Day 7, Dinner. In Mexico City a few years ago, I had a really good hamburguesa (no need to translate that!) from a food cart in the street, and wanted to try one in Oaxaca to see if that was a fluke or not. It wasn’t!
Here’s the hamburger guy at work. He starts with a fairly thin patty of beef, a slice of ham, bacon, and onions:
On top of the slice of ham is, yes, what looks like a Kraft Single, but then he adds Oaxacan cheese….we saw this before! Sorry, the pic’s blurry.
Then, on the toasted bun, he puts the beef patty, the fried ham with the melted gooey cheese, the bacon, the onions he’s just fried, plus more sautéd onions, chopped lettuce and tomatoes, a healthy dose of mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup and chile sauce (luckily he asked, because I only wanted “un poquito”). The result is yummy, but very drippy. No pics of the end result — I forgot to take one before starting to eat it, and didn’t dare to touch my camera once I’d started eating such a deliciously gloppy mess 🙂
If you need some vegetables to accompany your hamburguesa, you can go to the “Cara de Papa” (Mr. Potato Face) stand, and buy some potato chips fresh out of the fryer — here’s the guy slicing the potatoes:
or the ultimate in curly fries:
We didn’t try them, but you always gotta leave something to look forward to for your next visit!
Day 8, Lunch. B & I went our separate ways, and I wanted some mole negro (black mole), the most famous mole of them all, and the only one I had tried before. So I went back to the 20th of November market, which has loads of little eating places. I had no clue as to which of them would be good, so fell back on that tried and true principle — pick one that’s popular.
..and had my mole negro. Black sauces aren’t especially visually appealing, and once again I forgot to take a pic before I started eating, so this doesn’t look very appetizing!
It was good, certainly better than the other examples I’ve tasted, but I’m with B on this one — mole negro is not my favorite.
Day 8, Dinner. *Sigh*, our last night in Oaxaca, so we decided to treat ourselves to a more upscale meal, in a restaurant with tablecloths, where the cutlery didn’t come wrapped in a paper napkin. So we went to Casa Abuela, on the second story of one of the buildings that surround the main square. A random choice that turned out to be a good one!
Going up the stairs, here’s the entrance to the restaurant, which for some reason had a metal gate that the servers had to open to let customers in or out. Curses! our last chance to dine ‘n’ dash foiled:
and the interior:
B started with bean soup w/ chunks of cheese, which was very good:
and we shared an order of quesadillas with chicken in mole amarillo – yellow mole, our third and unfortunately last mole of the trip.
Not as complex as the two other moles we’d had, but still very good.
B’s main course was fish (I forget what kind). That’s roasted garlic on top, but surprisingly it wasn’t overpowering, and the fish flavor came through. The fish was cooked well, very flaky and moist.
For my main I had tasajo con chilaquiles, thin-sliced beef, accompanied by tortilla chips in tomato sauce topped with queso fresco and a dollop of cream, the latter being a common breakfast dish. The beef, although well-done (based on what we’d seen, probably the best way to have meat in Mexico), was surprisingly tender and flavorful, and the chilaquiles were also very good.
So although there was a hint of sadness in the air because it was our last meal in Oaxaca, the food was really good, a fine and fitting end to our Oaxacan food journey. Even though we did pay the relatively enormous sum of $28 US for two people 🙂
A few pics from the markets to finish…..
A stand selling churros, the Mexican equivalent of doughnuts:
Typical fruit stand:
Deep-fried pork products stand:
Typical butcher stand. Two things to note, the pigs’ feet in the lower right, and meat left out with no refrigeration, even though afternoon temperatures were typically around 30 degrees C/upper 80’s F.
That’s why you should always order your meat well done in Mexico 🙂
Typical selection from a grasshopper stand:
Of course I came back with some souvenirs, a few bags of dried grasshoppers (“CALIDAD EXPORTATION” – export quality, although one wonders where to), some quesillo (Oaxacan string cheese), dried squash seeds, and the chocolates that were left every night on the pillows in my hotel room:
-R