23 Feb 2018 8 Comments
in Eating Out, On the Road Tags: Abastos market, Casa Oaxaca, chapulines, Del Maguey, La Biznaga, Mexican cooking, Mexico, mole, Oaxaca, Tlayuda
Oaxaca, they say, is the culinary capital of Mexico. I was eager to put this to the test.
I am still digesting Mexico City tacos when we arrive and check into our hotel. But my pal Mike rouses me from a brief respite on my bed that could’ve easily turned into an evening in, and we are soon walking the beautiful historic streets of the old center of Oaxaca city. More
26 Jan 2018 2 Comments
in Observations, On the Road Tags: Chichicapa, Del Maguey, mezcal, mole, Oaxaca, Paciano Nolasco Cruz, Ron Cooper, San Luis Del Rio, Santa Catarina Minas, Teotitlan del Valle
I’m partial to Del Maguey single village mezcal. And not simply because my pal, Michael, is a partner in the company. (Though he has winced on the rare occasion he has discovered one of his competitor’s products in my liquor cabinet.) The mezcals are complex and delicious, I like the backstory, the commitment to preserving tradition, and the Ken Price labels. But I would become an even greater advocate upon traveling deep into Oaxaca with Mike, visiting two of Del Maguey’s palenques (where the mezcals are made), and meeting the men who make them.
Wild tobala agave at the Del Maguey bodega
It was a bright southern Mexico morning when the car picked up Mike and me, freshly filled up on breakfast mole and huevos, to head south out of the city and into the agave countryside. The day breaks open like an egg, the light harsh and silver as the swords of the espadin, elevation halfway to the sun and soon you are shielding your eyes. The landscape is dusty and weedy and cactusy, not the way I pictured Oaxaca, punctuated with the bursting spikes of the agave that will define our day. More
26 Nov 2016 13 Comments
in Food, Humor, Recipes Tags: Anthony Bourdain, chapulines, Del Maguey, grasshoppers, Mexican cuisine, mole, Nicolas Cage, Oaxaca, Thanksgiving
I had just finished my last post about my pal Mike and his wife Bridget harassing me from Oaxaca with their photos and videos of delicious meals, when they returned — bearing gifts!
There was a lovely and colorful dishtowel, a jar of black mole paste which to this cook is as good as its weight in gold, and there was a small jar of chapulines — roasted grasshoppers.
Chapulines
On the adventurous eater scale of 1 to 10, I consider myself about a 7. I’m no Anthony Bourdain. But I’ve recently been venturing more deeply into the euphemistically named world of “variety” meats, have sampled the slimiest offerings the world’s oceans put forth, and am a fan of such culinary curiosities as Japanese fermented natto and the stinking durian. There’s not a lot I won’t try, at least once. But one taxonomic class I have steadfastly resisted ingesting is that of the insect. More
18 Nov 2016 7 Comments
in Recipes, Video Tags: Del Maguey, Enrique Olvera, Mexican cuisine, Mexico, mezcal, mole, Oaxaca, Rick Bayless, Zapotec indians
My pal Mike likes to taunt me with photos and videos of his business trips to Mexico, which are frequent. See, if you haven’t been paying attention to previous posts, his business is Mexico — mezcal, that is: Del Maguey, the best in the world.
Mike in Mexico
His provocations are most often in the form of eyewitness video accounts of parades in Oaxaca, where there seems to always be a parade in progress, or photos of voluptuous window mannequins with whom he is certain I am a perfect romantic match. More
13 Nov 2015 16 Comments
in Beverages, Food, Video Tags: cocktails, Del Maguey, Mexican cuisine, Mexico, mezcal, Modelo, mole, Negroni, Oaxaca, Ron Cooper
“We want to have you guys over when we get the place cleaned up a bit,” my pal Gordon had been telling me for five or six years, over the course of two different “places”.
The time had finally come. Gordon and spouse Lori, who had moved into their “new” house a year or so before, were far enough along in their renovations that they now felt comfortable hosting. But nothing ever being simple, we had been trying to schedule this particular dinner party for a matter of months.
The mezcals of Del Maguey
The theme would loosely be “Mezcal & Mole” — or, at least, that was the subject line of the group texts bouncing around during the protracted planning phase. More
skinny girls & mayonnaise 