Mexican cuisine is so much more than fast food restaurants, greasy cheese nachos, and microwaveable burritos. Mexican cooking uses the best and freshest ingredients to create diverse family-style cooking, tasty street foods, and even high-end cuisine. Adventurous eaters can find corn fungus, cow tongue, and even dried, salted grasshoppers!

Casa Oaxaca with Chef Ruiz. Oaxaca is known as the food capital of México. To take in all the sights, tastes, and smells of Oaxaca, Chef Ruiz took me to an open-air market.

I love visiting markets when travelling! Although México has grocery megastores, it’s incredible to see how food travels from the farm straight to the market. Many market vendors specialize in just a few items. This means shoppers must visit one vendor to buy tomatoes and another to purchase chicken. This sort of shopping has been done all over the world for hundreds of years. For me, grocery shopping this way makes me further appreciate each ingredient and the care and attention that goes into farming.

At the market, Chef Ruiz took me to a couple of his favorite food stalls. He selected a few traditional Oaxacan street foods to sample. My favorite was the sliced mango covered in lime juice, chili, and salt. I also really enjoyed the tejate, a pre-Columbian drink made of ground cacao (pronounced Ka-Kow) beans and corn. It was thick, frothy, and chocolatey.

With bags full of bright orange squash blossoms, fragrant herbs, and fresh fish, we headed back to the chef’s kitchen to cook lunch. I watched as he prepared Sopa de Guias. Packed with green vegetables, this soup was a favorite from his childhood. By serving it at his restaurant, Chef Ruiz is helping to preserve traditional Oaxacan cooking.

Pujol with Chef Ruiz. The food at Pujol Restaurant in Mexico City is the complete opposite of Chef Ruiz’s homestyle cooking. Here, Chef Enrique Olvera takes traditional Mexican flavors and combines them with modern cooking techniques. The best part about Pujol is seeing how science, cooking, and artistry come together. The kitchen staff uses cooking methods like sous-vide; a machine that circulates vacuum-sealed food in a low temperature, water bath. By cooking in vacuum-sealed packages the flavor and moisture of the food is preserved.

At Pujol, every bite is a work of art. I started with an amuse bouche, which is a small bite of food used to wake up your taste buds. My amuse bouche was a type of push-pop, made with corn and a cheese called queso fresco. It was the perfect introduction to Chef Olvera’s modern spin on traditional food. Be sure to watch Vijaya’s interview with him to see some of his other culinary creations.

Next up: Another part of everyday Mexican life: Religion.

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