Mexico
One of the world's great cuisines — corn, chilli and centuries of patience, best eaten standing at a taco stall.
Find the taco stall with the longest queue and the spinning trompo of pork out front, its edges charred and glistening, a pineapple balanced on top. The taquero shaves the meat straight onto a small warm corn tortilla — a slick of salsa, coriander, onion, a squeeze of lime — two bites, gone, order three more. This is the everyday genius of a cuisine the world now ranks among its greatest.
It all begins with corn: dried, simmered with lime and ground fresh into masa for tortillas that taste of the field. Around it, a pantry of dried chillies, tomatillos, herbs and bitter chocolate that Oaxaca coaxes into mole, a sauce of thirty ingredients toasted and ground for days. Go south for cochinita pibil, pork buried and slow-roasted until it falls apart; anywhere, chase it with a cold agua fresca. Eat here and the tacos back home quietly stop making sense.
- tacos al pastor (spit-roast pork)
- mole poblano (chilli & chocolate sauce)
- cochinita pibil (Yucatán roast pork)
- tamales
- chiles en nogada
- pozole (hominy stew)
- guacamole
