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Oaxaca Night Food Tour: Culinary Backstreets
5.0
6 Ratings
Oaxaca de Juárez
This afternoon-to-evening tour offers an exploration of Oaxaca’s backstreets during a culinary transition, allowing participants to savor some of the city’s finest nighttime food venues. Additionally, it provides insight into their significant contribution to sustaining Oaxaca’s civic life.
This afternoon-to-evening tour offers an exploration of Oaxaca’s backstreets during a culinary transition, allowing participants to savor some of the city’s finest nighttime food venues. Additionally, it provides insight into their significant contribution to sustaining Oaxaca’s civic life.
Duration:
5 hours
Cancellation:
24 hours
Highlights
- Mercado 20 de Noviembre - Oaxaca’s culinary scene is a delightful blend of two worlds, both equally appetizing. In the morning, a vibrant array of eateries and vendors open up, ready to kickstart the day for Oaxacans. As evening approaches, a new wave of stalls and vendors emerge, ensuring the city’s culinary festivities continue. Locals will tell…
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Mercado 20 de Noviembre - Oaxaca’s culinary scene is a delightful blend of two worlds, both equally appetizing. In the morning, a vibrant array of eateries and vendors open up, ready to kickstart the day for Oaxacans. As evening approaches, a new wave of stalls and vendors emerge, ensuring the city’s culinary festivities continue. Locals will tell you: the true flavors of the city come alive at night.
On this afternoon-to-evening tour, participants will explore this culinary transition, savoring some of the city’s finest nighttime food spots while understanding their vital role in Oaxaca’s community life. The journey includes strolling through historic neighborhoods and public spaces, offering a glimpse of a side of the city that few visitors experience, day or night. - Oaxaca - The adventure begins in Oaxaca’s historic center, just as the night food stalls start to appear and a fresh set of aromas fills the air. The first stop is a vendor outside one of Oaxaca’s main markets, serving tortas and tostadas to homeward-bound workers since 1930. Joining the after-work crowd, participants will taste their renowned and hearty creations. The tour continues to a new family-run restaurant, now a neighborhood favorite, dedicated to one of Oaxaca’s essential ingredients: beans, served from large clay pots. Here, a sampler of their comforting dishes, which creatively honor traditional Oaxacan cuisine, will be enjoyed. The exploration proceeds to a small shop run by a local woman passionate about cacao and chocolate, where her artisanal creations will be sampled.
- Iglesia del Carmen Alto - As the tour progresses through the neighborhood, another iconic streetside business will be visited. This family-run stand has been selling tortillas stuffed with chicken and mole since 1965. Now managed by the fourth generation, it is a strategic stop for evening shift workers, hungry locals, and those looking to fuel up before a night out.
- Museo Belber Jimenez - Energized, the group will join locals in a nearby park to enjoy one of the most traditional and satisfying Oaxacan street foods, corn in a cup, perfect for a leisurely stroll. With cup in hand, the night parade continues to encounter the heavyweight of Oaxacan late-night meals, the tlayuda, a large, thin, and crisp tortilla topped with various ingredients. Just as the taco is to Mexico City, the tlayuda is to Oaxaca – affordable, filling, and endlessly customizable. A visit to a local favorite, selling them since 1952, is included. To conclude, traditional Oaxacan sweets from a stand in a church courtyard will be tasted, followed by a mezcal tasting led by a young master distiller, one of the few women crafting this agave spirit. It’s a perfect conclusion to an evening filled with the guardians of Oaxacan culinary traditions and their nocturnal endeavors.
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What's Included
- Licensed Guide
- Dinner
- Alcoholic Beverages
- Snacks
- Bottled water
- Licensed Guide
- Dinner
- Alcoholic Beverages
- Snacks
- Bottled water
What's Not Included
- Private transportation
- Private transportation
Location
Flores Magón 209
Flores Magón
Meeting Point and Maps:
In front of La Casa de Mezcal
Flores Magón # 209, OAX_RE_BENITO JUAREZ, Centro, 68000 Oaxaca de Juárez, Oax., Mexico
Cancellation Policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
Customer Ratings
5.0
(6 Ratings)
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179clivem
Feb 16, 2025
Brilliant day! - Veronica was a totally wonderful guide, so chatty and fun, and we loved trying all the delicious food and eating at street stalls we otherwise wouldn’t have been confident enough to try! Had a brilliant time. Oaxaca is just a magical place and has such a special energy at night - we did the 3:30-8:30pm tour. The only drawback was it lasted an extra hour than what it said (value for money, sure, to get extra time, but tiring when you’re jet lagged) and would have personally appreciated keeping to time. The mescal tasting at the end of the night was a bit too long for our taste as it was primarily a food tour and we were there for nearly an hour which felt too slow. But wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the tour and Veronica was friendly and full of recommendations for the rest of our stay in Oaxaca as well.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Gdstuart
Feb 15, 2025
THE way to experience Oaxacan cuisine! - Luis and Pablo curated a very special tour for us. We visited seven venues and gained precisely the overview of Oaxacan cuisine we were seeking. We tried six different preparations of black beans (who knew?), classic tortas and empanadas, and even produced our own batch of chocolate, from roasting and grinding the beans to consuming the finished product.
The mezcal sampling (over an hour long) was the high point for me. We visited with a second-generation artisanal producer whose father started the Paraiso palenque and now she's running it. She provided a comprehensive introduction to mezcal production which was translated real-time by Luis (as the evening wore on, this because pretty hilarious). We sampled four distinctively different mezcals. She explained how the different agave varieties affected the flavor of the resulting product. After we left Paraiso, we had one more stop at a late-night pork taco food truck that was bustling at 10PM.
The tour took us through much of Oaxaca's colonial center. Luis and Pablo pointed out several museums and venues that we visited in our remaining days in Oaxaca. They really enhanced our visit to this beautiful, safe colonial city.
If you decide to do a food tour in Oaxaca, choose carefully. Some agencies merely provide a 90-minute walk through the Mercado Benito Juárez, and tour participants must buy their own food. The real heart of Oaxacan cuisine is outside the markets. It was well worth paying a bit more to visit these venues and meet the indigenous producers who are paying homage to classic Oaxacan cuisine.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Sheila683
Feb 11, 2025
Snack Like a Local - This was our 10th food tour with Culinary Backstreets. Clearly they are doing something right — and our Oaxaca tour was no exception. Even though we’ve been to Oaxaca several times, our guide introduced us to some places we’d never even heard of. The pleasant walk was punctuated by tasty treats, including classic street food (tortas, empanadas, tlayudas) and ancestral delights (frijoles, chocolate and mezcal). The guide was friendly and knowledgeable, and the vendors were very welcoming. We will be back.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Global776430
Jan 26, 2025
Food & cultural immersion in Oaxaca - Our guide Veronica was excellent, engaging, fantastic explanations & stories. Wonderful selections of foods & experiences. The highlight of our visit to Oaxaca!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Seattlefamilytravel
Dec 17, 2024
A perfect tour! - We had a tour with Luis. It was the best food tour we’ve ever been on - completely exceeded our expectations. Luis was a perfect guide. He obviously cares a lot about the local food and traditions and did a great job sharing his knowledge with us. We visited numerous places that we wouldn’t have found or thought about going on our own. The mezcal tasting was the highlight of the tour - we learned so much.
Highly recommended!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Josephpf9813pe
Dec 10, 2024
delicious and fun - While in Oaxaca we did the two available Culinary Backstreets tours and recommend them both. Veronica was a fabulous guide for the night time walk which was a completely different experience from the daytime one. They are complementary and very fun.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
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