On the southern curve of Mexico on the Pacific, the mountains and microclimates of Oaxaca have nurtured a number of distinctive foods. Oaxaquenos have had some time to refine their culinary tradition: 2,000-year-old Monte Alban was one of the first Mesoamerican cities.
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The Oaxacan tamale is rectangular and made of smoothly ground cornmeal wrapped in a dark green banana leaf, which imparts a distinctive herbaceousness and slight color to the masa. Taqueria la Oaxaquena (6113 W. Diversey and 3382 N. Milwaukee) offers two types of Oaxacan tamales: a vegetable blend and a chicken mole, both tasty, though the powerful sauce somewhat overwhelms the vegetables. Off their “secret menu” you can get another Oaxacan specialty: chapulines, or roasted grasshoppers. They’re slightly spiced with red chile and lime and can be sprinkled over tamales, mole, or just about anything else, though if you ask me they’re most notable for the bragging rights they confer.
Quesadillas and Tlayudas
Rick Bayless of Topolobampo (445 N. Clark) makes an effort to offer a range of moles on a rotating basis. A recent special (the menu changes monthly) was lamb with mole coloradito, made with anchos, chocolate, and almonds. Deep red and almost ketchuplike, it overwhelmed the meat a little, but coloradito tamales with cremini were excellent. Chuck Pine of Chuck’s Southern Comfort Cafe (5557 W. 79th, Burbank, but currently closed for renovations after a fire), who used to cook under Bayless, whips up a mole amarillo, the yellowish and relatively thin member of the mole family made with costeno or chilcostle chiles, and folds it into quesadillas with chicken and yerba santa.
