Oaxaca Food Tour: Gastronomy, Heritage, and Local Traditions

Foodie Lucia Galanti takes One Planet Journey readers deep into the heart of Mexico’s most flavourful region for an Oaxaca food tour. Guided by chef and cultural guardian Blanca Pérez, this gastronomical adventure is a sensory blend of food, friendship, and storytelling. From cooking heirloom recipes in Indigenous homes to mezcal tastings and chocolate-making workshops, your tastebuds are in for a treat.

A food tour of Oaxaca, Mexico

Can you pronounce Oaxaca? Wuh·haa·kuh!  

It took me a few attempts! However, your pronunciation won’t matter. Let me take you somewhere unforgettable…

Some trips are more than the actual destination, however. Whom you travel with, meet and what you share along the way matter as much. For us, a group of girlfriends, travelling to Oaxaca, Mexico, represented a chance to reconnect, slow down, and celebrate the joy of time-honoured food.

Our dear friend Blanca is part chef, part cultural ambassador. She conducts immersive gastronomic journeys for women back to her motherland, Mexico. Through her, we discovered Oaxaca has more dimensions than just incredible food.

We found open doors to a rich tapestry of flavours, stories, and people who welcomed us into their kitchens and lives. They eagerly shared their deep-rooted heritage with pride and warmth.

“Mexicans are hospitable, joyful people who find genuine beauty in the imperfect, and that is handmade. Food is sensory, and each dish tells a story of resistance, identity, and love,” explains Blanca.

Let’s explore further.

Oaxaca Flavours Woven Through Time

The Indigenous communities in Oaxaca have grown colourful maize, beans, squash, chiles, and herbs like chepil and epazote for generations. When the Spanish arrived, they brought wheat, pork, rice, olive oil, and new methods of cooking, such as baking and stewing.

But instead of replacing local traditions, these influences blended to create dishes like mole negro (a classic Mexican sauce, made from over 30 ingredients). There are also tlayudas, crispy tortillas topped with fresh produce and house-made stretchy quesillo cheese.

These authentic dishes have kept traditions that now capture the imagination of inspiring chefs. Eager to utilise their cultural foundations, the results come in the form of creative contemporary dishes we’ve never tasted before. 

Discovering Oaxaca’s Landscape and Heart 

When you arrive in Oaxaca, the mountains kind of fold around you, over 2,500 metres high. Suddenly you’re in this wide valley in the south of Mexico that somehow feels both tucked away and completely alive. It’s remote, sure, but that’s preserved the plants, the food, the culture, and languages. There are 16 different Indigenous groups living in Oaxaca, and their traditions haven’t just survived. You find them everywhere. Spoken on the street. And, of course, cooked into the meals.

The historic city centre has a buzz about it. Outdoor cafés spilling into the streets, smells from the markets pulling you in before you even realise you’re hungry. Potters, weavers, and chefs all perform their crafts in a harmonious blend of old and new.

Meet Blanca: The Heart Behind the Food Tour in Oaxaca

Blanca Pérez grew up in Mexico, surrounded by the scent of simmering salsas and the rhythm of her grandmother’s cooking. She brought these memories and skills to Spain and built Corazón de Agave, a food truck business and award-winning restaurant in Sitges.

Every year, Blanca returns to Oaxaca to reconnect with her family. She also revisits the kitchens that shaped her, and trades ideas with traditional and creative chefs who with time have become both mentors and friends. She spends time with cooks, especially the grandmothers, learning old techniques, stories, and little kitchen secrets you won’t find in cookbooks. This is her way of staying connected to the heart of Mexican cuisine.

Small groups of curious travellers can come along for the journey. She invites them to experience the flavours and stories of her culture firsthand. During the tour, facts play a secondary role. Instead, she enthusiastically shares real moments she’s lived herself. It made her tour feel so personal. 

“For every tour I organise, I bring my story and my pride. There’s a deep desire that each person who comes on the food tour will experience an intimate and respectful immersion in the culture, traditions, and cuisine of Oaxaca. I hope each will leave them with a little piece of Mexico in their soul and on their palate.”

Oaxaca chocolate – purely next level

In a modest workshop run by the indigenous Zapoteca community, we had our next stop on the Oaxaca food tour. Here, we learned about the history of artisanal chocolate-making, and how chocolate goes beyond a simple treat. It’s a tradition where the community preserves it by sharing with others who value authenticity in food.

This immersive workshop began with the story of chocolate. You listen to its origin story and its role in indigenous rituals. We explored local cacao varieties, learned how they’re harvested, and watched the beans being roasted on a clay comal (traditional, flat, round griddle) from San Marcos Tlapazola. As they warmed, the room filled with the delicious scent of toasted cacao. Earthy, rich, and unmistakable. 

Once cooled, we peeled them by hand. Their shells flaked under our fingers, light and brittle, leaving a trace of colour.

As we worked, the room grew quiet. We listened to stories of earlier generations. We ground the beans on a metate, a stone smoothed by use. For this, you needed strong arms and determination. When blended, the aroma infused the room, wrapping us in a giddy warmth.

Following this, we mixed our delicious concoction, adjusting the sugar and stirring in regional ingredients, cinnamon and chilli. Then, a wooden molino was used to prepare the drink. Finally, after all our hard work, we got to savour our magical brew. A rich Oaxacan hot chocolate that is bold and made with layers of care. Truly a brew of the gods!

Cocina de Humo: Smoke, Fire, and Soul

Cocina de Humo is a smoke kitchen. Think of it as a return to the ancestral kitchens of Oaxaca. Women carry on generations of culinary knowledge, using native ingredients like maize and beans, wild herbs, and seasonal produce. It’s all cooked over open wood fires and clay comals.

The women cook by feel and memory and explain the origins of their ingredients with a mix of joy and pride. We tasted smoky moles, freshly made tlayudas, tamales wrapped in banana leaves, and tortillas hot off the comal. It was rustic, yes, but not simple. I’d say the flavours came out layered.

Mezcal: Dust, Laughter, and Liquid Fire

No Oaxacan food tour experience feels complete without mezcal. In the company of friends, it flows freely. So, on a dusty afternoon, we piled into the back of a pickup truck and bounced our way out to the agave fields beyond the city.

Laughter floated up with the dust. By the time we arrived, we felt a little sun-dazed and sore. Our hosts, artisanal distillers whose families had worked these fields for generations, walked us through the time-honoured process. It involves roasting agave hearts in underground pits, then grinding them with a stone tahona, fermenting, distilling, and finally tasting them.

And taste we did. Smoky, earthy, smooth, and fiery. Mezcal is not a single note but a full-bodied song. We quickly forgot the bumps, and our hearts remembered the generosity.

Heart and Heritage in Oaxaca – Immersive Cooking with Mimi

Mimi grew up cooking with her mother, later inheriting generations of recipes from her mother-in-law. In 2019, her pipián de nopales won second place at the “Third Meeting of Traditional Cooks of Oaxaca,” and it’s easy to see why.

Warm, funny, and full of heart, Mimi shares the stories behind the recipes. Her dishes come from four generations of women. Set in a traditional open-air kitchen, she’s surrounded by fresh market produce, flower pots, herbs and the occasional roaming chicken. The experience is as local as it gets. 

Mimi guides you through every step, sharing her techniques with a deep love for Oaxacan gastronomy. During this full-day cooking class, we created memelitas topped with vibrant salsas, rolled tamales in banana leaves, pressed tortillas, and stirred mole until our arms ached. In the end, our plates overflowed with everything we’d made. Prepare yourself for a five-sensory experience.

What I Carried Home from my Oaxaca Food Tour

Oaxaca cannot be explained. Oaxaca needs to be lived, says Blanca.

Indeed, it does!

I came to Oaxaca with an appetite for flavour, sunshine, and time with friends. What stayed with me overall, beyond the gorgeous and mouthwatering food, is the gentle pride and kindness of the Oaxacan people.

Blanca opened that door for us. Through her relationships, respect for tradition, and focus on community, she made the experience feel personal and grounded. In the end, these are the memories and stories we carried home.

A tip: Come curious. Savour slow meals, unfamiliar flavours, and a few mezcals. 

Have you been on a food tour in Oaxaca? What did you eat? Let us know in the comments. Subscribe to our newsletter and benefit from travel guides, sustainable tourism and luxury travel tips, insightful interviews, and inspirational places to visit. One Planet Journey – The World’s First Deep Travel Magazine.