excerpted from Bon Appétit^® May, 2003
SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION
The Soul of MEXICO

Return TO Oaxaca

Decades after his first trip to one of Mexico’s premier culinary cities, Mort Rosenblum finds it as vibrant as his memories: The markets are busting, the people are welcoming, and the food is as delicious as ever.

In the heart of Oaxaca, time defies all definition. You can, for instance, drop into an Internet cafe to probe the far reaches of the 21st century. Then a Zapotec woman seated outside on the cobblestones will sell you a bowl of nicuatole. It's the same foaming corn elixir her ancestors ate long before Columbus learned to sail. Better yet,forget your e-mail and eat your way through the centuries, savoring an ageless cuisine with subtly intense flavors that range from chipotle to chocolate.

When I first roamed mexico in the '60s, Oaxaca had been the high point.

Coming back after so long, I found the party in full swing, with happy new notes added to the old beat. The 30-piece Oaxaca State Brass Band, still up on the wrought-iron bandstand where it has played for the past 132 years, blasted brassy Rossini across the zócalo.

Central streets, freshly cobbled in the old way, were familiar yet full of surprise. heavy carved doors led to hotel courtyards ablaze in tropical bloom. Water murmured in tiled fountains. From a cantina, a Mexican voice from the past wailed about dying for love to the backdrop of tortured guitars.

Just north of the downtown markets, the air was rich in cinnamon-scented chocolate. Little mills in open-front shops ground roasted cacao beans into molten chocolate. These were molded into hockey-puck shapes that when spun by hand with water or milk produced the same sort of frothy drink– if a lot sweeter now– that Montezuma used to love.

I ordered the quintessential local dish: mole negro, the blackest of the seven moles (sauces) that Oaxaca claims as its own. This 20- to 30-ingredient chocolate-accented topping, usually smothering turkey or chicken (as it did here), is one of dazzling complexity. A single whiff confirmed the obvious. In this magical city, all was right with the world.

Oaxaca is safe. This is partly because the city is still far enough off the mass-tourism track to lure only those visitors who love– or want to love– the place. But it is mostly because the indigenous Zapotecs and other Oaxacan ethnic groups manage to welcome outsiders without compromising their ancient ways.

Any self-respecting Oaxacan is as comfortable with the past as with the present or the future. In most cultures, people bury their dead and move on. Oaxacans throw one of the biggest parties of the year for their beloved deceased, laying out for them meals, mezcal, beer, and favorite cigarette brands. The Day of the Dead, as the celebration is called, brings kids back from school in Berkeley and big-deal businessmen from their offices in Mexico City.

"We have something no one else has," explained Corina Rivera. "And we love it," she continued. Smartly tailored, fluent in foreigh tongues, young, and ready to choose a career, Corina would fit in New York or Paris. But she has no itch to live anywhere else. Family and traditions are curcial to her life. "I've traveled around, but there is no place like Oaxaca. It's the most wonderful city in the world."

Authorities protect the physical aspect, realizing the folly of throttling a golden goose. And for all the jewelers who stock digital watches, no one seems capable of getting the place to move faster than Oaxacan time. But by night, the city comes alive.

One evening, the Plaza Alameda de León, a tree-shaded park in front of the cathedral, suddenly exploded in turmpets and drums. Villagers from outlying regions had come to town, with dance troupes, floats, and costumed kids on stilts in tow. Girls in swirling skirts threw sashes around elusive tap-shoed guys in a dance called the chilenas. Pretty soon, everyone got into the act.

The next night, different villagers gathered around a different church. They built a towering framework with pinwheels on top, attaching enough firecrackers and skyrockets to win a second battle of Cinco de Mayo. When the fuses were lit, Oaxaca rocked.

It is that sort of place. What other city could revel in, say, a Night of the Radishes? Yes, each December 23, Oaxacans jam the zócalo to see who can carve the most elaborate tableaux on radishes.

Outsiders who catch the spirit are welcomed with courtesy and warmth. "Oaxaca has a big, sweet soul, and something about it calls you back," observed Holly Altman, a New York jewelry designer who has been visiting Oaxaca for 20 years. Her husband, Dick, a public relations executive, nodded in accord. Asked what draws him back, he was at no loss for an answer: "The mountains, the light, the art, the pace, the food, the people."

The food and the people were what got me, and they seem to be inextricably entwined. Besides being a city, Oaxaca is also a state of Mexico and a state of mind. It takes in a string of valleys and a meandering mountain range settled by a dozen separate peoples. Zapotecs and Mixtecs are only the most numerous. They share a tenacious attachment to customs that hinge heavily on things to eat and way to prepare them.

I [had] some unforgettable enchiladas at the home of Arnulfo and Mary Jane Mendoza. Arnulfo is a Zapotec weaver from the Oaxacan village of Teotitlán del Valle, whose work in silk has elevated an old-style craft to a high art. She is a Canadian who fell in love with the place and opened a gallery called La Mano Magica (the magic hand) and the enchilada– a dark red blend of local chiles and spices with a touch of chocolate– prepared by the Mendozas' chef, Reyna, was altogether reason enough to take up permanent residence in Oaxaca.

Most cooks stick precisely to recipes handed down from mother to daughter for longer than anyone can remember. But there are also adventurers like Iliana de la Vega, who runs El Naranjo. The name means "orange tree," and with tables set among potted citruses in a glassed-in courtyard, the restaurant indeed resembles an orangery. Decor, however, is not the draw. That would be Iliana's highly personal style of Mexican cooking.

"I am Mexican, and I love my country," Iliana said. "I won't do anything radical, like putting red wine in mole. But I want to do my own thing, which is not everything exactly as my mother did. People here are afraid of evolution. You can improve recipes as long as you are respectful of the basics. If you talk to me about authenticity, I don't know what you mean. If you say tradition, then I'm with you."

When Iliana makes a chile relleno, for instance, she sneaks in hits of sweetness and fire, experimenting with different flavors. Some Oaxacans cry heresy. But you had better reserve a table early if you want to eat at El Naranjo in high season.

Iliana bans lard from her kitchen, preferring instead a neutral cooking oil. Even an admirer such as Rick Bayless, the Chicago chef many Americans regard as the arbiter of Mexican cooking, fights her on this point.

Alejandro Ruíz goes further, riding the fusion wave in his kitchen at Casa Oaxaca. He spends several months each year in fine European kitchens, And when he cooks huachinango (red snapper), the fish is likely to find itself flavored with olive oil and rosemary.

Oaxaca offers a full range of dining options. But I prefer the other extreme, and I prowled markets for fabulous food served on rickety oilcloth-topped tables.

At La Fonda Florecita in the Mercado de la Merced, I had an empanada de quesillo con flores de calabaza. This was no more than a folded handmade conr tortilla stuffed with cheese, squash blossoms, and epazote, a pungent herb. Chile salsas lifted the snack from amazing to indescribable. Chatting with the owner, I had a sense of discovering something unknown. A large wall of hand-scrawled tributes, including one from Bono of the rock band U2, suggested otherwise.

For Bono's sake, I hope he also found Lupita's stall at the sprawling Central de Abastos, Oaxaca's central open-air wholesale market at the western edge of town. There, I tried an enfrijolada, a classic Oaxacan dish. Again, it was simple but stupendous: nothing more than homemade corn tortillas awash in black bean sauce served with tasajo, salt-cured thin-cut flank steak. But the trick is in fine touches, such as wild avocado leaves boiled with the beans. That, and a thousand years of practice.

These tucked-away treasures are endless. I came across another at the Mercado Benito Juárez in the heart of town, where "Casilda" has been selling juices for more than 100 years. The current Casilda is 70-something María teresa Valera Flores, whose great-grandmother had opened the original stand in a market that has long since burned down. The beverages, known as aguas frescas, are freshly squeezed juices from local fruits, added to water, and sometimes flavored with herbs and spices.

The house specialty is agua de tuna (prickly-pear-cactus fruit water) mixed with horchata (sweet rice drink). When that runs out, there are half a dozen other juices from fruits that only a botanist would recognize.
Juices bursting with color and flavor are standard issue at a Oaxacan breakfast. But there's more. The Camino Real Oaxaca hotel, located in an old convent, lays out a lavish spread. I prefer the Hotel Victoria, situated on a hill above town. Each morning, I ate my chilaquiles – fried tortilla bits in an eye-opening tomato and chile sauce–while admiring the colorful flora around the pool. But remarkable morning meals can also be found at a dozen inexpensive inns nestled behind the sturdy street-front walls of old colonial homes.

To truly appreciate Oaxaca, it helps to poke around outlying villages in the hinterland of cactus and cornfields. One afternoon, 15 minutes in a car took me back 2,500 years to the dramatic ruins at Monte Albán. The Zapotecs' ancient urban complex was likely as imposing as old Rome, with nobles living atop high pyramids around sacred temples below. The city rose in 500 B.C. and did not fall until the 16th century.
For a more up-to-date look at the Oaxacans' complex society, I went to the Sunday market that engulfs the town of Tlacolula, halfway to the must-see ruins at Mitla. Mainly, I had a terrific lunch of do-it-yourself tasajo.
From a row of meat sellers, I chose a slab of salt-cured flank steak sprinkled with extra salt and chile powder. I selected some fiery chiles de agua from across the aisle and, from a third lady, I bought fat green onions. I then picked up a tlayuda, a larger, thicker version of a corn tortilla. With these items in hand, I stepped up to one of the charcoal braziers glowing nearby and grilled a meal to remember.

In such colorful cultural strongholds, you can sense why the character of Oaxaca seems so safe. People calculate a perfect measure between opening up to the tourists on whom they depend and protecting their own sense of self.

Up one aisle, I found a solidly built woman wrapped in woven cotton, surrounded by her flock of turkeys. For ten minutes, we discussed the finer points of poultry. Upon leaving, I asked her name. "Ah," she replied, "Ya se me olvido." Strictly translated, that means "I forgot." But she really meant "Have a nice day, and mind your own damned business."

In the end, of course, it is more than ethnic stock with old recipes that keeps Oaxaca getting better while the world around it heads in the other direction.