How To Spend A Week in Oaxaca, Mexico

Photos by Josh Meister Photo.

We’ve now been living in Mexico for about eight months and had yet to travel very far – a big change from how we were living before we moved here! Oaxaca city had been at the top of my list for a while now, so we decided to spend a week there to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary.

First of all, pronunciation. The word “Oaxaca” actually comes from an indigenous language and was bestowed on the area by the Aztecs. And then to make it even more fun, Xs are particularly tricky in Spanish and can sometimes sound like an S or SH, like Ks, or like Hs. Trust me, just one of the many fun things about Spanish! In this case, it’s the latter, and the name of the city sounds like wah-haa-kah.

There’s a bunch of reasons why we wanted to check out this southern city, even at the beginning of summer. One of the biggies is, as usual, food. Similar to Mexico City, when you ask anyone about Oaxaca, the first thing they mention is the foods you have to try and the restaurants you have to check out. I’m not kidding, I had a list of over 50 places to eat just based on recommendations. Plus mezcal! Next on the list is culture. Oaxaca strives to preserve arts and culture in a really admirable way. Many of the villages surrounding the city focus on one specific craft, rug weaving or black pottery, for example, and some rely on vendors in the city to sell their goods. We’ll soon have a whole house to furnish and decorate, so doing some shopping was a big itinerary item for us. The city also hosts the Guelaguetza festival every July, in which indigenous people from all over the state come to the city to showcase their unique culture, in particular, dress and dance. Definitely want to hit this up one year! Lastly, more culture. Heh. So many museums, the botanical garden, a few historical sites, and several easy day trips. There’s a lot to explore here.

FOOD + DRINK

Alright, so food is an important topic when discussing Oaxaca. There’s a handful of higher-end restaurants, and I’m pretty sure we hit them all up. BTW, when I say higher-end, it’s essentially the price point of a nicer dinner in the States. For example, an appetizer, two entrees, four drinks, and a dessert at one of these guys cost us around $60 US with tip. Certainly more than we’re used to spending on dinner, but a steal for the caliber of the meal!

Of the nicer places, we really enjoyed Pitiona for dinner and had amazing lunches at both Casa Oaxaca and Los Danzantes. The food was outstanding at all of them, and the service even more so. Our last dinner, at Criollo, was – legit – an actual splurge, and sadly, our only disappointment. Although Criollo’s setting in a colonial mansion is gorgeous, they only offer a 7-course tasting menu, and only one of the courses was something we really enjoyed. Plus it was significantly more expensive than those first three. Womp womp.

For regular every day restaurants, our hands-down favorite was Boulenc. This place, dripping with bakery talent, serves all three meals, and is easily one of the best places to eat in Oaxaca. You could absolutely spend an entire day dining here because it’s that good. After three breakfasts in a row, we got a little self-conscious about the repeat visits, but apparently it’s not that unusual there, and we ate here at least once almost every day of our trip, enjoying the toasts and homemade English muffins at breakfast as well as the pizza and mezcal cocktails in the evening.

For breakfast, we also tried Pan Con Madre and Pan:Am. Both were good, but Boulenc had our hearts – and our bellies. We also got to indulge a little bit in the Jewish deli food we’ve been missing at Gourmand Delicatessen. It’s certainly no New York, but it did the trick for us as we’ve been without it for so long.

One of the staples of Oaxaca is the tlayuda. It’s often called a Mexican pizza, but only because of the form, I think. It’s a super large fried or toasted tortilla that is spread with beans and then a variety of other options including meat, cabbage, veggies, and salsa. Josh thought it was fine, I was not a fan. And mole is a must as well. Oaxaca is known as the “land of the seven moles”, so you know, kinda important here.

Three other restaurants that were high on our list are: Restaurante Tlamanalli, about 30 minutes drive outside the city in Teotitlan del Valle, a rug weaving village, which the NY Times lauds as did Anthony Bourdain; Itanoni, a bit of a hike north of the city, both open only for lunch; and La Matatena Pizzeria, which is supposed to be outstanding but was closed for renovations. Next time!

On to mezcal. So much mezcal! Mezcal is a sibling of tequila, another distillation of the agave plant. Tequila can only come from blue agave, but mezcal can be made from many different types of agave with many different results (think wine). Our favorite mezcal bar was Mezcalillera, where we did some nice tastings. Other recommendations include Del Maguey and La Mezcalerita, which has rooftop seating.

We also hit up a couple of the local breweries – Oaxaca Brewing, Utopia, and La Santísima Flor de Lúpulo, all during a really good job at focusing on beer a land where mezcal is clearly king.

SHOPPING

Oaxaca is a shopping mecca. Rugs, art prints, traditional (and traditionally-inspired) clothing, pottery, chocolate, coffee, etc. Our favorite spots for the traditional Oaxacan crafts were: La Plaza Artesanias de Oaxaca, a really nicely curated shop and where we bought some larger pottery pieces; La Casa de Las Artesanias, right next door, carries more product, but also feels a bit more crowded, and where we purchased several Teotitlan del Valle rugs; and La Casa Del Rebozo, a little outside the more heavily touristy area with almost the same products as La Plaza and La Casa de Las Artesanias. We also found some great Mexican folk art at La Mano Magica.

For more higher-end shopping, check out Marchanta, Miju Meko Atelier, Tienda Q, and Fe y Lola.

There’s tons of great printmaking and art galleries throughout the city. Our faves were Espacio Zapata and Tingladography.

And there’s also street vendors all over the place as well as the many markets in and around the city. (See below for more on those!)

SIGHTSEEING WITHIN THE CITY

Oaxaca is full of sightseeing highlights. The most impressive IMHO is the Templo de Santo Domingo with its iconic courtyard of agave plants and opulent interior. Attached to the church is the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, a must-do museum, and the Jardín Etnobotánico de Oaxaca (entrance available with a tour group only, and English tours are Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 11am).

Next up are the museums. Aside from the previously mentioned cultural museum, the Museo Textil de Oaxaca is lovely and was displaying an amazing private collection of textiles from all over the world, the postage stamp museum, MUFI, is pretty unique (and free!), the Oaxacan Artists museum, Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños, is interesting, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca, MACO, looks like it normally has super cool exhibits, but was heavy on the experimental video art when we visited, of which we’re not huge fans.

There’s several really large markets, some of which sell food, some products, and some, a combo of both. We tried the iconic chocolate con pan de yema at Mercado Benito Juárez (better without the bread, I think), checked out the vendors next door at Mercado Benito Juárez and got lost in the Central de Abastos, which has pretty much everything and is so large and maze-like, it’s a bit overwhelming. We also hit up the super adorbs Mercado Orgánico La Cosecha organic market several times for juices or a quick snack.

We always take advantage of free walking tours in any cities we visit, and would definitely recommend the pink-umbrellad Free Tour Oaxaca here. This is the only city tour we got a chance to do, but I was super tempted by the 2-day Spanish for Travelers crash course, the night bike ride, the street art bike tour, and the Turista Gráfico, a seemingly-monthly tour of printmaking studios.

On the weekends, parades for various events like weddings and graduations fill the streets in front of Templo de Santo Domingo with mojigangas (giant paper-mache puppets), music, and people joining in the parade throughout the city center. Since our trip straddled two weekends, we got to see a lot of these and spent about an hour dancing through the streets with one of them.

And if you want to get a visual overview, do a walk up to the Guelaguetza auditorium (don’t worry, you’ll see it!), which offers up a pretty amazing view of the whole city.

SIGHTSEEING OUTSIDE THE CITY

A trip to Oaxaca isn’t just a visit to the city. There’s a whole lot going on in the surrounds as well. It’s super easy to book some day trips with various vendors and guides offering up tons of different trips, but we opted instead to rent a car for a couple of days and do our own exploration.

We visited a couple of archeological sites, shopped at some craft villages, toured mezcal distilleries, and hiked a petrified waterfall.

Check out more info about our day trips HERE.

And to bring it all back to food, we also spent an afternoon on the outskirts of Oaxaca under the guise of learning to cook some traditional food, but in actuality, drinking some amazing mezcal and eating waaaaaaayyy too much. This cooking class that we found through Airbnb Experiences was one of our favorite experiences of the trip! Sonia and her family were so friendly and gracious, and they just kept the food and drinks coming. We learned about quesillo, traditional Oaxacan string cheese 🤤, made tortillas with a traditional press, rolled mole ingredients on a metate (stone hand grinder), and blended a super spicy salsa.

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