Every region in Mexico has slightly different food, bc the dishes all developed independently; the geography did not allow easy travel between areas until recently.
The Oaxacan food was very yummy.
Oaxaca is known for 2 foods made from the Cacao plant: chocolate and mole. Mole is actually a mix of nuts, chocolate, and chile pepper, as well as up to 15 other spices. It's delicious, and we bought many jars of it to bring home to MI to share. But a popular mole/chocolate store in Oaxaca will mix the chocolate for you on site! This guy is mixing cacao beans, almonds, and sugar to make a dry chocolate mix that people can take home and cook in some recipes and also make hot chocolate to drink.
All of Mexico eats tortillas, and Oaxaca is no exception. Except here, for some reason, the tortillas are HUGE!!! about twice the size of U.S. "tortillas" - maybe 15" diameter? Normally they will fold these in half to make a giant Tlayuda which is filled with beans and cheese and avocado and red pepper slices and maybe something else. I ordered a "Tlayuda" but instead got this huge open-faced volcano of a sandwich. It was a huge shell just covered in yumminess. Honestly, it was tough to eat.
Before the Spanish showed up, Mexicans didn't eat a lot of meat. Oaxaca City is not near the coastline, so they had no fish, and there are no domestic-able animals in Mexico. meat was limited to birds and rabbits that were hunted. To augment their limited protein intake, some traditional societies learned how to collect and fry grasshoppers. That's right, grasshoppers. blecht.
Now, it's a tradition for gringo tourists to buy some grasshoppers (which a few people still eat, only ground up so that the obvious bug-eating is less obvious, I guess) and eat them. I refused, but Dave went ahead and ate one.
He said it tasted like a bug with lime and chile powder.
double blecht.
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