The first is pozole, a soup that’s packed with corn. It’s made with a large-kernel white corn called cacahuacintle and chicken (or pork) in a pork bone broth. There are an incredible number of corn varieties in Mexico, but the one used in pozole has a light flavor and no sweetness to it. People then add whatever additional ingredients they like—lettuce, chopped onion, radish, avocado, a squeeze of lime. A lot of people add herbs or red pepper, too. There are three colors of pozole: white (pozole blanco), red (pozole rojo) and green (pozole verde). The red and green versions are spicy. Since nobody in my family likes spicy food, we always eat the white one.
White pozole
Pozole inevitably comes with chicharrón (fried pork rinds)
Pozole soup has been eaten in Mexico since Aztec times—when it apparently contained the flesh of humans during ritual sacrifices to the gods. Partially because of this history and because it uses corn that’s a little more expensive, pozole used to be eaten only on special days. Today, however, many restaurants serve it year-round. Apparently some of the best pozole restaurants are in Mexico City and the central highlands. One of the more famous ones is a family restaurant called La Casa de Toño. The pozole there is the red spicy kind, but it’s so popular that there’s usually a wait to get in.
Red pozole at La Casa de Toño
The next soup is consomé de pollo, a chicken consommé soup that has rice in it as well as chicken meat. Sometimes it also contains vegetables, but other restaurants make a simple version with just chicken and rice. People also add their preferred toppings, like chopped onion, avocado, or a squeeze of lime.
Consomé de pollo
The last soup is a tomato-based soup called sopa azteca. The key feature of this one is that it contains fried tortilla strips and cheese. And as you’d expect, people add avocado and lime to taste.
Sopa azteca
Soup is usually served in generous portions in Mexico, so it’s often enough to fill you up by itself. If you order something like tacos with it you may not be able to eat everything, so the smart thing to do is to check the size before you order.
The other food I recommend is Caesar salad, which actually originated in Mexico. It is said to have been created in 1927 by Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who owned a restaurant called Caesar’s Place in Tijuana. Tijuana is very close to the American border, which allowed the salad to become widespread in the US, and from there in Europe and even Japan. You’ll find Caesar salad on the menu at pretty much any restaurant in Mexico, and I would order it a lot when I first got here because I was already familiar with it. It looked simpler to me than Caesar salads in Japan—but it tasted so good. Caesar salad in Mexico is made simply, with romaine lettuce, chicken, croutons, and dressing. The dressing is so good that you can munch down a ton of lettuce with it.
Caesar salad
The restaurant that invented Caesar salad didn’t put chicken in it, and it looked a lot different than it does now—just big chunks of romaine tossed in dressing with pieces of baguette on top, which people would then eat with a knife and fork. My guess is that pretty much every restaurant in Mexico City serves Caesar salad with the romaine cut into bite-size pieces now, so you should definitely try it at Caesar’s Place if you ever go to Tijuana.
