, hosted its own on July 16th, and graffiti sprouted around the city, quite well-designed stenciled images with exhortations like, “The art of the pueblos for the pueblos!” In the end, all scheduled performances went on, even in the pouring afternoon rain, and at least during “Lunes del Cerro,” the protests remained peaceful.

There’s no question there have been gross human rights abuses here. But I have no expertise with which to analyze the pros and cons of the boycott, the protests, the demands of APPO. (Erin and I bought tickets to the official one before I realized how fraught the mere act of attendance could be and watched for an hour before we got rained out.) Yet I want to report on what I do know, what amazed and moved me at the two smaller, local Guelaguetzas I saw at Reyes Etla and Tocuela. And that I ate a jicama popsicle.



Guelaguetza is not just for tourists. More than any other folk dance I’ve ever seen, it is truly a celebration for the communities here. The town of Reyes Etla was deserted on July 23rd because the entire town had gone up to their cerro to watch the four-hour show. I was possibly the only tourist at the performance in Tocuela, probably the only non-Mexican, and definitely the only Asian person. I felt like I was at a community talent show or a high school concert, with all the personal warmth the audience felt for the performers.

I had been invited to see the show at Tocuela on July 30th by Senora Soledad, my cooking teacher, as her son was the director of the show, so I sat in the VIP section right next to the stage with her family. Everyone around me wanted to know who I was and where I was from and how long I was in Oaxaca (and of course, whether I was married), and this really beautiful baby was fascinated by my digital camera.



Each dance celebrates a specific region, with the performers wearing gorgeous traditional clothing. There’s a specific repertoire that makes up the Guelaguetza, and everyone ends with the “Danza de la Pluma” and the pineapple girls, but having seen three Guelaguetzas, I can attest that each director puts his personal touches on each show.



Soledad’s son clearly loved playing with the bullfight motif, charged with male-female conflict, as his girls charged the boys waving red handkerchiefs so vigorously, the stage became a Laurel-and-Hardy show of boys tumbling and girls chasing.



But to truly celebrate the region, the performers will throw samples of the regional specialties to the audience, which might be light little things like straw woven fans and dried gourds for drinking mezcal, or dangerous projectiles like mangos and pineapples. Many of these girls do not throw like girls. I only got hit once, in the face with a tortilla, though I did duck a mango or two. Luckily, the region known for its turkeys merely dances with a turkey, rather than throwing one out to the audience. So at the end of every number, there were arms waving frantically in the air and children running up on stage to wheedle more closely.



At Tocuela, the people around me got deeply invested in making sure that I got many “recuerdos” or souvenirs, and kept yelling to their daughter/cousin/niece, “Maria Cruz! Maria Cruz! Over here! Over here!” I came home with two little clay bottles of mezcal, two mangos, a little basket, two tlayudas, one totopo (crispy tortilla from the Isthmus), one passionfruit, three rolls of pan de yema, a piece of sugarcane, a hollowed stick of wood for drinking mezcal with a cord to wear it around my neck, a weird little bar of fruity, brown sugar dessert, and an inedible dessert that seemed to be made from a wedge of sugar cane soaked in a toxic liqueur.

Oaxaca is the most indigenous state in Mexico, with over 30% speaking an indigenous language. People are generally considered indigenous if they speak an indigenous language, like Zapotec or Mixtec, rather than by the color of their skin. Oaxaca is not necessarily representative of Mexico in this regard, but the intense pride I saw in their indigenous heritage at Guelaguetza was overwhelming. I know that indigenous populations are among the poorest in Mexico, and that Guelaguetza may be only a shallow form of recognition, but coming from a country where we don’t even pay lip service to our indigenous cultures, I was so moved by the sense of connection to a deep and rich history. I’m a big believer in the importance of national principles and ideals, even if they’re only aspirational, because how much worse is it not even to aspire to them?



And I finally ate a jicama popsicle! They were selling them at Reyes Etla, big thick slices on a popsicle stick, with so many different containers of colorful powders and spices. I had trouble understanding the vendor, who was very curious where I was from, so I ended up just asking for “lo mejor,” and got something that was spicy and tart and sweet, as if it had been dusted in those chili powder and Kool-Aid.



I also ate molotes, little fried torpedos of masa filled with potatos and chorizo, at the performance in Tocuela, but I think they made me sick. God probably wanted to strike me down for the arrogant way I’ve been bragging about how I never get sick from street food. (For an agnostic, I’m kind of obsessed with God, no?) I’ll spare you the gory details, but I finally had to open my bottle of Pepto Bismol. It was too bad, as they were so perfectly fried.

But for once, the food was not the point.

(Special thanks to Erin for the National Geographic-worthy photos from Etla!)

It's our last day in Puerto Escondido

It’s our last day in Puerto Escondido. Erin has already left for the airport, and Elena and I are spending the 5 hours before our bus in the most profitable way—doing nothing on the rooftop terrace of our hotel. Elena is in a hammock reading, or maybe even napping, and I’m sitting with my laptop facing the bluest ocean imaginable. It’s almost too mean to say out loud to my friends, who are going back to lawyer jobs in San Francisco, but I’ve been on a vacation from my vacation.

In this blissed-out town, I haven’t been doing my usual nosing around for superb food, and perhaps for my Zen acceptance of life, I’ve been rewarded with some of the most memorable food adventures I’ve had so far.



Playa Carrizalillo is the best kind of surprise. It’s a bit further west than Playa Zicatela, with its wide expanse of glassy waves that look like the purest and cleanest of blue-green Japanese ceramics as they break. Carrizalillo is not as obvious, if only because you have to descend a long flight of stairs to get there. The steps are solidly constructed and pretty, with flowers and suitably tropical plants at every angled turn, but the best part is only a few turns from the top, when you immediately see before you the perfect, deep blue, baby bay.

Little thatched palapas and restaurants line the beach, selling beer and shrimp cocktails. The restaurants aren’t particularly noteworthy, though I’m impressed they don’t mark up the beer more, and there are fewer vendors who come by, probably because of the steep steps.



There is, however, a leathery, old man selling mystery mollusks that were tender, almost buttery, and salty from the bucket he just caught them in. He called the bivalves “callos de margarita,” which after some Google research, Erin and I have decided they are some type of scallop. The conches he called “caracoles,” which I thought meant “snails” in Spanish.

The callos had a pebbly, almost spiny outer surface, and a deep purple ring around the pearly interior. He husked them right on the rocks, rinsed them in the murky seawater in his bucket, sliced them thinly and expertly, and served them back in their shells, with a fresh squeeze of lime and some hot sauce available, though it turned out for us to be superfluous. It was better to eat add just a bit of lime and taste the sweetness of the meat.

In classic Mexican fashion, he didn’t assume that Erin and I, who were standing over him almost panting with eagerness, wanted to buy a mollusk or two. We were finally moved to explicit action when another woman started negotiating a price for all the mollusks he had left. The fact that I might never taste a “callo de margarita” again is okay. It seems so fortuitous, so blessed, that we got to taste them at all.

We even had more nieve de coco, this one purer and cleaner, the more innocent version compared to the more sophisticated salty-sweet coconut ice cream we'd had on Playa Marinero. I am glad I don't have to judge which was better.

We had thought nothing could top Playa Carrizalillo, but two days later, we went to Mazunte. About an hour east of Puerto Escondido, Mazunte is a small town that seems to take the overflow from the hippies and nudists in Zipolite. The whole town consists of four or five streets in a loose grid, only two or three of them paved. It’s not much of a surfer town, and it feels even more laid-back than Puerto Escondido, which I hadn't known was possible.



We stayed all day on a little semicircle of a beach that had no umbrellas, no lounge chairs, only a lovingly ramshackle beach hut selling sandwiches, juices and tropical cocktails. We had brought a light picnic lunch with us, based on the tostadas de corozo I had gotten obsessed with after our lagoon guide, Lalo, told us about them. They were flatter and darker, a little thicker, and not ripply like your usual tostada of corn. When I tasted them, I knew immediately they were worth the long, hot walk to the market in town and dealing with the surly woman who sold them to me. They were just sweet enough, rich with the milk of coconuts, but completely dry and non-greasy. Topped with ripe avocados, fresh lime juice, and criollo tomatoes, crinkly like heirlooms, they whet our appetites for more.



It was so easy to walk just a few feet backwards to Babel, the little drink hut, run by a group of young, attractive South Americans, who were so at ease with their good fortune. The entire area was little more than 15 by 15 feet, with a few chairs, two hammocks, and an astonishing view of the ocean. Their mix tape was clearly a beloved one, as we heard the same Bob Marley song twice. We put our feet up and drank big, soda fountain glasses of “cucu melon,” 1 for 35 pesos, 2 for 50, which were made of freshly squeezed honeydew, a bit of mezcal, crema de coco, sugar, and crushed ice. So simple and so good. I kept thinking about it for the rest of the day, absentmindedly murmuring, “Wouldn’t that be a good drink for a summer dinner party?” I know it would console me back in Brooklyn, when I finally have to go back home.

The best street food in Oaxaca, possibly the world

I believe God or the fates have impressed upon me the great responsibility of declaring and describing with exactitude how riquíssima are the empanadas and tacos in one corner of Oaxaca City.

Lina had told me about this little stand of empanadas and tacos near the church on Garcia Vigil. “You’ll know it because of all the cars double-parked around it every morning.” But it took me over a month to finally get there.

The fateful day was Thursday, July 12th, the day after my cooking class at Seasons of My Heart. After my enormous day of eating, I had gone to my Spanish teacher’s apartment to watch the Mexico-Argentina Copa America game with her. I was already so full, but Lety had prepared all this food, and when I woke up the next day, I felt the food equivalent to a hangover. I didn’t even want to get out of bed, but I realized I had to call my mother before I got on the bus to Mexico City that night, and I dragged myself out with the intention of going to an Internet place with Skype and having a light breakfast of fruit at a wireless café.

But my usual Skype place was closed, and I had to trudge my way to the other one on Garcia Vigil. As expected, the connection was painfully slow, and I barely managed to communicate to my mother that I was alive and well. I left frustrated and tired, but then, there it was, the famous food stand outside of Iglesia Carmen de Arriba.

I wasn’t expecting much. I knew the empanadas de amarillo were famous here, but I had tried mole amarillo at Patty’s and not liked it much. But when I took a bite into this empanada, what we would probably call a quesadilla, I swear the heavens opened and angels sang. It was so toasty, just off the comal, and hot enough to satisfy the most scaredy-cat street food eater, but so good I had to ignore the burning of my tongue. The amarillo sauce was enlightening, the perfect example of the maxim my friend Mimi and I firmly believe, “If you don’t like a food, you just haven’t tried a good version.” Spicy, saucy, assertive, thinner than the sauce Patty had made, and a perfect complement to the shredded chicken. Mexicans know how to cook chicken breast. Every once in awhile, I’d find a bite of bright cilantro. Oh God, it was so good.



I took a bunch of pictures of the church around it, so that any of you, should you find yourself in Oaxaca, will be able to find it. I particularly love this picture of their grill, with the fat sausages roasting underneath the comal.



Like every other empanada and taco stand I’ve seen, they make their tortilla base right there. There’s a big mass of masa, with a giant press for making the giant tortillas. The tortillas, either for empanadas or tacos, are first cooked separately on the grill. When they have the telltale dark spots showing that they are crispy and ready, they’re filled with amarillo and chicken, or squash blossoms and string cheese and folded over to become empanadas, or they’re rolled up with various meaty fillings and salsa.

I hadn’t even been hungry, but the empanada just whet my appetite for more. I considered my options and finally chose a taco wrapped around a chile relleno and had my second revelation. And to think I didn’t like chiles rellenos! The chile relleno was small and skinny and packed with ground meat, and so juicy and flavorful I was sad when there was no taco left, but there was no one to blame but myself.

So once again, the stand is tucked next to the gates of Iglesia de Carmen Arriba that are facing the street of Garcia Vigil, near the corner of Carranza, south of Quetzalcoatl. There are other street vendors nearby, selling fruit or some such, but only one stand selling empanadas and tacos, unless of course, it’s Lunes del Cerro, but that’s another blog post.

¡Oh, la playa!

I have almost a month’s worth of posts to catch up on, including all the food I ate in Mexico City and the mole negro cooking class that literally brought tears to my eyes, but I have to gloat a bit about where I am, here and now.

Erin, Elena, and I are in Puerto Escondido. It’s a surfer’s paradise, which means there are many bare-chested men walking around. Sadly, surfers are not our type, but there are many other natural wonders to observe and enjoy, including, of course, very fresh mariscos or seafood and other culinary delights. And even if the food wasn’t that great, even I could be happy just swinging in a hammock on the roof terrace of our hotel", drinking Dos Equis and reading Rebecca West’s amazing “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.” But on this first day of our stay here, the food has been happily surprising.

Life here feels even sweeter because we survived a 9-hour overnight bus ride from Oaxaca City to get here. Erin had to knock herself out with sleeping pills, and Elena got some serious cricks in her neck, but as soon as saw the beach, the memory of the bus ride just melted away.

While you sit in your lounge chair under a straw palapa, you can get almost anything you want from the peddlers walking up and down the sand. You can buy a blessing or a wish from a giant clay pig (at least, I think that’s what he said), you can get your name engraved on a grain of rice (isn’t it weird what tourist-things travel all over the world?), and you can eat a delicious ceviche-like shrimp cocktail with a freshly tart, picante flavor, served in plastic dixie cup with fresh wedges of lime.



Or you can get nieve de coco, or coconut ice cream, from a sweet man who is so proud of his product that even after we had asked for two cones, he insisted we taste it first. This nieve, with a sorbet-like texture, would not have been out of place at the foodiest of foodie NY restaurants, with its rich, pure, and salty-sweet flavor. I have another great photo of Erin with her ice cream cone, but it's a tad too bodacious for this blog.



And at least so far, even your run-of-the-mill, random lunch place knows how to cook a fish with respect. At Vitamina, on the Adoquin, the pedestrian street lined with your usual flip-flops, crafts, and caftans, I had a lovely whole huachinango, or red snapper, that tasted as rich and fatty as bluefish or mackerel. It had been prepared “al Diablo,” in a creamy, just slightly spicy sauce. With some hot tortillas and a neverending pitcher of watermelon agua, how could I be anything but muy satisfecha? How could I be anything but satisfecha on a beach in Mexico?

Neuroticos Anonimos always feel better when they eat good food

I thought I was going to Ocotlán to check out their Friday market. I didn’t know I was going to find the solace I had been searching for.

The market was sprawling, but with arms radiating out rather than the dense block upon block at Mercado Abastos. Each arm was clearly dedicated to specific items—leather belts or fresh produce or random plastic items. My favorite was the turkey gauntlet, where people formed two long lines while holding their very placid turkeys under their arms. It felt almost stately, like a very dignified beauty pageant. I couldn’t quite tell who was buying and who was displaying, as everyone just stood there with his or her bird(s). I really wanted to take a picture, but I know most people don’t like to have their pictures taken, and I generally don’t ask unless I buy something. This was definitely something I could not take home.

I was there early enough to see the nieve, or sorbet, sellers making their ice cream. They place one bucket inside another bucket of ice and presumably salt, and they just keep turning the inner bucket to churn it to the right consistency. None of it was ready for me to eat, hence, no picture of this either.



But I did feel entitled to take pictures of everything I bought and consumed. I started with a breakfast of enfrijoladas, which are like entomatadas but in bean sauce, rather than tomatoes. It honestly tastes better than you would think. I washed it all down with a nice cup of chocolate con agua, which came with a soft bun with crumbly, sugary top and a hard little pretzel-shaped biscuit. I’ve realized that nearly all the bread in Oaxaca improves vastly when it’s dunked into some hot chocolate. Hot morning drinks, for some reason, always taste better in a bowl than a mug. I think it’s the particularly warm feeling you get when your fingers and palms are wrapped around the smooth curves of a bowl.



I then found a couple of benches full of families eating something I’d never seen before. The women ladled out bowls of dark red soup in the back, while the senora out front chopped at a soft, quivering mass of steamed meat. Chopped hot peppers, onions, cilantro and salsa were on every table, and every few minutes, a woman would walk by offering “blandas,” tortillas that are softer and tastier than their name implies. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but when I sat down and a blanda seller approached me, a young woman at the next table gave a quick, almost imperceptible smile and nod, so I bought two. It was sort of “build-your-own-picnic,” as her family had also bought some avocados and other garnishes to add to their meal.



The soup turned out to be full of potatoes, carrots, and green beans, as well as several different kinds of unidentifiable organ meat. This thing that looks like a bit of felt is flesh—I know, I ate it.



But even I had my limits. I looked at something that looked like liver, but a tiny bite revealed it definitely was not liver. There was something else that had gelatinous folds, a whole system of mountains and valleys in a bit of meat. I decided not to eat that either.

According to Lety, my Spanish teacher, I ate menudo. Hooray! I’d always wanted to eat menudo.

I bought some albahaca, or basil, since I keep thinking I’m going to make spaghetti with tomato sauce, though it looks and smells distinctly more like Thai basil than sweet basil. I watched several goats go by, bleating wildly. Perhaps they knew something the turkeys didn’t.

My heart never leaps at the thought of touring a church, but I was actually moved when I stopped at the church that had been restored with the help of Rodolfo Morales, the local boy who became a great artist. My pictures don’t capture how fresh and light it looks, or how lovely the ceilings are with their serpentine gilt vines. It was, however, slightly alarming to see mannequins dressed in cheap satin, representing Christ or saints, encased in glass. Catholicism seems sort of blithely unselfconscious about its morbidity.

And then I went to the Casa of the artist himself, which is quite a funny little place. It’s just off the main square in Ocotlan, and when I walked into the arched entryway, there was a young, bearded, artsy-looking guy just sitting on a bench. The gate was closed, but he assured me it was open, and when I approached the gate, a woman appeared with a young boy. They welcomed me in, the woman telling me I could leave my shopping bag on a bench, and the boy wordlessly leading me up the stairs to the second floor with its exhibition hall.

The exhibit showcased the collages Morales had been making near the end of his life, with ribbon, antique images, lace, even faces I recognized as having been cut-out of Benetton ads. The exhibition hall was right next to what used to be his studio, complete with rolls of ribbon.

When I wandered back downstairs, I began to realize what a strange house I was in. He only died in 2001, and you could peer into his bedroom, his kitchen, and his dining room, presumably preserved as he’d left it. On a shelf by the staircase, you could see 30 or so empty perfume bottles, just sitting there like the tchotckes of any older person. But it also became clear that his family was still living in the house day to day.



A senora, older than the woman who’d let me in, was in the gorgeous kitchen when I came in, and she began showing me around, telling me how this horse sculpture made of wood was very old, or how that baby doll in a glass case was very old. The china cabinet was filled with crystal, but it also held a plastic thermos and one antique cup with Japanese faces that the senora had hoped I could identify. As we were talking, we heard a wail come across the courtyard, rising above the birds in their cages. Suddenly, a girl with long curly hair appeared, carrying a smaller little girl who was crying. She stopped crying when she saw me, but she started again after the older girl took her into their bedroom. When I asked where the bathroom was, the senora thought for a bit, and then kindly let me use the family bathroom. As I left, the senora told me that the lady of the house had gone to the market for bread and sodas, so I was very welcome to come back and have a snack with them.

When I left the house, the bearded boy was still there and he asked me what I liked the best. “Oh, the kitchen!” I said.



But before I went back to Oaxaca, I had to eat one last thing: a molote. I hadn’t seen these before, these little torpedo-shaped fried dumplings filled with potato and chorizo. As always, I felt slightly sheepish ordering “un molote,” but the lady was so nice. She asked me with the warmest smile, “Te gusta?”, knowing the answer already. It’s in these moments that I’m glad to be a particularly freaky foreigner—an Asian AND a woman traveling alone. The novelty of seeing me eat and enjoy their food seems to make up for the fact that I can only buy 2 blandas or one molote. When I got back to Oaxaca, I found out from Lety that molotes aren’t easy to find, as they’re usually the kind of food sold in driveways of private houses on Sunday mornings. If only I’d known, I would have bought a bagful.

But perhaps as much as my memories of the food I ate and the art I saw, I think I will treasure the brochure I found at the church for “Neuróticos Anónimos.” According to the brochure, “Neurosis” is “caused by a person’s innate egoism that keeps him from having the ability to love.” It advises the reader to read and answer the quiz in the calmest possible manner, with the most honesty possible. The questions include, among many, “Do you believe the whole world is watching you?” “Do you lie without necessity?” “Do you do things that you consider stupid?” “Do you live disgusted with the entire world?”

So in Ocotlán, I ate several things I’d never eaten before, saw an artist’s home, and learned that I’m not as neurotic as I think I am.

Tortas at La Hormiga

It’s been interesting to see what middle-class Mexicans will tell foreigners about street food here in Oaxaca. First, they start by telling you never, never to eat street food and to only eat raw fruits or vegetables if they have a good, thick removable skin. I’m not quite sure what the danger is, beyond your usual food poisoning. Although guidebooks and locals will tell foreigners that they have to be careful because their sensitive foreign stomachs aren’t used to the local bacterial blend, middle-class Oaxaquenos themselves are careful about where they buy food on the street and they also carefully disinfect lettuce and other produce by soaking them in iodine and water before eating raw salads. Every morning, you can hear a guy shouting in the street, “Agua! Agua!”, as he delivers big plastic canisters of purified water. And no one ever asks how you want your meat cooked—there’s only one option when the butchers don’t use refrigerators. Can you imagine what the raw food movement would do here?

Their exhortations not to eat street food were so strong, I did wonder at first, if there was something that made street food in Oaxaca more dangerous than in Thailand or Haiti or any of the other places I’ve eaten street food. But when I started to press them, even the American staff at my school backed down and said, “Well, I eat street food. We just don’t want anyone blaming us if they get sick.” Pretty soon, I started to get tips from my Mexican family, the cooking teacher at ICO, and my private teacher, about the fruit juice seller at Mercado Juarez that uses purified water, or Senora Angelita whose corn, on and off the cob, is “muy limpia.”

One of the biggest factors in determining the cleanliness of a vendor is how they handle money. Many of the reputedly clean people have a helper who handles all the money, while he or she handles all the food. But if their helper is absent, the favored method seems to be to put on a thin plastic glove before handling the money, and then taking it off to go back to cooking food. I like it. Any serious cook would agree that it’s hard to determine when food is done through plastic or rubber, but the NYC Department of Health would have a collective heart attack.

So now that my Spanish classes are in the afternoon, I have from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to do nothing. I spend most of my morning (and admittedly, most of the night before) thinking about where I am going to eat lunch. Wednesday was my appointed day to go eat at the recommended, “very clean” torta truck, “La Hormiga” in Conzati Park. “Hormiga” means ant, and the truck accordingly has a very happy ant smiling at its customers. The truck itself gleams with cleanliness, and it’s always crowded, particularly when school lets out.

A torta reminds me very much of a Vietnamese banh-mi. If it’s ordinary, it’s nothing more than a sandwich. (And personally, I am not big into sandwiches.) But if the bread is toasted right and the crust crackles as you bite into it, and the sharply salty filling is balanced, by creamy avocado and cheese in a torta or by tart pickled vegetables in a banh-mi, it can be so much more satisfying than a sandwich deserves to be. Or perhaps it would be fairer to compare a torta with a panini, since both get toasted and pressed on a grill, and the Platonic ideal of both sandwiches recognize that the bread is as important as the filling.



I wouldn’t say that “La Hormiga” is on the level of Saigon Banh Mi at the back of the jewelry store on Mott St. at the corner of Grand, or my favorite little ‘Ino in the West Village, but my torta with cecina, a spicy, shredded pork, and quesillo was crackly, salty, and balanced like an Olympic gymnast. ¡Qué sabrosa!

Mercado organico at El Pochote

Now that I’ve been here for over three weeks, it’s finally hit me that I’m actually living here, in Oaxaca, Mexico. The raw newness of the city has worn off, and there are areas I can navigate without looking at a map. Best of all, I’m starting to have favorite places, and at the top of the list is the little park of El Pochote.

You could walk by El Pochote and not even know it. It’s built into the old aqueducts of the city, with only one small wooden door in a brick wall of arches leading into the enclosed space. Once you’re inside, it’s mainly red dirt with a brick walkway, a small pond with a brush of bamboo, and not much greenery, but there’s something so lovely about its quietness and feeling of secrecy. Oaxaca, despite being a city less than 1/12th the size of New York, can still feel noisy, crowded, and polluted at times, and it’s always a relief to find myself inside El Pochote.

The park regularly shows free art films and hosts events like the bicycle-power generator demonstration I went to Saturday night (inexplicably paired with a series of animated shorts by a Czech filmmaker I’d never heard of, Jan Svankmajer). But the biggest draw of El Pochote for me is undeniably the organic market on Fridays and Saturdays.

Like organic markets in the U.S., the customers appear generally middle- and upper-class, along with a lot of the type of gringos who like to visit places like Oaxaca, lefty, green, well-meaning. The whole market is very well-groomed, pretty white tents on wooden poles, instead of helter-skelter plastic tarps. The only non-food items are tasteful, traditional pottery and all-natural soaps and shampoos, no plastic cups with Disney characters printed on them. And as much as I like the crazed chaos of piñatas juxtaposed with raw meat, I have to admit it’s often a little easier to enjoy the Mercado Organico.



And no market in the U.S., neither the Union Square Greenmarket, or my beloved Alemany Market in San Francisco, or even the gastronomic playland of the Ferry Building in San Francisco has the tlayudas, enchiladas, and tacos I can get at El Pochote. Actually, I don’t think there’s any other market in Oaxaca where I could get the food I ate at El Pochote. Looking at the wide range of sautéed vegetables—squash, mushrooms, dark leafy greens—I suddenly realized what I’d been missing in my diet for the past three weeks. My stomach cried out for something that would taste fresh and simple, not cooked or pureed or seasoned.

I started with a fantastic “taco” of a tortilla rolled around diced chicken piquant with sautéed sweet peppers, mixed with a bit of black bean spread and such lovely, tasty sautéed mushrooms.



I then had two enchiladas smothered in coloradito mole with some shredded chicken, lettuce, and queso sprinkled on top. I think prices here are slightly higher than elsewhere, but they’re still so low by American standards: 23 pesos or a little under $2.30 for a plate of food that would have been more than enough for my lunch. I felt particularly lucky eating these, that I’m here long enough to try multiple versions of my favorite foods. This coloradito had a sophisticated touch of bitterness, but still slightly sweeter and better, I think, than the one I’d tried at Casa Oaxaca.



I drank some chilacayote, a pulpy drink with seeds and all made of a type of sweet squash. I didn’t like it very much, and wished I had gotten tejate in a pretty little gourd instead, like my classmate who graciously wasn’t surprised when I asked to take a picture of her drink.



I bought some candied figs, squash, and chilacayote, which were pretty good, but a little too sweet to eat in the huge chunks they sold them in.



And then I finally tasted some chapulllines, the Oaxacan specialty of fried grasshoppers. I’d been waiting for July or August, when they would be bigger and better, according to Soledad my cooking guru from ICO, but the little old lady selling them was so insistent, I ended up buying a tiny $1 bag. They tasted salty more than anything, not as crunchy as I’d thought they would be, maybe a bit like anchovies. I love anchovies, but I don’t snack on them, and I didn’t finish the bag.

And to take home, I bought a little chocolate crescent-bread from the Korean woman who runs an organic farm and restaurant in Etla, a pueblo outside Oaxaca. I think she and her half-Korean daughters were as surprised to see me as I was to see them, but I was too shy to get her story. I had hovered by her stall for so long, though, that I felt obliged to buy the bread. Lucky for me, it was really good. I loved the cinnamon-y texture and flavor of the bit of chocolate running through the swirls of sweet, eggy bread. It wasn’t at all like eating a crappy pain au chocolate with a stingy bit of chocolate at Au Bon Pain. Most Mexican bread tastes too dry and/or too bland to me, organic or not. This was so much better, wholesome without being boring. (My friend wants to organize a trip to her restaurant, so I hope to get her story sooner or later.)

Heh heh, when I have my own apartment, I can take more food home.