Food

Start in the markets, not the restaurants. The smoke hall at 20 de Noviembre — pick your meat, they grill it, you assemble tacos at shared tables — is the single best first meal in the city, about 150 MXN per person with a drink (June 2026).

The seven moles are the local flex; negro is the famous one, but coloradito is the one we order twice. Tlayudas are dinner food, memelas are breakfast food, and tejate from a market stand (15 MXN) is the pre-Hispanic drink worth trying once even if you don’t finish it. Restaurant Oaxaca is real too — but book the famous rooms a week out and know that the market stalls two blocks away are cooking the same dishes at a quarter of the price.