While I’m actually pretty satisfied with a yellow mole empanada on the street corner every night, I also found some five course meals and tacos this time that gave me that desperate pang of nostalgia when I got home. I just wanted to try one more dish, one more guisado, one more breakfast to offer a soft landing for my hangover. Until the next time, I guess. Here are a few places I visited in January. 

Levadura de Olla

This menu caught my eye for the way it split up dishes: typical Oaxacan dishes, ceremonial, rescued, and creative. As you work your way down it’ll start with the most typical like tlayudas and mole negro, and then it cascades into dishes not commonly seen on menus in the city, like mole de fiesta con pozole seco, a tribute to the time before rice was introduced to Mexico and hominy accompanied dishes as the starch. Rescate is a word I hear often these days in Mexico as cooks are calling out dishes that people no longer make as often or the ingredients are either difficult to acquire. At Levadura, they’re prioritizing using different heirloom beans, corn and other traditional ingredients. 

A good example is the tamal de jumil, tiny stink bugs. This is a traditional dish from San Mateo Yucutindó, in Sola de Vega. To collect the bugs they have to walk four hours in the early morning, capturing the insects before they wake up and fly away into the daylight. They’re cooked and layered into the tamal with black beans. 

If you’re not feeling up for bugs, another ancient dish from the Valle area is a hearty almost stew-like dish called segueza, known as a mole de maiz for the toasted corn that’s coarsely ground and incorporated into the dish. This one came with black beans and chicken. There are a number of options here for vegetarians here too: a few salads and a tamale de requeson with squash blossoms imprinted on the outside of the masa like pressed flower paper. 

This young duo got their start making food for events and just a month ago took the leap into their own restaurant, and I’m not going to be surprised if their place will soon be hard to get into. Open 8 am to 9 pm every day of the week. 

Mo-Kalli

Last year I interviewed cocinera tradicional Catalina Chavez, who was in the middle of constructing her first restaurant. It’s now open and if you are looking for that perfect mole to complete your Oaxaca trip, go here. Catalina is not just a lovely person to talk to about any topic, but she’ll spend time with you to explain each of her dishes and their history. 

On Sundays they try to have Oaxaca’s seven signature moles, in addition to other dishes that are traditional of the region. Segueza was one, hers made with guajillo and chile de agua. She also served a chichilo, a special mole that leans charred and acidic with a base of cumin and avocado leaf. 

Her coloradito is prize-winning (literally) and helped her earn the money to open up her place. It’s bright with almond and chocolate and served with turkey taquitos topped with queso fresco, cucumbers and cilantro. Mancha manteles is a fruity mole made with pineapple, apple, bananas, and pear with a base of chiles that kick a little at the end. Her verde is like a hug from a big strong dude: herbal and fierce with greens like hoja santa and fresh oregano. The simplest sauce on the menu was made of tomatoes, onion, garlic, and chile de agua served with pork ribs, and my friend and I both agreed it’s one of the best tomato sauces we’ve ever tasted. She gave a friend some tea to help his stomach and joked about how she’s also a bruja, and honestly I wouldn’t be surprised because her food is magic. 

This restaurant is outside of Oaxaca City in Tlacolula, so I would recommend that you check out the Sunday market and then visit her for lunch (or go for breakfast). Open 7 am to 7 pm Thu-Sun. Phone number: +5219512941249. Donají 48, San Isisdro 70400, Tlacolula. To get there if you are taking a taxi say you are going to Catalina’s restaurant in Colonia Tres Piedras and they will probably know it. You will want to tell the taxi to come back to pick you up as it’s a residential area. 

Teocintle

I love the vegetables in Oaxaca. Bright squash blossoms, herbs that bring black beans to life or garnish a tostada, wild greens swirling in a sopa de guias. But when looking for a casual dinner in Oaxaca city, you’re mostly out of luck for anything light and green. Dinner isn’t really a big custom here, suffice for a tlayuda or a taco to hold over your mezcal better. But one night, after a long day of meat, I went to a new restaurant called Teocintle. It’s reminiscent of Alfonsina, there’s a daily menu with a few courses, and produce and ingredients carefully selected. 

The dinner started with a red corn tostada, pink and delicate, holding a curtido mix of carrots and cauliflower over hutilacoche (corn smut, which is a delicacy) and a sprinkling of chapulines and greens. It was refreshing. After, there was a light bean soup, a tetela filled with quesillo and sauteed squash, and the main course was a pork belly in a chapulin (grasshopper) salsa. It’s rare to go through four courses in Oaxaca (or anywhere) and not feel stuffed, but I felt perfectly satisfied after eating here. The dessert was by far my favorite, a light passionfruit cream underneath a biscotti made with frijol tostada, and caramelized potatoes. 

Teocintle is a family operation, two cousins who have done the circuit in Oaxaca’s fancier restaurants. You can find testaments of their experience in the small details in the service and the presentation of the food— garnishes galore, and an agua de mamey that puts others to shame casually served in a jicara as part of the meal, for example. 

Five courses will cost you $300. They also have mezcal and beer. Open 2:30-10 pm. Make a reso via IG/FB or go by in person because their place is small. 

Sabor de Cecy

This hole in the wall serves tacos de guisados, which always look different wherever you are in Mexico. Here the tacos are on big tortillas, toasted on the comal, slapped with a layer of black beans, filled with a guisado of your choice, topped with rice or a nopales salad and then rolled almost like a little loose burrito. She has a bunch of guisados: costilla in red sauce, chicken tinga, mole, and for the vegetarians, mushrooms and huitlacoche or spinach and eggs, and quesillo and squash blossoms. They also have tortas and empanadas (what might be called quesadillas elsewhere), and one or two aguas. There’s a big white wall with signatures and scribbles that indicates that foreigners have definitely found this place, but at $25 pesos per taco (one is a solid meal) it’s for locals too. Open 8 to 6, closed Sundays. On Porfirio Diaz, on the opposite side as the Sanchez Pascuas market up a block. 

Baltazar

One thing that I love about Mexico is that it’s common to find restaurants or stands that do one thing and one thing well, for example a specific kind of taco. At Baltazar it’s tetelas, a masa triangle filled typically with a thin layer of black beans. Opened by the same chef as Tierra del Sol, Baltazar takes one of the popular breakfast restaurant’s signature dishes and uses it as a platform to take guests around the culinary regions of Oaxaca. The tetelas are filled and topped with dishes from the Mixteca, the Sierra Sur and other areas whose recipes you might not get to try if you just hang out in the city. The Valles was my favorite: an amber estofado made with almonds, sesame seeds, spices and tomatoes on top of a blue corn tetela stuffed with a layer of lengua. They also have several vegetarian options. 

The restaurant is located in a huge courtyard that also houses the Convite tasting room, so all of the mezcal drinks on the menu are Convite. I tend to avoid cocktails these days, so I can’t report back. 

They also serve breakfast and juices. My recommendation is to go with friends and order the sampler plate of three so you can try different ones. 

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“I wasn’t trained formerly as a chef but growing up in Oaxaca, you know the taste of a good tortilla, a good mole, corn…” Jorge León, the chef and owner of Alfonsina trailed off while we shared a taxi to Oaxaca city from his restaurant. 

Alfonsina is in a community called San Juan Bautista La Raya, where Jorge grew up. If headed there from the city, after the airport bridge you’ll take a left instead of going straight into the airport. The paved road will soon turn to dirt and a few houses after, an iron gate marks the entrance to Jorge’s family home and the restaurant. 

In a city, especially a downtown, where the textiles, murals, and flowering purple Jacaranda trees are so striking they interrupt your thoughts, I think it’s the quietness of Alfonsina that makes it so enchanting.

The restaurant and kitchen is in one corner of the courtyard, under the shade of a huckleberry tree, next to the patio where Jorge hopes to grow more things once he has time. Inside is there is a comal and stove facing the dining room just like in many Oaxacan kitchens. But here almost everything inside — the brick walls, the plates, the squash in the corner and the wood furniture— is the color of burnt clay, log cabins, warmth. Once the restaurant is formalized, and not just tethered to eaters-in-the-know by Jorge’s whatsapp or IG, there may be more things inside that alter the color palette, but I secretly hope that it doesn’t change too much. There is no music in the restaurant, but from the patio where people hang out and the family works around the house you’ll hear some filter in along with the rooster’s crows, and the sounds of the fire cracking under the comal.

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Jorge is generally a shy guy, not socializing too much with guests and disappearing from the kitchen after courses without a word. His food is also plated simply and neatly on ceramic plates and bowls, with few extra flourishes. 

Also unlike parts of the centro, nothing here feels exclusively made for the entertainment of foreigners. The first time I walked in an entire table of people from the neighborhood were halfway through their comida. While visitors can come here for a five-course lunch, the restaurant also make breakfast and comida for the neighborhood. Jorge’s mom is frequently pressing tortillas for people to take to-go. 

Jorge got his cooking start at Casa Oaxaca, and then later at Pujol where he worked for six years. He recently returned to Oaxaca to open the restaurant with his family’s help. Because here the ingredients he loves are at his fingertips. His family is originally from the Mixteca, and so is the beef and corn at the restaurant. He’s picking special ingredients from friends and the rest comes from the central de abastos (Oaxaca’s wholesale market).

The first time I came here was for comida, which included five courses and mezcal or beer (and a passionfruit agua). Not sure how the prices will change as they formalize the restaurant, but for now it’s a great deal. 

The first course had all the flavors of Oaxaca but scaled back and proportioned differently from what you might normally get: fresh black beans from his farmer friend with generous pieces of huitlacoche that looked like hunks of eggplants, a chorizo oil hanging back and coating the dish, and a generous pile of quintonil greens on top. Later the purslane stems (a common green here, but rarely served with the stems) were treated with the same chiles he would use for barbacoa, and made into a smokey pasta dish. The star was the mole negro, made with an imperfect stone like they do in the Mixteca instead of a metate. The consistency was a thicker but still silky, almost overwhelmed by the flavor of cacao but brought back from the edge with the subtle heat of toasted chiles. My second favorite was the yogurt dessert, which I could have for breakfast every day. Made in house, and then served in a mug with mango, strawberries and the huckleberry jello (the berries came from the tree outside). It was refreshing and lighthearted.

For breakfast they’ll again serve you a daily menu — could be chile relleno tacos and a garbanzo soup, or chilaquiles and a memela— with juice and coffee. Whichever meal you arrive for you’ll probably find ingredients and dishes that seem similar to other daily menus in Oaxaca, but take note of the details: maybe an underused fish from the Oaxacan coast will get its due on your plate, or the texture of a sauce will feel different because of the tools used to make it, or the masa will be a bit lighter on your tongue. It’s these touches that make all the difference.

To make a reservation you can text Jorge via WhatsApp at +52 1 55 2659 3941.