---
title: 'I Tried Every Famous Mexican Food'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=S4bLJMsSLTo'
video_id: 'S4bLJMsSLTo'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 1712
---

# I Tried Every Famous Mexican Food

> Source: [I Tried Every Famous Mexican Food](https://youtube.com/watch?v=S4bLJMsSLTo)

## Summary

The video explores the depth and diversity of Mexican cuisine beyond common stereotypes, traveling from Oaxaca to Sinaloa and Mexico City. It highlights traditional dishes, local ingredients, and the communal aspect of food, arguing that the best Mexican food is about care and respect for ingredients.

### Key Points

- **Oaxaca: The Birthplace** [0:27] — Oaxaca is considered the birthplace of Mexican food, known for its seven moles and unique ingredients like chiles de agua.
- **Communal Grilling Technique** [1:34] — The market in Oaxaca features communal grills where you can grill your own meat, using beef fat as a brush to enhance flavor.
- **Exclusive Oaxacan Peppers** [1:43] — Chiles de agua are exclusive to Oaxaca and are highly flavorful, not too spicy.
- **Best Chile Relleno** [3:58] — The best chile relleno was found at La Teca, a coastal Oaxacan restaurant, described as 'heaven'.
- **Tía Elvia's Home Cooking** [6:30] — Tía Elvia's home-cooked breakfast, including eggs in hoja santa and her original mole, was a highlight, showcasing simple, perfect cooking.
- **Sinaloa: Seafood Mecca** [10:26] — Los Mochis in Sinaloa is a hidden gem for seafood, with floating restaurants and the best aguachile.
- **Best Burrito** [10:55] — The best burrito was from Burritos Beli in Los Mochis, with a thin, buttery tortilla and simple, perfectly seasoned meat.
- **Best Aguachile** [15:23] — Aguachile from Sinaloa is the best, with a freshness and balance that rivals Michelin-starred versions.
- **Mexico City: Street Food to Innovation** [17:01] — Mexico City offers a range from classic al pastor tacos to innovative dishes at Maizajo and Gaba.
- **Quintonil: Fine Dining** [25:00] — Quintonil, the number one restaurant in Mexico, serves a fine dining version of traditional dishes, but the best mole was still Tía Elvia's.
- **Final Verdict: Care Matters Most** [28:42] — The best Mexican food is not about cost or complexity, but about care and respect for local ingredients, as seen in all the stops.

## Transcript

Everyone loves Mexican food.
Tacos al pastor, burritos, quesadillas.
Except what if that was just scratching
the surface of arguably the greatest,
most diverse cuisine on planet Earth?
What if the best is something
most of us have never seen before?
So I'm traveling all across Mexico—north,
central,
and south—to find the best
Mexican food in the world.
The world thinks they know Mexican food,
but we're about to open up the
other 95% that people have
been missing out on all along.
And it all starts in Oaxaca.
If you could find where
Mexican food was born,
you'd probably be looking
here.
And our first stop blew my mind.
Arguably one of the most insane
markets I've seen in my life.
I'm so hyped!!
They got grills lined all the
way down this entire thing.
Charcoal grills.
They're flaming up over there.
This is basically like an
all-you-can-eat buffet.
Grill your own adventure.
It's a happy place.
This is my happy place.
I say it first.
Joining me yet again is the greatest
food guide in all of Mexico,
my friend Gaby.
And she's enlisted Oaxaca
native Coco to help us out.
So let the adventure begin.
Mira, ¡qué linda es ella!
Chorizo.
Suadero.
This part here?
Yes.
And after we got our meats,
it was time to grill.
This is fat I think she's
gonna use to grease it.
And look how quickly it renders.
Now she's essentially
greasing and glazing this,
kissing it with melted beef tallow.
This puts Korean barbecue to shame.
After watching the master at work,
I finally was handed the reins.
I didn't know I was gonna be cooking.
I'm hyped about it, though.
She really cares about
making this a great product.
While I was cooking,
she brought over some fresh,
still hot from the griddle tortillas to
just use as a landing zone for the meat.
You put the meat down and the
juices soak into the tortilla.
This is so smart because instead
of squirting it with oil,
you get this slowly rendered beef
fat so there's not a ton of flare-ups
and you just kind of brush it.
You're treating the chunk
of fat as your brush.
Those beautiful peppers over
there are called chiles de
agua from the state of Oaxaca.
Nowhere else you find them.
We'll have a touch of incredible
flavor that we are not going
to find anywhere else.
And after Gaby threw on
the veggies from the grill,
we had our final plate.
That was incredible.
I don't know if we made
meat or if we made love.
We have here a bunch of
incredible meat: this beef,
chorizo, suadero over there.
We have some guacamole, aguacates,
lime, and special onions.
Oh.
Unbelievable.
There wasn't a single
bad bite on this plate.
You tear some tortilla,
and then you assemble
multiple combos of meat.
I was in a state of bliss.
But how did the exclusive
Oaxacan peppers taste?
Chile de agua.
Cheers.
Not too spicy, but what I love about it,
so flavorful.
Like,
one of the most flavorful
peppers I've ever had.
Take a little bite of that.
A little bite of this.
Magic.
What makes it super incredible
is that grills are communal.
It makes it a community...
so we can meet people, and then,
of course, grilling our own food.
You do feel the communal aspect.
Everybody's selling something different.
Oh, I want a little bit of this.
I want a little bit of that.
You can create, essentially,
a chef's tasting menu
out of different meats,
vegetables, salsas,
fresh chilies that are grown, like,
right here,
picked fresh the moment
before you grill it.
The experience alone is a 10 out of 10.
The food is so fresh, it's so delicious.
You're going to walk away feeling good,
full, maybe ready for mezcal?
Absolutely.
Ready for mezcal.
Oaxaca is known for the
land of seven moles,
and this iconic Mexican
staple was invented here.
So according to Gaby,
there is no one place with the singular
best. But there's so much variety,
and frankly,
it's all kind of up to
personal preference.
I tried all seven of them at a
spot called Los Pacos for what
I'll call a crash course...
in mole.
And while they were all tasty,
it's kind of difficult to pick a
favorite because they all have
completely different applications,
but also more specifically,
because we have even more mole later on.
Up next,
Gaby is taking me to a very special spot,
La Teca.
This is...
coastal Oaxacan food.
I'm very excited because I'm
with my very beautiful friend,
Deyanira Aquino, known as La Teca.
We call Teca to all the women that
were born in Istmo de Tehuantepec.
So this is a strong, beautiful woman,
an amazing cook.
She's bringing all the
products from their homeland,
and she will cook as her mother
did and as her grandmother did.
I'm excited.
Starting off with a chile relleno taco.
This is heaven.
That was completely unexpected.
This is the best chile
relleno I've ever had.
This is my favorite chile
relleno in the country.
Chile relleno is essentially
a fried stuffed chile,
but oftentimes I feel it's misconstrued.
People just kind of stuff whatever in it,
and they end up being quite boring.
And then the inside has this tender meat,
not too fatty, and little chunks of,
like, toasted nuts and olives.
It's briny, it's sweet,
it's fresh, it's fatty.
It's like kind of everything in one bite.
All in a nice little satchel.
Garnacha.
Garnacha?
Okay.
That's a good reaction.
You cannot try it anywhere else.
This is what makes Oaxaca
so magic and so amazing.
The quality of the corn and the technique
behind the corn matters infinitely
more than anything else.
You're down here with a
corn tortilla in a bag.
Then you have your first fresh one you're,
like, up here.
But then you go to Oaxaca and you see
how they treat corn and you're like,
way up here, dude.
This is, like, so delicate.
The topping is delicious as well.
I love the grated cheese.
It's almost like the Oaxacan
version of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
It's delicious.
Two great bangers at the gate,
and we still had a feast...
in front of us.
But what stopped me in
my tracks was the mole.
We had the seven moles,
and this wasn't even on the menu for us.
She just brought it out,
one of her random moles, and it's so dark.
I was like, okay,
I'll give it a little try.
It is absurd.
It's so rich.
It's like,
dark and deeply cooked and toasted.
The texture is, like, smooth.
It's a little fatty.
It's got a sweetness to it as well.
It's deep of, like,
this roasted chili combined with, like,
this dark chocolate,
almost espresso-like level of flavor.
It turned the pork into...
a Michelin-star bite.
I mean, this is...
like a transformative sauce,
and that is a perfect example
of the power of a good mole.
My brain is opening up to the idea that
we might just be getting started here.
I mean, if that's where we're at now,
who knows where we'll go next?
Moving on.
We started Oaxaca on the street,
but now it's time to hit the Michelin
Bib Gourmand level at Alfonsina,
where the whole M.O.
is to create all their foods
as sustainably as possible.
Instead of using granulated sugar,
they squeeze it out of fresh sugar cane...
on site in front of your eyes.
We did a simple four-course.
Solid dessert.
And like everything else Gaby
has had me try in Oaxaca,
it was...
wonderful,
and it turns out the food is inspired
by the chef's mom's home cooking.
So jokingly, I asked,
is her food even better?
And, well,
he sent me to his mom's house to find out.
And you know,
cooking runs in the family because
Tia Elvia runs a breakfast-only
restaurant out of her home.
And it's a beautifully short menu.
But here's the thing.
They have no restaurant cooktop.
It's just two bricks,
a wire rack set over a flame,
and a massive stone comal.
Something tells me this
lady does not f*** around.
So Tia Elvia took our menus and said,
get ready.
I was born ready.
First off,
eggs cooked in hoja santa on a warm,
handmade, freshly ground corn tortilla.
It was so simple,
it had me concerned that it
might be a little boring.
The salsa is incredible.
Better than any bullshit breakfast
taco you're going to get in
Austin or everywhere else.
The texture is
insane.
The fragrance of the corn
combined with the egg.
They actually seasoned it properly.
And then that, like,
herbaceousness from the hoja santa.
I don't want anything else at all.
Perfect as it is.
But also, this salsa is incredible.
That's tremendous.
Next up, Tia's original mole recipe.
That's absurd.
Perfect.
I think this is my favorite mole I've had.
It's so viscous.
It coats your palate
almost like peanut butter.
I taste the intensity of the mole.
I taste the salty sort of
brininess of the cheese.
And of course,
the fragrance of that sweet,
beautiful corn.
I want to come live here with her.
Okay, what's next?
The hits just kept coming.
I'm already tapped in.
Memela.
A perfect corn tortilla topped
with lard and fresh cheese.
Oh.
Oh, my God.
That is incredibly good.
Another chile relleno taco.
Jesus Gaby.
Even chilaquiles.
This is absurd.
One of the best chilaquiles I've ever had.
And last of all,
we might have something special here.
Costilla frita,
fried ribs cooked in a fresh tomato salsa.
This is...
ridiculous.
10 out of 10, no changes.
Zero.
How often do I say that?
That bite was easily the
best of the trip so far.
And this is like a pinnacle example
of the culture and the food,
not just of Oaxaca, but of Mexico.
It's like an attention to
detail that is bar none.
And it feels like we're experiencing
it in the way that it was
meant to be experienced.
Very, very traditional.
We're literally in her home,
in her front yard.
She's not even cooking with
conventional equipment.
It's like wood-fired everything.
She's making this as hard as possible.
She has every reason
to miss something here,
and she's fucking nailing it
better than most chefs do.
I mean, it's fucking insane.
So we're in search of the best
Mexican food in the world,
and I almost feel like at this point,
we've found it.
How do we keep going
from here is my question.
Really good local ingredients
prepared properly.
Is the food just being cooked
in someone's home in Mexico the
greatest Mexican food in the world?
Only one way to find out.
Okay.
Our final destination of
Oaxaca is Casa Oaxaca.
There's so much to say
about this restaurant.
It's arguably the most influential
modern restaurant in all of Oaxaca.
Many many,
many many
many restaurants have been
influenced by this place.
We're here to try everything.
Just get the last final strong
tasting of Oaxaca before we move on.
We were presented with a
simple tlayuda to dip in salsa,
a chile de agua filled with ceviche,
a tostada with crab, and finally,
an insect tostada with
crickets and mealworms.
But the best bite surprised even me.
That's the best tomato salad
I've ever had in my life.
It's fucking insane.
I feel wrong saying this,
but out of everything,
this simple little tomato
salad is remarkable.
It's so balanced,
and it leans directly into, like,
the unbelievable produce of Oaxaca.
So you got mini tomatillos,
local red tomatoes, grapefruit supreme,
and this black sapote.
I'm not a huge tomato salad guy,
and this is my favorite dish
in the whole restaurant.
Oh, margarita time.
Mezcalita time.
I do not know how anything will top
the experience we've had so far.
In fact,
the spots we've been going
to have been so good,
I started saving every
single place on my maps.
And the reason I can do that easily
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Now, on to the next stop.
Of course I love Oaxaca,
but everyone talks about really two
places when it comes to food in Mexico.
Oaxaca and Mexico City.
Those are the best
places to eat after all,
right?
What if there was a hidden gem that
has never gotten the love it deserves?
I have no expectations,
but a lot of excitement for this one.
Los Mochis in Sinaloa.
I had never even heard of this
place until my chef friend Luis,
who's from there, told me.
I think it's the best trip.
See you soon.
I love you.
Luis, I love you too.
We've got restaurants
literally floating in the sea,
supposedly the greatest
seafood in the country,
and more styles of aguachile
than I knew existed.
Turns out we might not be
walking into a hidden gem,
but a damn near seafood mecca.
But then Gaby surprised me again,
proving there's even more to
northern Mexico than mariscos.
So we're in Burritos Beli.
Los number one.
Los number one in Los Mochis, but around.
This is an amazing experience.
Since you're watching how
they're doing the flour tortilla,
this is an expertise that
only this woman will have.
Like, in this region,
the elasticity is very
important for the tortilla,
and this is the perfect
size for a burrito.
They're basically rolling every tortilla,
immediately cooking it,
immediately stuffing it,
and then you eat it.
This might be the fastest burrito
rolling I've ever seen in my life.
So there's so much fat in the tortilla
that it creates a translucency
in the final dough.
That's a good thing.
That's a good sign.
They're so thin.
You can see the filling from the outside.
We have three here.
This one is the potato.
This one, I think, is the barbacoa.
The chicharron.
Oh, my God.
Insane.
First of all, the tortilla is so tender,
it, like,
melts in your mouth.
And it's buttery, too.
It has, like, a buttery quality to it.
But the filling, this is my big thing.
It is seasoned perfectly to
the absolute limit with salt.
The porky flavor comes through.
They're kind of frying it in its own fat
because you're getting a little bit of
crunch from the exterior of the meat,
a little bit of chew.
That fatty,
sort of gelatinous chicharron
skin melts in your mouth.
It's chewy.
It's crunchy.
This is probably the best
burrito I've ever had.
It doesn't need anything else.
There's no rice in it.
There's no cheese in it.
There's not, like,
a bunch of tomato, onion.
It's just literally tortilla, bean,
meat, and it's unbelievable.
Next up, barbacoa.
He's burrito drunk.
What am I doing wrong?
The meat is incredible.
Even this sort of, like,
fibrous part of the meat is so tender,
the second you chew, it just,
like, gives way.
These are things that are made every day.
They're lifted up by the culture.
But if you were to go somewhere in, like,
New York and put this out for $20,
everyone would be like, oh,
my God, you're the best of all time.
These guys are doing it every day.
They're just doing it the right way,
And respecting the tradition
of the recipe of their family.
I'm blown away,
and we're starting off at a level I don't
know if we're going to recover from.
I've eaten in all sorts of insane
situations around the globe,
but our next spot is something
I have never even seen before.
But first, meet Gaby's friend Irma,
our Los Mochis expert.
I trust her because her
family owns El Farallon,
one of the most legendary seafood
restaurants in Los Mochis.
So I blindly followed Irma onto a boat,
and after the most beautiful,
relaxing ride of my life,
and a little show from
the dolphins—by the way,
shout out to the dolphins—and maybe a
little bit of boat shopping for Gaby...
Let's buy that one!
That one?
Okay, I'll have my guy call them.
We pulled up to a restaurant
in the middle of the sea.
This is the best.
I'm blown away.
I have no words.
Well, I have some.
The first two words that
come to mind are: I'm hungry.
Now,
I know this looks like a floating shack,
but it's actually a seafood oasis
called La Casita del Ostion.
This is the stuff I love.
We walked on and they hammered us with
a massive spread of fresh seafood.
I mean,
we hadn't even exchanged
anything beyond a quick hello,
and they went to work on oysters.
Not so sure about this guy's technique,
but you know what?
I'm not gonna question it.
First of all, listen.
Nothing.
That might be the best part.
Peace and tranquility.
Okay, so we have oysters here,
fresh, shucked right in front of us,
very simply...
Unbelievable.
Wow.
Holy fuck.
Salud.
Woo!
These are the best oysters I've ever had.
The texture is incredible.
It has, like, a super meaty chew to it.
And then we have a really
interesting ceviche.
They scrape this,
and then they're marinating
it with lime juice,
etcetera, which cooks it.
So you get this sort of, like,
fluffy texture.
All sorts of vegetables I'm seeing.
Cheers.
You know.
I've never,
ever had any ceviche like this in my life.
As it compresses when you bite it,
it becomes actually quite moist, like,
because of all the acid and
the lime juice that's in there.
This one has, like,
a lot of texture in it,
and it still has the same meatiness
that a nice cooked piece of fish does.
It's phenomenal.
It's like the essence of the energy
out here is translating into the food.
I love it.
Next,
we knocked out some shrimp that were
cooked in seawater before our last
dish: their impeccable grilled fish,
which you assemble yourself
on a fresh tortilla.
A touch of mayo,
add a nice little morsel of grilled fish,
touch of onion,
and a good amount of salsa.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Wow.
Right?
Wow.
Seriously, it's absolutely incredible.
And the flavor of the fish, so fresh.
The sweetness of the onion, like perfume.
Whole fish,
a little bit of char on the skin.
Clean, simple flavor.
Everything we've had in Sinaloa
so far has all been about,
like, emphasizing natural flavor,
just coaxing it in the
right direction with really
good technique.
Welcome to Sinaloa.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And I'm never leaving.
Thank you.
Now it's on to one of the biggest
reasons I came to Sinaloa.
Aguachile.
This is the dish that Luis got me to fly
all the way out here in the first place.
After all, it is the aguachile birthplace.
So we got set up with a
red and green version.
Now, typically,
I prefer green,
but we'll see which one
is the best of the two.
There's our bite.
Mm.
Sinaloa.
You can't keep hitting home
runs every single time I eat.
It's not fair.
It's absurd.
I've been to one, two,
three-star Michelin
restaurants that do aguachile,
and I can tell that this
is what they're going for,
and they still can't
achieve it at this level.
It's so flavorful, it's so balanced.
But also just the freshness is just, like,
hitting you from every angle,
from texture to flavor
to balance of flavor.
It's fucking unbelievable.
That was just the green.
So how's the red?
Wow.
I'm in heaven.
I guess we move on.
I don't want to leave, but we move on.
Before I left Sinaloa,
I got to head to Irma's restaurant,
El Farallon, and we finally found Luis.
He's been missing for a couple days,
but that's all right.
We had scallops, shrimp,
the whole gamut of seafood.
But then I saw a dish that
stopped me in my tracks.
I mean, I'm talking as dark as night,
made of burnt habanero.
So how good could this really be?
Favorite that we've had in
the world of raw dishes.
Amazing marriage of tradition and new.
The technique in that bang.
Fruity sweetness from it is insane.
Combined with the dark flavor
of the habanero is absurd.
If you look up Sinaloa and you
look for videos about food,
you probably will not find anything.
And after being here,
I'm realizing that that is probably
the biggest mistake that could
exist on planet Earth today.
I can't believe nobody has really been
here to talk about the cuisine here.
Producing some of the greatest food
in the entire country of Mexico,
in the whole world.
And we're not even done.
We have one last place.
We've covered the origin, Oaxaca.
Then we've gone all the way up north
to the seafood capital of Mexico.
We have our last place, Mexico City,
where the pure enjoyment of street food
at the highest level is juxtaposed with
the beauty of one of the most dynamic
restaurant scenes in the world,
including the number one
restaurant in all of Mexico.
But to name the best
Mexican food in the world,
it's going to require a unique strategy.
We're doing something
different in Mexico City.
We're stair-stepping our dishes.
We're leading to a top of the mountain.
We're starting at the
base of the mountain.
It is the number one obvious example
of what Mexico City is about.
It is where classic meets innovation.
Al pastor would not exist without the
introduction of people from Lebanon.
The trompo having the
spinning rotisserie of meat,
and then the Mexican people,
combining their ingenuity and cuisine,
has created arguably one of the
most iconic tacos in human history.
This place is so professional,
but this is great.
I always feel skeptical when
I see chef toques and tacos.
It's a game changer, isn't it?
Game changer.
The tortilla is unbelievable.
So fragrant, so soft.
The meat is fatty and like
perfectly seared on every side.
And the juicy, sweet pineapple.
I mean, listen,
it's a beautiful al pastor.
I love it.
It's a perfect place to start...
But where we are going to end,
it's going to blow your mind.
We move on.
We couldn't have this
video without this dish.
Maybe you saw that coming.
But next up,
things in here that I didn't even know
existed from a traditional cantina,
a type of restaurant mostly
unknown to outsiders,
but locals love.
Gaby took us to one of
the most celebrated,
El Sella.
And I'm going to be honest,
it looks a little too simple.
This could be a situation
where looks are deceiving,
because this could be
the best meal in Mexico.
Hidden in plain sight.
The energy is giving me energy.
All the people talking.
And the crazy thing is there's no music.
The music is just...
Just like...
this.
We just sat down and already...
Yeah.
One of the best things about
cantinas is the service.
The service is amazing here.
What is this?
Like a...
Chamorro?
Yeah, this is
my favorite dish here.
Oh, my God.
Another dish.
Two different dishes.
We have a chorizo, a sizzling platter,
and then this beautiful
braised pork shank.
The chorizo smells...
Amazing.
Oh, my God, smell that.
We call it chorizo a la sidra.
Smoky sweet porky.
I mean, it just smells unbelievable.
This feels like a very Spanish dish.
And they even served it with bread.
Not just tortillas, but also sliced bread.
Wow.
That looks tremendous.
I didn't even need a knife.
It just, like, came out.
Cilantro, onion, cilantro, some chili.
That's a lot of chili.
It's habanero.
Oh, okay.
I don't want that much.
Amazing.
I love this because it's
just like homestyle cooking.
This is exactly what you
will find in cantinas.
The Mexican, the Spanish.
But the feeling of the homestyle,
everything feels familiar here.
The waiters, they will know you.
They will know what you drink,
they will know what you eat.
You can spend here hours.
It's just very uncomplicated.
You don't need to feel stuffy or
nervous or like you need to dress nice,
throw something on, sit down,
and then just eat and
hang out with your friend.
That's like my kind of day.
How do I try the chorizo?
I think with bread.
Amazing...
I knew you would love it.
Yeah.
The chorizo is by far my favorite.
Really?
Seasoned crazy phenomenal.
It's super acidic, but also very salted,
very, like,
unctuous.
And there's a smokiness to it,
and it's just like bathing in its own fat.
When you're done eating the chorizo,
you take your bread and you mop
that chorizo fat up and enjoy that.
This is an experience that you
have to have when visiting Mexico.
No reservation.
You show up, eat,
hang out, drink a little bit,
dip.
This might be the most slept
on thing in Mexico City.
I love it.
On to the next.
We started with two classics,
but our next step up is Maizajo,
arguably one of the best
taquerias in all of Mexico City,
possibly in Mexico.
And a place where they treat corn like
gold.
But it's their mind-bending taco
creations that teach us exactly
what makes Mexico City so special.
Chef Santi, good friend of mine.
Thank you for having us here again.
He's a new young chef, but also,
more importantly,
perfect example of breathing
new life into old traditions.
Santi told me he'd give me the
best the restaurant had to offer...
So we started out with a bang.
Dish number one, a shrimp flauta,
or his inspiration of it.
Whole shrimp
left all in one piece,
wrapped with the corn tortilla that
they make in-house and then deep-fried.
The corn tortilla wrapped around
the shrimp protects it just like
it would its natural shell.
The meat should be cooked perfectly,
and then the exterior crunchy.
Cheers.
That is special.
It's not a big list of ingredients.
Just like the quality and the technique.
It's still keeping that tradition
of simple but delicious intact.
But it's also creative because simply
the way that they're making it.
He could just break down the shrimp,
wrap it in a tortilla, and fry it,
but leaving it whole and making it
look nice and presenting it this way.
Great example.
Onto the next dish.
So this is his suadero taco.
This one's a little bit more traditional.
This is my favorite taco from all Maizajo.
Wow.
It tastes like the heart and
soul of a proper suadero taco.
But then he has all these
sort of atypical toppings,
like the pickled onion and chili,
which I'll put on
that slight bit of elevation.
The chefiness.
Mexico City, baby.
We're not quite at the
highest level of fine dining.
We are at where haute cuisine
meets the ultra traditionality.
Next up, the New York strip taco.
The tortilla is made by hand.
New York strip, the best quality meat,
sliced ultra thin,
plated really beautifully.
Amazing.
Doesn't need anything else.
Nailed it.
Absolutely incredible.
The meat is cooked perfectly.
It's exactly like I like it,
sliced ultra thin,
but it has a lot of intramuscular
fat so it doesn't go dry,
and it's just kissed on the grill.
It's full of moisture, full of juice.
Seasoned perfectly.
Needs absolutely nothing.
Truly perfection.
We started at the absolute baseline,
the foundation of what makes Mexico City,
Mexico City.
With a simple taco that's
been around a long time,
and now we're seeing it.
Young chefs reinventing the classics.
But before we end this video with
the number one restaurant in
the entire country of Mexico,
we first are visiting a restaurant
that goes by the name of Gaba.
A place that's supposedly pushing
the boundaries of what you can
actually eat every single day...
We started out with a
delicious hamachi crudo,
a tomato salad,
and a dish that finally made
chayote squash interesting to me.
But the next dish tops them all.
I cannot eat anymore.
You're doing so good.
I've been eating seven days in a row.
Now we have a tartare.
They're lightly smoking it and curing it.
Now we're stepping it up.
Now we're feeling the Mexico
City of it all on tostada.
It's the best tartare I've ever had.
This is made with a cut of beef
that has a shitload of flavor,
and it's cured and it's aged,
so all that flavor is super
compacted and maximized...
And guess what?
The salt level's perfect.
I know we're not rating,
but this is like a 9.8.
9.9, maybe a 10.
In the world of tartares, frankly,
it doesn't get much better than that.
And somehow when I thought
that they hit the ceiling,
an unlikely dish challenged
my mindset even further.
I have never been a huge fan of tripe.
This is amazing.
This chef is a baller.
He's risky because not a lot
of people will get you tripe
in this kind of restaurant,
you know,
but it still has the flavor
that we know from a taco,
that he's the source of his creativity.
This is a place I will spend all my money.
I also will spend all your money here.
It's the best tripe I've ever had,
and I really don't like tripe.
And I went in for a second, third bite.
This is how all tripes should be served.
And now for the star of the show,
the pork chop al pastor
reimagined for the modern world.
Arguably the largest and craziest
al pastor you'll ever see.
So how does it compare
to our favorite top taco?
This is the next level.
Al pastor taco has been
around for a long time,
but now we have al pastor inspiring a
full-on unique dish in and of itself.
A beautiful grilled pork chop,
bruleed pineapple.
Instead of a taco,
you have this beautifully dressed lettuce.
This is the marriage
that makes Mexico City,
Mexico City.
It is its own dish now,
but it's still equally
delicious in a new way,
while still respecting what makes a
traditional al pastor taco amazing,
but also new.
Also a different experience.
Beautifully done.
Bravo.
It is modern cuisine perfectly done.
And by that,
I mean it is deliciousness first,
beauty second.
And I'm not saying the
dishes aren't beautiful.
They're stunning, but they're not,
like,
so lost in making it beautiful that
they forget about making it delicious.
Some of the bites here have been
some of the best bites I've ever had.
But where do they fit in the
best Mexican food in the world?
So we move on to our final location,
the number three restaurant on earth
and the number one restaurant in Mexico,
Quintonil.
So you want to talk about
innovation meets tradition.
This is the highest form of innovation.
We have a lot of courses coming.
Let's see what they look like.
Can fine dining really deliver the
same satisfaction or what they argue,
a better meal than all of the
original dishes that we tried?
First up, the snack course.
They started us off with pescadilla,
which contains tuna from Baja, caviar,
Thai chilies, and a grasshopper salsa.
A lot of flavor.
Just one bite.
It's funny,
after eating everything we've eaten, like,
yeah, I know those flavors.
Not too dissimilar to many of the
things that we ate in Sinaloa.
She's joining cultures in small bites.
In big dishes,
it's not only the taste of a region,
it's like a bomba.
Like a what?
Bomba.
Bomba!
Oh!
Next snack.
Mussel tostada, pickled mussel,
grilled and glazed.
Cheers.
These are the kind of moments
I'm looking for in this meal.
Explosion of flavor.
So deeply flavorful, super layered,
but also simple.
That's a bite.
I could eat probably 30 or 40 of those.
Okay, we're rolling well so far,
but could I really eat 30
or 40 of this next dish?
Fried escamoles, ant larva.
They call it the Mexican caviar.
That's a better angle...
It's like an aged cheese flavor.
A little fried donut.
This reminds me a lot of my grandmother.
She used to do, like,
a pasta like this en tomate, very simple.
And then she will add cotija cheese.
I think it's like a ratatouille, like,
effect.
You know,
ratatouille or I don't
know how to pronounce it.
Pulling the emotion out of you.
It's a beautiful thing.
Snack time is over.
Now it's on to our first
main course of the night.
Butternut squash salad,
a foam of horchata, brown butter,
and rice vinegar dressing,
and then what looks like
toasted pumpkin seed...
The more you eat it, the better it gets,
honestly.
It's like a perfect salad.
Perfectly balanced, creamy.
Salt level's amazing.
It's still the same mentality, though,
which is super simple, done really,
really well.
We've seen tlayuda in Oaxaca,
and it was phenomenal.
But in front of me,
we have the fine dining version,
completed with a crab salad,
a sauce made of pipián and galangal.
Very Asian inspired.
Yeah, that is impressive.
This is where they're really
starting to blur the line and
create their own cuisine here.
You can taste the inspiration of,
you know, Mexican flavors in there,
but it also...
Thai flavors, these Asian flavors.
This is where the innovation is now,
creating its own cuisine.
Now we have reached a course
that is touching tradition.
Pork tamale with an onion ash.
Wow.
This feels like an iconic
reinterpretation of a classic.
But speaking of classics,
the mole has arrived, and I'll be honest,
I'm nervous for Tía Elvia back in Oaxaca.
Will this be the best
mole I had in Mexico?
Wow.
What a dish.
It is probably the best
mole I've ever had.
It's absurd.
I want, like, a big fucking cup.
This mole, take home with me.
Quintonil's was absolutely delicious,
but so was Tía Elvia's,
so I gotta give it to Tía.
Come on.
I feel that we're
reaching a crescendo here.
We've come all the way back
to traditional flavors,
and they're really hitting heavy now.
I'm full.
The final dish of the entire evening.
This is where it all comes together.
A cornbread base with a passion
fruit foam and a burnt corn leaf ash.
Oh my.
That is a 10 out of 10 dessert.
That is a banger of an
ending to an incredible meal.
A beautiful crescendo by Quintonil.
But we have to ask,
what is the best Mexican
food in the world?
On one end,
I'd say the burrito and the seafood
in Los Mochis was probably at
the top of my list. But wait,
wait wait,
wait wait.
So was Gaba kind of at the same level.
And also, so was the cantina,
and so was the incredible
breakfast made by hand.
So how are we supposed
to pick a winner here?
I think what I'm realizing is these
were all equally great in their own way.
And this isn't a cop out.
It doesn't matter how much money
you spend or how fancy your meal is.
Sure,
you can have great on
both ends of the spectrum,
but really,
it comes down to making it the right way.
Taking the ingredients that they
have that are already around them
locally and just treating them
with respect and actually giving a
when they make the food.
And Tía Elvia cared just
as much as Quintonil cared.
Quintonil cared just as
much as the cantina cared.
And everybody in those individual
restaurants seated next to each
other were having a great time.
And that is what the best
Mexican food is all about...
Love you.
Subscribe.
Bye.