Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat tacos al pastor
Pork marinated in chillies and achiote on a vertical spit with a pineapple on top, shaved into a corn tortilla. A Lebanese shawarma legacy that became the city's signature.
The taquero flips a piece of pineapple off the knife into the tortilla, and that is part of the craft. Real pastor stands work at night rather than at lunch.
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Try a tlacoyo
An oval patty of blue corn masa stuffed with beans or cheese and cooked on a comal, topped with nopales, cheese and salsa. Pre-Hispanic street food that still lives in the markets.
The blue masa is a corn variety rather than a dye, and it tastes noticeably nuttier. Sold in the morning at market entrances and metro exits.
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Try pozole
A soup of large nixtamalised hominy with meat, served with radish, lettuce, oregano, onion and lime on the side. You assemble the bowl yourself, and half the pleasure is there.
It comes white, green with tomatillo or red with dried chillies: three different schools. Traditionally a Thursday and weekend dish.
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Order a quesadilla
A folded corn tortilla with a filling, griddled or fried. In Mexico City cheese goes in only if you ask, and that is a genuine local custom rather than a joke.
Say con queso if you want cheese. The classic fillings are squash blossom, huitlacoche mushroom, and potato with chorizo.
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Eat chilaquiles for breakfast
Tortilla pieces drenched in green or red salsa with crema, cheese and onion, often topped with egg or chicken. The morning-after breakfast.
Ask for them no muy aguados if you do not want them fully soggy. Green is sharper, red deeper, and you can ask for half and half, divorciados.
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Try a tamal
Corn dough with a filling steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. A street breakfast that Mexico City eats inside a bread roll, a combination called a guajolota.
The husk is not eaten; it is a mould and an aroma. Tamal carts run early morning and evening, and you hear them by their recorded announcement.
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Try cochinita pibil
Pork marinated in achiote and bitter orange juice and slow-cooked in banana leaves until it shreds. A Yucatán dish that became routine in the capital.
Pickled red onion and a habanero salsa are essential alongside, and that salsa is hotter than anything else on the menu. Eaten in tortillas or in a roll.
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Try mole
A thick sauce of dozens of ingredients — dried chillies, nuts, spices, chocolate — cooked for hours and served over chicken or turkey. Not a chocolate dish: the chocolate is one component among thirty.
Puebla's mole poblano is dark and faintly sweet; Oaxaca's black mole is smoky and bitter. It comes with rice and tortillas for mopping.
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Try chiles en nogada in season
A poblano chilli stuffed with meat and fruit under a walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds. Strictly seasonal, served only in late summer and September.
The season depends on fresh walnuts and pomegranate; outside it the dish is made from stores. The white, green and red echo the national flag.
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Get esquites or elote
Corn either as kernels in a cup or whole on a stick, with mayonnaise, cotija cheese, chilli and lime. A street classic sold by metro stations and in parks.
Ask for it sin chile if you do not want heat; the powder goes on generously. Epazote in the broth gives esquites their herbal note.
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Have a comida corrida at the market
The set lunch in a market kitchen: soup, rice, a main, tortillas and an agua fresca at a fixed low price. It runs from two to five.
The menu changes daily and is written by hand. Tortillas come in a cloth-covered basket and are refilled until you decline.
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Have churros with chocolate Desserts and pastries
Ridged strips of fried dough in cinnamon sugar, dipped in thick hot chocolate. Eaten late at night and early in the morning rather than after dinner.
Mexican drinking chocolate is cinnamon-scented and slightly grainy, not powdered cocoa. The classic churrerias run around the clock.
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Get pan dulce Desserts and pastries
Sweet bread from a bakery: the sugar-topped concha, oreja, polvorón. You take a tray and tongs, choose yourself and pay by the piece at the till.
Eaten at breakfast and in the evening, dunked in coffee or hot chocolate. Fresh trays come out in batches; ask what just left the oven.
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Drink an agua fresca Non-alcoholic drinks
A diluted fruit drink from big glass jars: rice horchata, hibiscus jamaica, tamarind, lime with chia. It costs very little and replaces fizzy drinks.
Jamaica is sour and barely sweet, horchata sweet and milky; start with those. Buy where the jars are constantly emptying.
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Drink café de olla Non-alcoholic drinks
Coffee brewed in a clay pot with a cinnamon stick and unrefined piloncillo sugar. Spiced and sweet, served in a clay mug.
The clay mug changes the taste and is part of the drink rather than the presentation. The sugar goes in during brewing, so it cannot be made unsweetened.
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Try mezcal Local alcohol
A spirit distilled from roasted agave with a pronounced smokiness, sipped rather than shot. Tequila is a subset of mezcal, made from blue agave only.
It comes with orange slices and sal de gusano worm salt, which is a traditional pairing rather than a gimmick. Start with espadín, the most balanced variety.
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Try pulque Local alcohol
A low-alcohol fermented agave sap: viscous, sour and alive. Drunk in pulquerías, often flavoured with fruit, and it cannot be kept.
The texture is unfamiliar, slightly slippery, and that is normal. The fruit version, curado, is easier than the plain natural one.
