Street Food in Oaxaca - CHEESE CORN CHAMPION and Mexican Meat Alley Tour in Mexico!

This is the definition of a meat sauna. This is an ultimate fiesta in here. It's just a party in the middle of the morning, a meat party. All the action, the energy in here, the meat love is out of control. Good morning, I hope you're having an amazing day. It's Mark Wiens. I am in Oaxaca City, and Oaxaca is known for having some of the best, one of the ultimate food cultures in all of Mexico, so I'm thrilled to be here. We're gonna walk around today, we're gonna visit some local markets, we're gonna eat some amazing Oaxacan food, we're gonna visit some attractions. We have one full day in Oaxaca City. We're gonna make the most of it, and I'm gonna share it all with you in this video right now. Dos de leche. Cup of hot chocolate, he mixes it up, twirling that stick. Oh, man, this is a frothy, bubbly cup of fresh hot chocolate, Oaxacan style. Oh, wow. We decided to try a tamal de mole, and it's steamed in a corn husk. There's the masa, and then you can see the mole underneath. Okay, let's try this. Oh, oh, it's so hot. I love how that's just stuffed. It's just packed, it's just oozing with mole, and you can taste the dry chilies in there. You can taste a little bit of a chocolatey flavor, and then it's all wrapped up within that corn meal. I need a sip of hot chocolate after that. Oh, we are off to an amazing start. That was just my first bite, and my first beverage of the day in Oaxaca, and it was fantastic. Oh, that's making me excited. We need the bunny hat. Oh, that hits the spot in the morning. That's wonderful. It's eight a.m. right now, and we're starting off this morning at Mercado Abastos, which is the biggest, the largest market in Oaxaca City. It's absolutely gigantic. You can find everything here, from fresh vegetables and seafood, oh, lots and lots of seafood, to fruit, anything. Hola. Also, we're gonna also find a lot of pre-cooked food here that we're gonna eat for breakfast. You need a new pair of underwear. If you need a pet, if you need fruits and vegetables, this is the market to come to. Oh, we're coming to the food section right now. Oh. Some of the stalls are still opening because they, I think they open around eight or nine, this whole entire market, but this stall back here is just absolutely packed. It's called Comedor Lupita. I'm not even totally sure what they serve yet, but there are a lot of people here. You know it's gonna be delicious, so we're gonna stop here to eat whatever they serve. Oh. Caldo de camarón. Shrimp soup or fish soup? Put a ball of masa in the, what is that called, a flattener, and then they flatten it into a tortilla, and then the tortillas go onto the comal, which is a hot stone, and then they just bubble up, so we got fresh tortillas here. We got the caldo, and yeah, we got caldo de pescado, which is with fish, a fish soup, and then caldo de camarón, which is the shrimp soup. For the caldo de pescado, it comes with a whole fish just overflowing over the bowl. I'm just gonna taste that broth first before I add some seasoning. Mmm. It's a little bit tomato-y. You can taste some herb in there, and then you do taste the full effect of the fish. That's a little bit fishy. I'm gonna squeeze in some lime. Then they also have some onions and peppers and cilantro, which is all communal, which you can add to your soup. I'm gonna add a bunch of onions and peppers and cilantro. Oh yeah, this is gonna be amazing, and then also some cilantro. Okay, and then for this bite, I gotta go into the fish. Oh yeah, I'm not sure what type of fish this is, but it's a whole fish in here. Look at all that meat on the side. Oh wow, that's hot. Oh, the fish is awesome. It's really silky in texture. Actually, the broth tastes a little bit seafood-y, but the fish is very pure, very clean. Not fishy-tasting at all. I can't wait to try one of these fresh tortillas, and I think the easiest thing to do is to just roll it up and you kind of eat it like bread on the side. It's a little of, the tortilla is a little bit on the drier side. You can taste the fresh corn. Actually, it only tastes like pure corn, maybe just with water in it. It's good, it doesn't taste oily whatsoever at all. Okay, one more addition to the soup that I didn't know they even had on the table is this salsa. I gotta add some. Yeah, this market? No, I had no clue where to come here. We were just gonna walk around and see whatever looks busy. Oh, oh, that salsa is nice. A little bit sour. The green chilies, which are, I think they're roasted. You can taste the smoky flavor to them. This is a very soothing, very warming dish to eat in the morning. I'm loving it. Next, I'm moving over for the camaron, which is the shrimp. Squeeze in a little more lime. Okay, take a look at this. This is the same soup base, but full of big shrimp with the head on full shrimp. So I'll actually just take this guy with my fingers, pluck off that head. Yeah, that's a good fresh shrimp. Let me follow with some of the soup. This is, yeah, this is a wonderful dish. Taste that with the tortilla. Both of those soups are excellent, just depending if you want, and they taste the same. It just depends if you want shrimp or if you want fish. I like them both. Probably I like the fish better. It's a little more meaty. Gracias. Muchas gracias. One more thing that I had to try is their coffee, because of how they serve it. And this is, they serve it with a spoon. They serve it in a clay cup. You can smell the coffee in there, and then you can also really smell chocolate in there. It's okay to pick this up, right? It's very light. It's not like a strong coffee. It's a very, very light coffee, almost like you're just drinking hot water with a little bit of coffee flavor, and then a little bit of a chocolate flavor. But it's, I mean, you can't think of it like an espresso or like a strong coffee. And what's also cool is that you can see a reflection in this bowl of coffee. If you look down, you could use it like a mirror. Can you see my face down there? This is a massive clay cup of coffee. I'm gonna be peeing like crazy in about an hour. But this was a great place. They're really friendly. Very popular local place for breakfast. And yeah, that just hit the spot. It's like very warm and soothing. It's comforting. That's what you need in the morning. I'm loving the produce here. There's so many different types of chilies, lots of fruit. The passion fruit is gorgeous. There are mangoes. There are berries. There's a lot of interesting and unique herbs and vegetables here, and especially things that look like they're kind of wild foraged vegetables. This is a great market. One of the things that I noticed just walking around the market, especially the vegetable and fruit section, is that they have a lot of both tropical fruits and vegetables, as well as more like dry, arid climate fruits and vegetables. So it's a huge mix of such a diversity of fruits and vegetables. And that's part of what makes Oaxacan cuisine so diverse. This is my kind of a market. There's an entire lane that's just garlic. There's so much garlic. There's just an abundance of everything, actually, in this market. We're just completely lost within this network, within this labyrinth of a market, but we could see the smoke pouring out of this stall, and we knew it was a place we needed to stop for our next thing to eat. She works so fast, but you can tell she loves what she does. I can't wait. I can't wait to try it. And those salsas just look insane in huge mortars, stone mortars. In order to make our memela, so what she does is she first pounds the masa. She flattens the masa, then it grills over the hot metal plate, which is sitting over charcoal. And we got the one with meat, so she takes a really thin strip of meat. She puts it into a little grill. She sticks it underneath the hot plate, which is where the coals are burning. So that roasts until it looks like charred, slightly charred. Then she adds on something called asiento, which is, she explained to us, is sort of like a, I think it's a lard, a pork lard. Spreads that on. Then she adds some of the salsa from this giant salsa stone bowl, stone mortar. And then after that, she sprinkles on some queso, which is cheese. And then finally, we got that piece of meat all on top. It's so hot. It's so fresh. Okay, Carlos, you ready? Ready, let's do it. Yeah, these are so juicy. They're just dripping with salsa. Oh, that is insane. Carlos. Good. It's so good. You can really taste that salsa in there, which is like very smoky, a little bit spicy. That's just outstanding. Definitely my favorite part of that entire memela is that salsa. The complexity of flavor in that salsa will blow your mind. Wow, I'm so happy right now. Wow, that was absolutely phenomenal. So flavorful. I absolutely loved it. And she's so friendly. She's so nice. She's so caring. She, oh man, what a wonderful lady. I have no idea how I can explain where this stall is. It's somewhere within the thick of the market. You just gotta walk around, but you will find little gems like that without a doubt. What a market. This is a place you have to visit when you're in Oaxaca City. This is the type of market I could literally just hang out for the entire day, just explore, walk around, see new things, and eat. But we have a lot more to do today, so we gotta move on. We're gonna head to the center of the city now. The weather is actually perfect today, and it's actually not that far to El Zocalo, which is the centro, el centro. So we're just walking over there, and we're about to reach the old town. We cannot make it very far in Oaxaca without finding more food. The food here is so good. So she has this giant pot of slow-bubbling pork and pig parts, which is carnitas, and they're just braising in their juices. She, right as we were walking past, she pulled out the bubbling heart, and Carlos and I decided that we needed to have a quick taco before we continue walking. We cannot make it far. She chopped up the heart, then she added it into the tortilla, and then she added some guacamole, some cilantro, and maybe a little bit of salsa. Or maybe that's some green salsa as well. Oh, that's delicious. Heart is so tender. It's not even irony at all. And then that guacamole in there, there's a little bit of salsa, and the cilantro comes in nicely. That heart, it's so tender. It's not even like, you know, heart can sometimes be a little crumbly and dry. That is so moist. Muchas gracias. Buenos dias. Wow, that was superb. It's so, that was one of those impulse food purchases that there was just absolutely no way we were gonna pass by on the sidewalk without tasting that. We had to. Okay, we're on our way to El Zocalo now. Oh, there's just so much food. Okay, we can't stop. We can't stop. We gotta keep on moving. But I want to, so I wanna stop so badly. There's so much good food. It's endless. We're almost to the center, but we came into, it's a huge protest. Many of them are doctors and nurses, I think protesting some kind of a health issue, but we're gonna just kind of walk along with them to the center there, and then visit the main plaza of Oaxaca City. It looks like the entire city of Oaxaca has gathered in the center there, and it's so busy that we don't even, I think we're gonna avoid it right now. Maybe we'll have a chance to come back later today. But instead, we're gonna go eat some more at another market, which is a very, very well-known market, especially for the grilled meat. This is the place I was looking forward, have been looking forward to coming for years. Welcome to Mercado 20 de Noviembre, which is also known as the Grilled Meat Alley of Oaxaca. There's so much meat here. You choose your meat, they grill it for you fresh. This is a place for meat lovers, that's for sure. Thank you. There's about 40 or 50 or maybe more stalls with an assortment of different meat, and I think they all pretty much have the same things. There's beef steak, there's pork steak, there's longanisa, there's the sausages, there's some other things. You finally, you just gotta choose one of the stalls. We went with a very friendly lady. She offered us the whole mixed plate, so we got the mixed plate. What they do is they weigh it all out, and I love, my favorite part of the entire process was how she takes the meat, and she just kinda lightly tosses it onto the grill, chucks it onto the grill. It lands perfectly onto the grill. Then they grill everything up in a cloud of smoke over just flaming hot charcoal. This entire alley is a meat paradise. This is the definition of a meat sauna. We're taking our tray of meat down the alley. Oh man, it's just filled with meat smoke all over the place. And we're going to the vegetable section, I think. It's a little confusing and hectic in here, and I love it. We got a table at the back of the market now, and they serve you just the entire tray. It's an entire basket of meat with the tortillas. We got some salsas to go with it, and we got some red paper to eat off. The meat aromas within this hall will just, your mouth will immediately start to water. Okay, I'm gonna try a piece of that beef first. Oh, that's insane. So it's salty, it's tender, but you feel the texture of the meat, the stringiness of that meat. You can taste how it's been grilled over such a hot charcoal fire. It has such a smokiness to it. And with that saltiness, that produces such an incredible meat umami. That's absolutely stunning. I love those roasted vegetables to go with the meat. I love the roasted peppers too. This is an ultimate fiesta in here. It's just a party in the middle of the morning, a meat party. All the action, the energy in here, the meat love is out of control. Okay, next up, this is a marinated pork. As she said, it's in a chili marinade. I love that marinade. It's a little bit on the dry-ish, like roasted side. You can taste the dried chilies in there. You can taste it's already sour, maybe from lime juice. Okay, next up, I'm gonna try the longaniza, which is the sausage that she grilled. When she was grilling that, you could just see the flames shooting up because of all that juicy fattiness coming out as it was grilling. Okay, I'm gonna put that longaniza into a little piece of tortilla, add some of that salsa with the, it's like a pico de gallo salsa with tomatoes and chilies and onions. It's just meat after meat of deliciousness. That sausage is so smoky. Those onions are so sweet. This is like a bar. There's one more left on here. I finished it all. I found one. Delicious, that's so smoky. It's a little bit chewy, but that releases so much juicy flavor. Yeah, I love intestines. Intestines are awesome. We are now walking out into, oh, the market sort of opens up once you get out of Meat Alley, and they have a lot more food. Oh, this place is amazing. There's still so much amazing food to eat at the market, but we're getting kind of full, so we're gonna take a break. We're gonna walk around. We're gonna go back to the main plaza and to a couple of churches, and then after that, hopefully, we'll eat some more. We've only been walking around for half the day so far, and already, this Mexican food tour of Oaxaca, the city, has been outstanding. I love this city. People are friendly. The food is incredible. The culture, it's such a food-based culture. We walked back over to El Zocalo Huesos. This is the main public square plaza of Oaxaca City, and today, yeah, it's still bustling from the protest, but things have quieted down a little bit. People are wandering off, but even if there's not a protest here, it's still a bustling public space in Oaxaca, just an overall very pleasant area. We're walking up the walking street towards the mountains. You can see all the mountains in the background, and we are walking towards Santo Domingo. This entire plaza, Santo Domingo, it's an incredibly beautiful part of Oaxaca. You can come here just to relax, sit on the walls of the plaza. The church, the architecture is gorgeous. It's calm. They have the whole Oaxaca sign here. You can take your photos, but it's a beautiful place. It's a great place to spend some time when you are full after eating a lot of food and take a little break before your next meal when you're in Oaxaca. We're walking out of Old Town, and we're on our way to go eat at, it's a restaurant that serves a very famous Oaxacan dish. Okay, you'll see what it is. This is the spot, and I think they just opened. Hola, buenos dias, buenas tardes. Oh yeah, it's really quiet right now, but I think it will really get packed in the night, but we're gonna have other plans tonight, so we're here as soon as they open, which I'm okay with. Talayudas are one of the ultimate snack foods in Oaxaca. Put on a thin layer of beans, and then after that, she adds on some cabbage, and then the famous Oaxacan cheese, which is like a mozzarella string cheese, and she really strips it into thin strips, but puts a lot of cheese on the inside. Then it goes over the hot coals, and so it grills, but you can smell that very fast, almost burning aroma to it, but they keep flipping it so that it doesn't burn, but that cheese starts to melt and all mingle together, and then you can order it with your variety of different meats, which then they also grill over the really hot fire, and they put it all together on a plate, so we got some fresh talayudas to try right now. I think they're all the same on the inside, but then they just come with different meats on the top. This one is the marinated pork, but yeah, you can see these are pretty huge, and they're folded up. It comes with some garnishes. There's some salsas and some onions on the side as well. That's pretty heavy. You can really smell the burnt, roasted flavor of this, because they keep it on such a hot fire, but they just keep flipping it. We gotta take a look inside. Oh yeah, look at all of that. Oh, there's so much cheese. That's like a giant mouth opening full of cheese. That cheese is so elastic-y, and then it does have an amazing roasted fire aroma to it. You can taste the crunchy cabbage in there. The beans sort of give it some creamy richness, and then, yeah, that's just delicious. Okay, and let me add on some of those salsas and a squeeze of lime, and also you gotta have some of those onions on here, with some, they kind of look like pickled onions. Okay, let me pick this whole thing up again. It's getting heavy. Yeah. Oh, mm, mm. Oh, that really enhances it. The guacamole, the squeeze of lime to make it sour, the onions. I think that's the touch it needed for me, because it was lacking that sour, acidic touch to it. Some of this garnish. I don't know what this is. Mm, slightly onion-y, but without the grassy-tasting onion. I think this is the same meat that we just ate an entire platter of. Oh, yes, it is. We got three different types, but really, they're all exactly the same. The only thing that's different is the topping of meat, so it kind of really doesn't matter which version you get. I like how the cheese, I mean, the cheese is not too salty. They use a lot of cheese, so you think it's gonna be really rich and really salty, but actually, the cheese is kind of light, not too salty. It has a nice rubbery elasticity to it. From here, we're gonna jump in a taxi, and it's a little ride away. We're gonna go to a place called Monte Alban. There it is. This site, Monte Alban, is on the 20 pesos Mexican note. It's at the top of the mountain. It overlooks the valley, and you can see all of Oaxaca. It was a pretty nice drive to get here, and I was just reading that it is the largest pre-Hispanic city in the Oaxaca region. Something else that's very fascinating about this site is that it's the first urban-planned city, so actually, where they took time to plan the entire city out and the different buildings. I don't know, everything is planned. This is the first urban-planned city in the Americas, so it says this is the main plaza, and it dates back to around 500 to 800 A.D., and it's a 40-meter-wide stairway. Okay, I'm climbing up. It's 5 p.m. That's when they close. I wasn't really sure what to expect when we came here, but it was well worth a visit, and what I like is that you're able to climb up some of the ruins, get the view of the whole city. That was great. No, okay. We're on our way back to Centro now. You just gotta love the quality of those speakers, that music. We made it back to El Zocalo, which is the center, and it's perfect. It's in the evening. This is the time when people are out and about, when they're hanging out, when they're walking around, and we came here actually last night just to walk around. I wasn't filming, but we stumbled into this stall where they're making elotes, and elotes, it's corn with lots of toppings. It's one of the most common street food snacks, and you'll find it all over. Like, in the evening, it's all over the place. You'll find it everywhere, but this guy, he has the longest line of any elotes cart in the entire city, and then we asked some of the people standing in line last night why, and they said it's because of his style. Cheese and minis, all the best things. Got a lot of cheese. Muchas gracias. I would make a guess to say that he probably has the most skill in the entire world at seasoning a cob of corn. He just flies. Is Micah allowed to taste it? Nope. Sorry, Micah, you can't taste this, because there's lots of different chili sauces on it, and a lot of mayonnaise, so I think Micah will just have to watch this one, but it's, ah, it looks beautiful. It's just covered in so many things. This has to be the fanciest corn on the cob I've ever had in my life. Mm. Oh, it's young corn, so it's really soft and tender and juicy. It's full of mayonnaise. There's so much mayonnaise on it. Then you've got the cheese, which is really finely shredded. You've got all those different chilies, which are kind of salty. The lime juice on there comes in really nicely, and then, yeah, just those mix of chilies. That's so good. And you'll see so many people walking around eating this at this time. Another thing that I just love about him is how he sells something that's so common, that's so typical, yet he does it with such style. He takes such pride in what he does, and I fully respect that, and I'm fully willing to wait in line to take such pride in what he does. I think I got a little mayonnaise up my nose. It's been a very long day, but there's one more thing that we have to eat to make this day complete in Oaxaca. We are back at Mercado 20 de Noviembre for one last plate of food. On the opposite side of the market from the meat hall, you'll find, it's kind of a big food court area where you'll find all sorts of local Oaxacan food. This is a great environment, and actually, a lot of the stalls are starting to close because I think they're most popular at lunch, but you can come here to get your plates of mole Oaxacan style, and yeah, we're gonna try a couple different ones right now. Starting off with is mole black. Gracias. And it is, this is one of the ultimate dishes of Oaxaca. It's, yeah, it's probably one of, I mean, it's a dish you absolutely cannot miss. They're famous for mole here, and it's an exquisite blend of spices. I know there's nuts in the sauce. I think with the mole black, there's also some chocolate. That aroma is insane. You can smell those red chilies. It's such a dark, rich, chocolatey-looking sauce. It has a little bit of a sweetness to it, but then you can taste the rich, smoky, blackened, slight bittery flavor to it. You can taste all those chilies in there, the nuttiness of it. It's such a complexity of flavor. Great way to end the day. Carlos and I are splitting the mole black and the mole roja. So this is the red mole version, which I don't think it includes chocolate or some of the other spices. It's a totally, actually, totally different blend of spices and mixture. Mix that with some of the rice. Mm, that's like totally different. It's more on the, it's saltier without being sweet at all. I really like it. It's almost like a curry, it's almost like a curry sauce. We've come to the end of the day. I'm running on my last steam, but I have a little bit more energy now after that mole, that final plate. Oh, that was delicious. I like both versions, actually, were fantastic. We only had one full day in Oaxaca City, so we wanted to make the most of it. I think it was an amazing success. I'm very, very happy, and that was some amazing food. And I'll leave all the information of what we did and things we ate in the description box below so you can check all that out. And I wanna say a huge thank you for watching this video. Please remember to give it a thumbs up. Also, remember to subscribe. I'm gonna be publishing lots more food and travel videos, and click the little bell icon so you get notified of all future videos. Good night from Oaxaca. Thanks again for watching, and I will see you on the next video.