6/5/10: Food!!!

I've had exactly two less than great meals here, at the two most tourist-oriented restaurants I've been to. Other than that, the food's been great. Cheap, too.

Well, except for a couple of restaurants JK and MR recommended. Fortunately, those have been some of the best meals I've ever had, and still cheap for the quality.

MR recommended Casa Oaxaca. Really lovely experience, and if I could get this computer to work I would post photos of C.O. meal #1, Tim Palmer style. Update! Photo! Anyway, it was well worth it and such a comfortable place to spend a long, leisurely meal. I spent $25 on that meal, about 4 to 5 times what I normally spend on dinner, and worth every peso.

But wait! This afternoon I passed Casa Oaxaca - El Restaurante. Not to be confused with Casa Oaxaca hotel with adjoining restaurant where I had C.O. meal #1! Obviously I had to try them both. C.O. meal #2 was even better than #1. Gracias MR, JK, DN for recommendations, and GF for reminding me to try the fish.

I took a cooking class the other day with a few other American students. We showed up at our instructor's house hoping to pick up just one dish we could recreate at home. That dream went out the window pretty quickly once we started cleaning, toasting, and grinding all the chilis, nuts, chocolate, spices, etc. by hand for our mole negro. The four of us sweat through an hour of two of prep, too tired to make our own tortillas. No problem, though -- we just took a quick walk down the road to pick up some fresh ones from the tortillería down the street (1kg for $.50). They were still hot enough to burn my sensitive gringa finngertips when we sat down to eat twenty minutes later.

The mole was incredible. Much better than any of the mole I had tasted before, since apparently most restaurants use a mix instead of going through the hassle of making it all from scratch. I did get the recipe, but sorry friends -- I won't be making any for you unless you can gather up a few willing prep cooks to help hunt down the ingredients and grind them all up. I'll supervise.