Culinary tourism: Mexico City

Since we are in the spectacularly delicious city of Mexico for the holidays, I'm going to try to drop a few tips for travellers who really want to see the food side of the city.  As it is home to over 25 million people, it's pretty hard to cover it all, but there are some favourite spots I always come back to.  

First off, as beautiful as Mexico's beaches are, you just can't get the full historical and cultural picture of the country without a trip to the capital and some of the cities inland.  Food wise, one historical lesson I learned once was that long before colonialism, Mexico City has been the boss, like it or not.  Be it Aztec or Mayan, the rulers back in the day always got their taxes in the form of goods.  This meant that coastal areas sent fish.  Since you don't want to send your ruler stinky fish, they first built a road system (remember that old bit about all roads lead to Rome? Same deal), then they organized a cross country relay where a well packaged fish could get to the capital in a matter of days from sprinting runners.  What on earth does this mean today?  It means that there is a centuries old tradition that anything grown or caught in this varied countryside is available fresh in Mexico City nearly year round - how great is that?  It also means that if you can't get to some region of the country on your trip, you can probably find a good spot to eat their food here.

Mexicans are the masters of street food.  Back home, I find street food decent, but way over-priced and too showy.  Street food in Mexico is cheap and delicious and with all the flying knives, who needs a show?  Worried about Montezuma's Revenge?  Fair enough, here's my rules:  

- look for stands with lots of locals - they have the best food and the product is moving faster

- in the general scheme of things, how clean does the operation look?  It is street food after all

- does it smell good?  Bad meat doesn't clean up during cooking and you want delicious food anyway

- sometimes just go for it - if I didn't, I would never have tried tripe, brain, tendon, crickets, or worms 

If my recommendations seem a little hard to get to on your schedule, remember, with this many people in one place, good ideas spread like wildfire, and food is such an important part of life here, good cooks are everywhere.  Talk to people, ask where their favourite spot is, be brave and go.  Eat some brain, eat some tripe.  Eat the local cheese - good lord eat the cheese.

I've already written about Biko, a fantastic meal we enjoyed in 2010 on the bicentennial (literally, we ate on Independence Day), but it is actually only one of the restaurants in Mexico City that made it  onto San Pellegrino's list of the top restaurants in the world, and countless others that are tops in their own rights.