What To Eat in Mexico: 36 Best Mexican Foods

The only good thing that came from colonialism: the spread of bread around the globe. Tortas are essentially giant sandwiches packed full of meat, cheese, vegetables and sauce.

Tortas are usually enormous and oozing multiple fillings, leaving you full for hours. The ultimate torta is a Cubano which tends to include a bit of everything: ham, milanesa (a breaded meat fillet), multiple types of cheese, avocado, salad, chipotle. Only order one if you’re very, very hungry!

Alternatively, pick a torta with 1-3 fillings for a slightly lighter meal (although still not very light). My favourite combination is milanesa, cheese and pineapple. Another mouth-watering torta filling is a cochinita pibil, a type of slow-cooked pork originating from the Yucatan Peninsula.

At local markets and street food stands, you can expect to pay between 30 and 60 pesos for a torta.

Tostadas are crispy, fried tortillas topped with ingredients. I love a seafood tostada served with fresh prawns (camaron) and avocado, seasoned with a dash of lime.

If you’re in Mexico City, head to Coyocan neighbourhood for some of the best tostadas of your life at Tostadas Coyoacan inside Coyoacan Market. Here you can get all kinds of fish and meat tostadas. I’d recommend the chicken (pollo) and mole sauce or the octopus (pulpo).

We’ve all heard of enchiladas before, right? Unlike fajitas and other Tex-mex dishes, enchiladas are ‘real’ Mexican food. These large tortillas are folded over and topped with sauce.

I’ve included enmoladas in the same entry because they’re so similar. Like much of the best food in Mexico, both dishes are smothered in sauce. Enchiladas are usually topped with tomato-based sauce while enmoladas are made with mole.

Given my love of mole, I’d take enmoladas over enchiladas any day, although let’s face it: I’d never say no to either.

Mole is a Mexican sauce combining chillis and other ingredients. Mole poblano is my favourite, made with chocolate. If you don’t know, chocolate actually originated in Mexico as a bitter drink before the Spaniards took it back to Europe and mixed it with milk and sugar.

Mole is one of the most complex Mexican dishes to make, as any Mexican chef or abuela (grandma) will tell you. Making it from scratch can take hours and involves blending all kinds of ingredients like pine nuts, golden raisins, garlic, chilli, then frying the paste, adding stock and stirring the sauce for hours.

An easier option is to buy the readymade paste or powder from a market and mix it with chicken stock. Alternatively, just eat chicken mole enmoladas at any Mexican restaurant.

Other variations include white mole which I made during a cooking class with Aura Cocina and pink rose mole (made with rose petals and sesame seeds) which I tried while visiting Taxco.

I’m not usually a huge soup fan but I crave tasty Mexican soups. Pozole is one of the top Mexican foods to try, known for its rich flavour. While a tomato soup filled with corn kernels might sound veggie-friendly, pozole is usually made with chicken broth. However, many vegetarian restaurants in Mexico City will make it without. Ask before ordering.

Like most Mexican foods, pozole is only as spicy as you make it. Mexican restaurants tend to serve dishes non-spicy and let you add chilli sauces set at the table. On a cold day in Mexico City (they do exist!), there’s nothing more warming than a spicy, steaming bowl of pozole.

Thought there might be a dish without corn coming soon? No chance. For this Mexican dish, corn tortillas are rolled up into flute shapes (flauta means flute in Spanish) and stuffed with ingredients such as potato, beans, cheese and meat.

Sometimes you can combine the flavours and have beans and cheese in the same flauta. Usually they’ll come topped with cheese, lettuce and cream: the ultimate Mexican combo.

Flautas aren’t my all-time favourite Mexican food because they can be oily. Potato flautas are bland, but a pork flauta dipped in salsa is rich and moreish.

8. Quesadillas

Another Mexican food that’s made it global is the quesadilla. Since queso is the Spanish word for cheese, quesadilla basically means cheese tortilla.

However, quesadillas can also come with other fillings. If you’re veggie, you can order fillings like flor de calabaza (in English, squash flower).

Look out for blue corn quesadillas (or in fact, blue corn anything). For some reason, these taste so much better than regular quesadillas.

You can’t do much better than a blue corn breakfast quesadilla stuffed with Oaxaca cheese, preferably eaten perched on a plastic street stall. Mexican food heaven!

The first sweet entry in this Mexican food guide is something you’ve probably heard of before. Churros originated in Spain but are now incredibly popular in Mexico. The locals will (of course) tell you that theirs are the better version, served with cinnamon sugar and a dip of either chocolate, cajata (Mexican caramel sauce) or condensed milk.

If you’re in Mexico City, you can eat delicious churros at Churros El Moro. The Condesa branch is located beside leafy Parque Mexico, the perfect place for people-watching while dunking churros in hot chocolate. The original Churros El Moro in the Zocalo (city centre) is hectic and local with table service and a diner feel. Expect a queue outside the door to get inside.

Visiting Mexico City? Check out my complete Roma & Condesa food guide

Proving that the best food in Mexico is usually cheap and cheerful, enter gorditas. These pocket-shaped patties are largely made with the same ingredients as sopes and tacos. I like them with mushroom and nopales (cactus) but there are usually plenty more options available.

Gordita means chubby in Spanish but don’t let this stop you – gorditas aren’t bad for you. Like tacos and other Mexican foods, the only ingredients are corn and limestone, plus whatever ingredients you choose to order.

The fact that chilaquiles are listed as number 14 in this Mexico food blog is merely coincidental. If it were in order, chilaquiles would be number one or two, probably only topped by mole.

If you’re wondering what to eat in Mexico for breakfast, this is your answer. Fried tortilla chips are topped with salsa verde (green salsa) or salsa roja (red salsa), cheese, cream and onion. You can usually opt to add huevo (egg) or pollo (chicken). Order them sencilla (simple) if you don’t want either.

I eat chilaquiles most weekends. Toss out the smashed avo – these are a brunch classic, served with a flat white in many a trendy Condesa cafe. While touristic places will serve them for 100+ pesos, you can also find chilaquiles at local restaurants and street stands for as little as 35 pesos.

Corn in its pure form is called maiz but when it’s cooked, it’s called elote. When served with mayonnaise, chilli and cheese, it’s called elotes y esquites. I love this Mexican street food snack. Who knew that corn could be so tasty and moreish when simply slathered in sauce and cheese?

You’ll usually pick up a serving for 20 pesos or less. I can’t imagine it has any nutritional value but who’s complaining?

Dorilocos are the only listing in this Mexico food guide that I didn’t like. Since they’re an iconic local snack that many Mexicans seem to love, I decided to include them so you can make your own mind up.

Dorilocos are packets of Doritos cut open and filled with other types of chips, Cheetos, hot sauce, cream, peanuts, corn, veggies, lettuce, and whatever else is lying around. It was just too many flavours and too enormous. Along with two friends, we only made it through half a packet and eventually threw them away. Sorry, Dorilocos, you are not the best food in Mexico!

Ready for another take on the enchilada? Enfrijoladas are folded corn tortillas topped with frijoles (mashed black bean paste). They’re often topped with cheese and fried eggs, too.

They’re a typical breakfast dish originating from the Oaxaca region of Southern Mexico. After having these for breakfast, you’ll definitely only want a light lunch.

Tamales are a staple and one of the most important Mexican foods. Unsurprisingly, their base ingredient is corn but they couldn’t be more different to tacos or quesadillas.

Tamales are made with steamed corn dough (masa), stuffed inside a corn husk with other ingredients inside such as chicken, mole, salsa verde or roja. You can also get sweet tamales which are bright pink and flavoured with guava.

These are one of the oldest Mexican foods, served for almost 5,000 years. Tamales are commonly served at food stands or by vendors on bikes announcing their availability via loudspeaker. Grab them while hot.

Another typical Mexican food to try is chile relleno, translating as stuffed chilli. Large green (non-spicy) chillis are stuffed with cheese or meat, coated in a light batter and bathed in a sauce, usually tomato.

I’d say they’re healthy because chillis grow from plants but I’d probably only be fooling myself. When served with beans, rice and salad, they’re a hearty main meal.

A variation on chile relleno is chile en nogada, translating as chilli in walnut. While I frequently change my answer on my favourite Mexican food, I’d put these in my top three with mole and chilaquiles.

For this dish, a giant chilli is stuffed with a picadillo (hash) of steamed fruits such as peach and pear and served in a creamy walnut sauce, topped with pomegranate seeds and green garnish.

Chile en nogada originates from the city of Puebla, just two hours from Mexico City. Rumour has it they were invented by nuns of the convent when an important general came to town. The red, white and green colours are meant to represent the Mexican flag.

Personally, I’m planning a second trip to Puebla just to eat them again (you’ll find them in other cities but not as frequently).

Huaraches are oblong-shaped delicacies (translating as ‘shoe’) served with bean paste and a variety of toppings. A veggie one with nopales and cheese is delicious. They’re similar to sopes and gorditas but larger and thinner.

Huaraches are mainly found around Mexico City as that’s their birthplace but I’ve also eaten them in cities including Guadalajara and San Miguel de Allende.

For everything to do and eat in the capital, read my CDMX travel itinerary.

Machetes aren’t widespread across Mexico but I wanted to mention them in my Mexican food guide in case you find yourself in Guerrero, a suburb of Mexico City not far from Instagrammable library, Biblioteca Vasconcelos.

These enormous tortilla wraps are almost half a metre long and stuffed with fillings of your choice. I opted for huitlacoche (very rich in a serving that size) but you can ask for them cut in two with a different filling in either end. Try these at Los Machetes de Amparito on Calle Heroes.

The final entry is this Mexico food guide might be the simplest yet most addictive. These potato chips (or crisps as us Brits would call them) are named papas which means potato. You’ll find them in every Mexican city and I couldn’t be happier because I love them drizzled with spicy Valentina sauce.

You can ask the vendor ‘un poco mas’ (a little more) if you want them spicier.

27. Tequila

Durr. The best place to try tequila is of course, the town of Tequila in Guadalajara state where it’s produced. There are a couple of ways to do this including the iconic Tequila train that travels from Guadalajara to Tequila, taking you through scenic fields of agave plants and plying with you unlimited tequila en route!

I’m actually sipping Mexican hot chocolate while writing this blog. As the birthplace of the beverage, where would be better for drinking it?

While Oaxaca is the most iconic place to drink hot chocolate, you’ll find it all over Mexico. If you’re in Mexico City, visit cafe chain Tierra Garat and order the chilli hot chocolate.

Mexcian hot chocolate is traditionally made with water rather than milk. In fact, mixing chocolate with milk was a Spanish invention. However, the drink doesn’t lose any flavour by making it with water (and usually you can ask for milk instead nowadays) because it’s so rich already.

30. Horchata

Technically an agua fresca, this is one of the best Mexican drinks to try. Horchata is a plant milk flavoured with cinnamon. It’s incredibly sweet so I couldn’t drink it every day, but it’s refreshing on a hot day. Horchata is one of the oldest Mexican drinks, dating back to the 13th century.

Pulque is an alcoholic Mexican drink made from the sap of the maguey plant. It’s milky, slightly lumpy and can’t be bottled as it will explode.

Despite these strange characteristics, I like pulque. Try it at a pulqueria in Mexico City to sample different flavours like chocolate and marzipan. If the creamy version turns you off, try fruit pulque instead. Flavours like berry are tangy and refreshing.