Oneika Raymond is hungry. And, luckily, she’s headed to Mexico City, one of the most exciting culinary destinations in the world. There, she visits three eating and drinking spots that connect her to the layered flavors and history that give Mexico City its particular sabor (or flavor) and deepen her understanding of the dynamic capital.
Oneika starts her day off early with a sunrise float down Xochimilco, an historic and active canal system perhaps best known for its weekend parties on the water. But at this early hour, Oneika’s guide, Anais Martinez, the founder of Devoured Food Tours, is here to show Oneika the quieter side of Xochimilco: its farms, or chinampas. Oneika and Anais tour a working chinampa, where Oneika picks fresh produce for a farm-to-table breakfast. Over the meal, Anais shares how Xochimilco once nourished most of Mexico City — and how its role continues to evolve as a vital piece of the culinary scene.
Then, Oneika heads to the beating heart of Mexico City’s food scene: its bustling streets. She meets up with Natalia de la Rosa, a local food and travel journalist at Tacos de Mixiote Castelán — one of Natalia’s go-to street food stands in her neighborhood of Juárez. Natalia shows Oneika how to order and dress up mixiote tacos — a type of taco you’ll be hard-pressed to find outside of Mexico. Then, they sit down to discuss the importance of street food culture to the fabric of daily life in Mexico City.
After a full day of eats, Oneika ends her tasting tour back at her hotel, the JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City Polanco, for a digestif. She takes part in a private mezcal tasting at the hotel’s Tahona Room, the first-ever mezcal tasting room in the city. Oneika’s guide, Julie Wharton, Tahona’s bar manager, explains how the different regions and families of mezcal producers in Mexico infuse each spirit with a unique flavor and story, which deepens Oneika’s appreciation for the eating and drinking traditions of Mexico City — and leaves her hungry for more.
Experience Mexico City’s transformative eating and drinking traditions for yourself. For more about Oneika’s journey — and to get other itinerary ideas — visit Marriott Bonvoy Traveler. To learn more and book a room at the JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City Polanco, visit the hotel’s website. Book wellness-inspired activities for yourself at Marriott Bonvoy Tours & Activities. Marriott Bonvoy members earn points on every experience booked through the site.
To read full episode transcripts from About the Journey and see photos of each featured destination, head to About the Journey on Marriott Bonvoy Traveler. Starting this season, you can watch full videos of each episode on the Marriott Bonvoy YouTube channel.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Anais Martinez: Why do we have so much street food? How do we buy in markets? If you want to learn about the culture of a country, of a city, or Mexico, food is culture. You just have to go through that.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Welcome to About the Journey. I’m your host, Oneika Raymond, travel expert and member of Marriott Bonvoy.
In this season, we’re exploring how travel changes us for the better, allowing us to nurture ourselves, our relationships with family and loved ones, and even with the world around us.
This week, we’re in Mexico City, one of the most exciting culinary capitals in the world. And you know what? The best way to dive into it is to literally taste it, which is precisely what I’m going to be doing today.
Natalia de la Rosa: Mexico City people, we are passionate about street food, we do at least one meal a day in the streets.
Anais Martinez: You can see really famous chefs coming down here. They have their own chinampa and they just pick things up — and they put them on their daily menu.
Julie Wharton: The mezcal that we have here is, you cannot find it any place else.
Oneika Raymond (Field): So here’s the deal, we’re going to be making three stops in Mexico City that give it its distinctive sabor, or flavor. And at each stop, we’re going to trace the history of the city through its food and drink. By the end of this episode, you’ll be plugged into the eating and drinking traditions that nourish this intriguing capital.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Mexico City. Welcome to a sprawling metropolis of over 20 million people where history and modernity collide on every corner. You know, I’ve actually lived in Mexico before, way up in the north. And, as such, I’ve visited the capital, Mexico City, many times. And let me tell you, the city seems to evolve every single time I visit, so it always feels new. But this time around, I really want to deepen my understanding of the rich history and layered cultures that make up its eating and drinking scene.
The mixture of Indigenous and Hispanic cultures infuse[s] every aspect of life here, but they truly come to life on the plate. For centuries, much of Mexico City’s food has been grown and delivered from a region known for its maze of waterways and islands called Xochimilco. So, that’s precisely where we’re headed first.
Oneika Raymond (Field): I’ve driven an hour outside of central Mexico City to Xochimilco. Now, this historic and active canal system is both a popular and bustling place to gather for a float down the waterway. But today, I’m here to see a quieter side of Xochimilco.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Now, while I’ve had the privilege of visiting Mexico City many times, I’ve only been to Xochimilco once before, and that was nearly 20 years ago. But the Xochimilco that I’ve experienced before, and what it’s probably best known for, is its afternoon parties on the water.
Anais Martinez: We’ve all done it. It’s like the mariachis and the flowers and families dancing on the boat and then eating. It’s beautiful. I love it.
Oneika Raymond (VO): This is Anais Martinez, founder of the company Devoured Food Tours. Anais agreed to meet me at Xochimilco at the crack of dawn to help me connect to its quieter side that most visitors don’t see: the farms.
Anais Martinez: Originally, to grow things, we were able to feed ourselves from this. So this is the reason why I like to come this early. Because this is like the complete opposite. We see. We are in touch with not only the nature, and fresh air, but also the history of how this started.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Anais leads me onto a flat-bottomed boat called a trajinera. We take off down the calm, tree lined waterway that nourishes Mexico City. Our destination is a sunrise farm-to-table breakfast.
Anais Martinez: Xochimilco still, to the date, is one of the most important green areas of the city. This, along with Chapultepec, this is like two of the lungs of the city. We call them the “lungs of the city”. It’s really important.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Today, Mexico City dwellers come to Xochimilco for a breath of fresh air. But all this greenery didn’t happen by accident. Held together by these rows of trees are plots of manmade farmland that Anais tells me are called chinampas.
Anais Martinez: They call them the floating islands in English. I don’t know why, because as you can see, they’re not floating. [laughs] It’s just ground. It was made of layers of soil and plants and over and over again. And you keep building up, until you have, like, a bedding where you can actually step on. And then slowly we started growing things.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Wow.
Anais Martinez: So the more shore you have, the more life you have.
Oneika Raymond (VO): And life is vibrant in Xochimilco today. I’m invigorated by the rising sun that warms the cool, fresh air. We hear birds and other sounds of wildlife pierce through the morning haze.
Anais Martinez: The sounds are amazing.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Yeah, I love this.
Anais Martinez: This is, we call them gallinetas. It’s a little chicken, water chicken.
Oneika Raymond (Field): [laughs]
Anais Martinez: They’re black with the little beak. That’s the one, cute, on cue.
Oneika Raymond (VO): We glide to a gentle stop at la Chinampa del Sol, or the Sun Chinampa. I step out onto a soft, soil path lined by Mexican willows and beautifully natural and wild looking herb bushes. It’s both lush and alluring.
Anais Martinez: You can greet the rosemary.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Oh, this is lovely.
Anais Martinez: Smells amazing. Morning dew and everything.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Oh, beautiful.
Anais Martinez: Alright, so I want you to take a look at the kitchen.
Oneika Raymond (VO): We make our way into a clearing outfitted with an open-air kitchen to our left.
Anais Martinez: Do you want some coffee?
Oneika Raymond (Field): I would love some.
Anais Martinez: Yeah. So, they have café de olla, which means, like “coffee from the pot”, boiled with some piloncillo. You know piloncillo is like a raw sugar cone that we use.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Okay.
Anais Martinez: And some cinnamon. It’s not too sweet.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Oh wow, this tastes great.
Anais Martinez: It’s good, right?
Oneika Raymond (VO): As I sip on my cafe de olla, we walk through a cheerful flower garden to a field full of leafy green vegetables. Lettuce, kale, and rainbow chard grow from the dark brown earth.
Anais Martinez: So here in Xochimilco we have a really rich in nutrient soil. I think there’s only one in the whole world that’s richer than this in the Amazonas. But yes, because of all the volcanic activity that we had here a long time ago, the organic matter in this soil is [higher] than the rest of the world.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Anais bends down to pluck some crisp, tender green lettuce leaves from the chinampas’ fertile soil.
Anais Martinez: I think that’s enough.
Oneika Raymond (Field): I love that it’s like shopping, but at a different type of store.
Anais Martinez: No, but fresher. You know what, I’ll get some of these.
Oneika Raymond (Field): What is this?
Anais Martinez: This is celery flower.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Oh, wow.
Anais Martinez: It’s going to be perfect for our salad. Alright, let’s go have breakfast.
Oneika Raymond (VO): We make our way to an al fresco dining setup. On the table is a breakfast spread. There are hearty sopes, made of fried blue corn masa topped with tender shredded beef. And a salad, made of the lettuce we picked, that’s almost too beautiful to eat. The smell is divine, and I suddenly feel my stomach rumble in anticipation.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Anais, this looks incredible. It smells incredible. And I cannot wait to dig into all of this. I love that this is the true farm to table experience.
Anais Martinez: On your plate.
Oneika Raymond (Field): On my plate.
Anais Martinez: Five minutes.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Five minutes.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Incredible. Incredible.
Oneika Raymond (VO): While we eat our breakfast, Anais tells me that only a fraction of the chinampas in Xochimilco remain active today. It’s her mission to help people connect to this land and how vital it is to preserving the identity of Mexico City’s culinary scene.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Why is Xochimilco such an important … or why does it play such an important role in, I guess, the Mexico City food scene?
Anais Martinez: Well, I guess, this is going back to the beginning, right? This is, again, how it all used to look. And if we had all the chinampas working like a farm, we could feed a lot of people in the city. And it’s important that some of the biggest, most famous restaurants are coming back to this, because I think they’re like setting an example. You know, like if they’re like the guides, there’s a lot of people who are going to go behind that.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Yeah, so that’s incredible. So you’re saying that a lot of the restaurants in the city, and some of the top restaurants in the city, are actually sourcing their food from right where we are?
Anais Martinez: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Oneika Raymond (Field): From Xochimilco.
Anais Martinez: You can see really famous chefs coming down here. They have their own chinampa and they just pick things up and that they put them on their daily menu. So I think if they’re setting that example, everyone else is like slowly joining. So it is going back to our roots.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Very cool. And to kind of bring it out with a wider lens — why does food play such an important role in the cultural fabric of Mexico in general?
Anais Martinez: Well, I think in general, food is culture. So, if you want to learn about the culture of a country, of a city, or Mexico, you just have to go through that, right? Why do we have so much street food? How do we buy in markets? What is the lifestyle that we have to have in order for us to go to the markets? Or the tianguis, which is like a pop-up market. Or coming here? So you get some of the traditional things that we’ve had for a long time. This is going to get everyone out of their perception of what Mexico City is. You’re here. First, you enter the city, and you see how cosmopolitan and vibrant. And then you come here and it’s the complete opposite again. You know, it keeps changing your perception. Instead of just being just a city … this is it. This is heritage. This is history. This is nature. This is going back to the roots.
Oneika Raymond (VO): As I leave the tranquil canals of Xochimilco. I can still taste the fresh produce. I can’t help but feel a sense of connection to the land and the people who have nourished this city for generations.
I’m both happy and grateful for this return to Xochimilco and for the opportunity to see it in a different light. But the heart and soul of Mexico City’s food culture is in its lively streets. I make my way to Juárez, a charming residential neighborhood sandwiched between Paseo de la Reforma, home to the iconic Angel de la Independencia, and the trendy Roma Norte neighborhood. It’s also the place our next Mexico City guide, Natalia de la Rosa, calls home.
Natalia de la Rosa: Nice to meet you. Welcome to Mexico City.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Natalia is a food and travel journalist based in Mexico City. I’m meeting her for, you guessed it, another meal. We convene at the corner of a busy intersection and all around us locals go about their day. It’s just about lunch time, and Natalia is here to show me her go-to neighborhood taco stand, one of the oldest in the area.
Oneika Raymond (Field): So where are we exactly?
Natalia de la Rosa: We’re in a very popular plaza in the neighborhood. And we are in my favorite mixiote stand.
Oneika Raymond (VO): We’re at Tacos de Mixiote Castelán, a street food stand that offers up mixiote, a type of taco that you’ll be hard pressed to find outside of Mexico. While I lived in northern Mexico for a year, visited many times since, and have eaten too many tacos to count, I’ve actually never tried mixiote tacos.
Oneika Raymond (Field): And what’s mixiote, exactly?
Natalia de la Rosa: Mixiote is one of the most traditional kind of taco styles in Mexico City. It’s from the state of Hidalgo. It’s basically lamb cooked and kind of wrapped in parchment paper or mixiote leaf, which is the outer layer of the agave leaf. And basically, they cook it slow and low for a really long time. And the lamb, they marinate it with a bunch of chiles, spices and stuff. And it is a really true stellar taco.
Oneika Raymond (Field): How does street food play a role here in Mexico City?
Natalia de la Rosa: Well, it’s a really essential role, not only in terms of flavor and just fun of kind of going out to get tacos, it’s an essential role in terms of, like, how chilangos eat every day. So, Mexico City people, often, we do one meal a day … at least one meal a day, in the streets. Whether that be a taco, a tamal, a pastry, a coffee, a late-night stand. Mexico City people, not only are we passionate about street food, but it’s part of how 9-5’ers, construction workers, families … we just eat in the streets constantly.
Oneika Raymond (VO): The importance of taco stands, or puestos, to the fabric of Mexico City cannot be understated. There are almost 11,000 of them operating in the city. Just behind Natalia, I watch as three busy taqueros, who span multiple generations, work to satisfy the always busy lunch crowd.
Oneika Raymond (Field): So how does the stand work exactly? There’s a lot going on.
Natalia de la Rosa: Yes. There’s a lot of going on — this stand has been here for 40 years. It’s one of the staples of the neighborhood. And basically, Dona Tere, Don Angel, they have a really good loyal customer base. And you order your tacos, and then you put all the toppings here.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Okay. I love the idea of choosing your own taco adventure…
Natalia de la Rosa: Yes, definitely.
Oneika Raymond (Field): …and yeah, so let’s get into it.
Oneika Raymond (VO): In the capable hands of Natalia, we head to the stand and place our orders. Our taquero readies two tortillas with the speed of 40 years of experience. He fills the tortillas with generous heaps of slow cooked lamb.
Natalia de la Rosa: So he’s gonna put cilantro, onion. Cilantro is kind of like one of the stellar kind of toppings in tacos. You can find cilantro in suadero tacos, in pastor tacos, in mixiote tacos, but it’s kind of one of the basic ingredients of Mexican cooking.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Our taquero hands us our unadorned tacos, and the adventure begins.
Natalia de la Rosa: There you go.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Beautiful.
Natalia de la Rosa: And you can put whatever you choose.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Wonderful.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Natalia and I sidle up to a long table filled with a checkerboard of colorful toppings.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Jalapeño.
Natalia de la Rosa: Jalapeño.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Solamente este.
Oneika Raymond (VO): There are salsas in daring hues of red and mouthwatering green, as well as pickled vegetables, fresh pineapple and cactus, known locally as nopales.
Natalia de la Rosa: And that one is … that one, I would be careful.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Natalia said, “Be careful!” [laughs] It’s muy picante?
Natalia de la Rosa: Yes, usually I put kind of tiny drops. And then, always extra napkins.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Extra napkins for any spillage. Great, alright, well let’s go eat. Let’s go sit down.
Oneika Raymond (Field): So Mexico City is known as a foodie town. What is the culinary scene here in Mexico City? Can you describe it?
Natalia de la Rosa: Well, it’s very diverse. Number one — the city has seen a lot of migrations for different communities and people from all over Mexico have settled here. It’s the biggest city in the country. So you have different regional specialties that you can find here. And it’s very diverse in terms, not only of the flavors, the region, international cuisines, but it’s also diverse in the spectrum. You have really good street food — that is like the bread and butter of chilangos of Mexico City, how Mexico City people eat. And you also have the high, fine dining range, which is like bougie, fancy and stuff.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Bougie. [laughs]
Natalia de la Rosa: So, not only is like, a broad in the spectrum, but also kind of high and low, we do really well.
Oneika Raymond (Field): That’s very cool. And I love this idea of street food being the backbone of the culinary scene here.
Natalia de la Rosa: Mexicans, we gravitate towards the table. We gravitate towards eating together, family with friends. So in the sense of thinking about not only street food, but just in general as a gravitational epicenter where communities, families and whole neighborhoods come and live together. And you just hang out. So in that sense, food brings us together as a community, and as a city as well.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Thank you so much for bringing me here.
Natalia de la Rosa: Thank you for coming and thank you for kind of putting a spotlight into, not only Mexico City tradition, but what makes Mexico City, Mexico City. It’s food, it’s community, it’s long time traditions.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Ordering lunch shoulder to shoulder with Natalia, I’m grateful for how warmly she’s welcomed me to her favorite puesto. You know, as a traveler, you can never truly live like a local, but you can absolutely come to places like this to feel like a part of the community — if only for a moment…or, a meal.
I leave Natalia. After a day full of eats in the city, I’m ready to head back to my hotel where I can finish with a traditional Mexican drink.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Hi!
Julie Wharton: Hi! My name is Julie. Welcome to Tahona.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Thank you so much.
Oneika Raymond (VO): This is Julie Wharton, my guide at JW Marriott Hotel Mexico City Polanco’s Tahona Room, the first ever mezcal tasting room in Mexico City. Julie is going to lead me through a private mezcal tasting to end my day — because you can’t visit this city without tasting this smoky spirit that’s woven into its eating and drinking culture.
Julie Wharton: The mezcal that we have here is, you cannot find it any place else.
Oneika Raymond (VO): Julie runs daily mezcal tastings around the large, stone table we’re seated at, which represents the tahona rock used to grind down agave plants for distillation.
Oneika Raymond (Field): So what do you know about mezcal?
Oneika Raymond (Field): I know absolutely nothing about mezcal. I’ve actually never tasted it before, not to my recollection. So, what is it exactly?
Julie Wharton: The difference between mezcal and tequila, it’s because mezcal is the way that they do is more artisanal. And with tequila you can use blue agave — just blue agave. And mezcal, we have hundreds. So we are going to start with Tres Chicon. Chicon means “spirit” in Maya. Tres Chicon is the three stuff that they need to make the agave. That’s fire, water and agave. So you want to try?
Oneika Raymond (Field): Yes, please.
Julie Wharton: Okay, let’s do it.
Oneika Raymond (VO): I take a small sip of the Tres Chicon. Right away, I get the smokiness that everyone talks about. It hits my tongue like a rocket.
Julie Wharton: Yeah, it’s very smoky, too, but it’s very light.
Oneika Raymond (Field): It is very light.
Julie Wharton: The flavor and the smells that you’re going to feel in the mezcal depends on the type of the ground that they are planted. Because if you have, I don’t know, a coffee, or corn — depends on the plantation that you have around, is going to influence the flavor in the mezcal.
Oneika Raymond (Field): How does mezcal fit into Mexico City’s drinking scene?
Julie Wharton: Anywhere, any place. And mezcal has grown a lot in Mexico. And now we can find a lot of good mezcals here. I think it’s part of the culture. The people that make the mezcal, they are families that grow the agave to go to the palenque, to do the distillation. So I think that when you get to know something about mezcal, you can know something about Mexico and the people that [have been] living here for so many years and producing mezcal for so many years, so I think that’s very important.
Oneika Raymond (Field): Absolutely, it tells a part of the story of Mexico and of Mexico City.
Oneika Raymond (VO): I leave Mexico City feeling revitalized and, honestly, a bit awestruck. Despite living in Northern Mexico for a year, there’s always been an energy to the capital that’s drawn me.
And plugging into the city through the local food scene this time around makes it that much more evident. I now realize that getting to eat breakfast along the gorgeous waterways of Xochimilco, trying street food in the bustling neighborhood of Juarez, and sipping smokey, small batch mezcal right here at the Tahona Room — well, they’re all experiences that feed not only my hunger but also my connection to the city.
So to my fellow travelers out there: a bit of advice — come to Mexico City. Come here, visit with an open mind and an empty stomach, and let the flavors, the people, and the stories of this beautiful place feed your curiosity. And you know what? I promise, you’ll only leave hungry for more.
That’s all for this episode of About the Journey. Thank you so much to our guides Anais Martinez, Natalia de la Rosa and Julie Wharton. Find the full day’s itinerary and information on how to visit each stop for yourself at traveler.marriott.com/About the Journey. Starting this season, you can watch full videos of each episode on our Marriott Bonvoy YouTube channel.
In our next, and final episode, of our wellness journey this season — we’re on the gorgeous island of Maui.
Luana Kawaʻa: We have an ʻōlelo noʻeau, a proverb, that says, “E hele me ka pūʻolo.” We come with the intention to make that place even better than the way we found it, or that person better than the way we found them.
Oneika Raymond (VO): We’re turning outwards to find out how connecting deeper to places through history and local traditions is vital to understanding our own life’s journeys.
About the Journey is produced by Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, AT WILL MEDIA, MTRA and me, Oneika Raymond. Our Marriott Producers are Robin Bennefield, Valerie Conners and Rachael Sulik. Our AT WILL MEDIA Producers are Kristy Westgard, Gale Straub and Tina Turner. Mixing & Sound Design by Greg Deavens II with support from Andrew Holzberger and Zach Grappone. Original Theme Music also by Zach Grappone.
Our MNTRA video producer is Arnaud Zimmerman, Director of Photography Gabriel Knoos-Newton, Post Producer Zach Gelman and Editor Bryce Perry.
For more travel inspiration, visit Marriott Bonvoy Traveler at traveler.marriott.com. I’m your host, Oneika Raymond. See you next time!
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