Welcome to Oaxaca. After getting settled in at your home base for the week in the city center, we’ll gather for an intimate welcome dinner at one of the most unique spots in town, Cocina de Humo. There, a rising star of Oaxacan cuisine, Thalía Barrios García, will prepare our meal tableside over a smoky clay griddle. We’ll enjoy vegetable-forward specialties from her home region in southern Oaxaca, where the desert meets the tropics.

We’ll get familiar with the city of Oaxaca as we set off on a culinary walking tour of the historic center. We’ll visit market stalls and neighborhood restaurants to enjoy snacks and tastings that represent the many microregions of the state of Oaxaca. As we walk, talk and taste, you’ll gain an appreciation for corn, from nixtamalization and milling all the way to warm corn tortillas at lunch. After some free time to rest or explore independently in the afternoon, we’ll regroup to experience Oaxaca by night at Sabina Sabe, celebrated for its inventive drinks and small bites.

We begin with a morning visit to Oaxaca’s largest wholesale food market – the Mercado de Abastos – guided by chef Rodolfo, who will lead us on a shopping expedition for our cooking session together. Among beautiful piles of nopales, pyramids of guanábana and carefully chosen chiles, we’ll meet his favorite vendors and get an inside look at how one of the city’s top chefs navigates a traditional market in search of produce at its very best moment. We’ll return to Rodolfo’s kitchen at Restaurante Origen, take stock of our purchases and have a quick refreshment before getting started. Rodolfo will instruct us on how to prepare classics from the Oaxacan kitchen – from prep to plating – made with his own personal touch. We’ll end by enjoying a late lunch together, feasting on what we’ve prepared.

After breakfast in town, we head out to Etla, a center of Oaxacan cheese production. First, you will visit cheesemaker and get hands on with the quesillo you've been seeing and tasting all week. Next you'll meet Mimi, a traditional cook, in her Matadamas home. This is no streamlined kitchen, but rather a traditional workspace with an enormous stone metate for grinding, a wood-fired comal for cooking and a heavy press for tortillas. You’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder with your host as we make salsa, tamales and more for our late lunch. In the evening, we enjoy an agave spirits tasting with a local expert who has a collection of rare artisanal mezcals.

 

The intersection of humans and landscape is what gave us the miracle of Oaxacan cuisine and this day begins with a study of that in the Ethnobotanical Garden of Oaxaca. Here in Mexico’s most biodiverse region, we will encounter cacti, succulents, flowers and wild plants that form the basis of Oaxacan cuisine, art and culture. From there, we will head to the home/restaurant/laboratory of Oaxaca’s most celebrated culinary heroes, Abigail Mendoza, the Zapotec chef, food activist and advocate for the traditional chefs of Oaxaca. She and her sisters will demonstrate the arduous preparation of chocolate atole before we sit down to a lunch together. We’ll then enjoy a digestive stroll in Abigail’s neighborhood and visit another kitchen to discover the craft of tortilla making. 

The evening will be free for you to explore Oaxaca. 

 

Today, we’ll head out to Tlacolula, a small town that hosts a weekly market that attracts vendors and shoppers from all over the region. We’ll join them in the Sunday ritual of eating tender, slow-roasted barbacoa tacos. We’ll also sample hyperlocal chocolate, fruit popsicles and crunchy chapulines. Near the market, we’ll visit the Capilla del Señor, a jewel-box of a church with a fascinating history. Then, we’ll retreat from the bustle of the market to the private home of Catalina Lucas, a Cocinera Tradicional (traditional cook) who will welcome us into her kitchen to learn to make her mole negro and share a meal that you simply can’t get in a restaurant.

After breakfast, we will head out of town to catch up with Rodolfo at his ranch and working farm, the quintessential Oaxacan setting for a day of cooking together. We won’t need to visit a market on this day because most of what we will cook comes straight from this land. Oaxacan cooking is, naturally, deeply tied to native crops such as corn, beans and chiles, and today we’ll be cooking with some of the lesser-known varieties of those Mexican standards, ones that never make it to major markets and that make home cooking here so exciting. With his herb garden within reach, we’ll tie on our aprons, grab a cold drink and spend the day learning Rodolfo’s recipes in this rustic setting. We’ll return to Oaxaca in the early evening and then meet again for farewell drinks.

We wish you safe travels and continued adventures.