From filete chemita to yukgaejang, these are the dishes that define the Western hemisphere’s biggest city.
Since at least the time of the Aztecs, the Valley of Mexico has exerted a gravitational pull on the world around it. The Aztecs came to the great Lake of Texcoco in the 14th century and built the greatest city in Mesoamerica. When the Spanish arrived on the Gulf coast, they made their way here immediately; they proceeded to destroy Tenochtitlan and build their own great metropolis, which would, in short order, become the finest city in the New World. Goods flooded the city’s markets; new cuisines emerged as unknown ingredients merged with the agave and corn and tomato and chile that had first been cultivated in the fertile highlands to the east. Mexico City’s history can be read in blood or in gold, but it is perhaps most legible in food, spelled out at every loncheria and taco stand, every power-lunch and immigrant enclave. If history is transmitted through food, then no city in the western hemisphere wears its past so proudly on its sleeve as Mexico City.
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