Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chocolate World
456
Mina Street
Chocolate Avenue
Oaxaca, Mexico
Though most cacao beans grow in neigh-
boring Chiapas and Tabasco, the gracious
old city of Oaxaca has become the epicen-
ter of chocolate in the nation that invented
it, thanks to one shop-lined street of choc-
olate specialists: Mina Street.
Thread your way through Oaxaca's nar-
row colonial streets and shady plazas to
find the 20 de Noviembre Market, just
south of the town center. Mina Street runs
along the south side of the market—you'll
probably be able to find it by following the
heady chocolaty aromas. The shops on
Mina Street don't just sell chocolate, they
make it on premises, grinding cacao beans
with almonds and cinnamon into a fine
powder or paste, then pressing it into bars
or tablets that can then be dissolved in hot
milk or water. (To the surprise of some
visiting chocoholics, Oaxacans believe
that chocolate is best enjoyed not as
candy but in hot chocolate drinks or in
mole
sauce.) The three largest purveyors
are
Chocolate Mayordomo
(corner of
Mina and 20 Noviembre sts.;
&
52/951/
516-0246
),
Chocolate La Soledad
(Mina
212;
&
52/951/516-5841
), and the slightly
smaller, family-run
Guelaguetza Choco-
late
(20 de Noviembre St. 605;
&
52/951/
516-3513
). Any of these stores will cus-
tomize chocolate for you with whatever
ingredients you want; nibble on the tablets
of chocolate and you'll find they're grittier
and sweeter than the chocolate you may
be used to eating, but still delicious.
The chocolate stores also have “choco-
late bars” on site, meaning a counter where
customers are served hot chocolate. There
are three kinds of hot chocolate drinks:
chocolate de agua
(made with water),
chocolate de leche
(made with milk), and
champurrado,
a thicker drink that has corn
mixed in with the cocoa. Then of course
there's
tejate,
a Oaxacan delicacy once
reserved only for the rulers of the Zapotec
Indians; it's made from corn, roasted cacao
beans,
mamey
seed, and
rosita
flowers,
laboriously mixed by hand and served in a
painted gourd bowl called a
jicara
. To sam-
ple
tejate,
you'll have to explore inside the
market to find a food stall that serves it—
look for stacks of the gourd bowls. Also
inside the market are a few pottery stalls
where you can buy traditionally shaped
cups and spouted jugs for serving hot
chocolate, as well as implements for mak-
ing chocolate the old-fashioned way, with
metates
(a flat stone used to grind cacao
beans) and
molinillos
(wooden whisks used
to whip the beverage into a froth).
Oaxaca's other great use for chocolate
is to make
mole
paste for cooking. Actu-
ally, of the seven
moles
used in Oaxacan
cooking, only the black
(negro)
variety
includes chocolate, but it's the best known
of them all. The proprietors of
Casa Cre-
spo
(see Lodging below) conduct an Eng-
lish-language cooking class centered on
chocolate, which includes a guided shop-
ping trip to the market.
(
Oaxaca City (3.6km/2
1
⁄
4
miles).
L
$
Chocolate Posada,
Mina 212
(
&
52/951/516 5760
). $$
Casa
C
respo,
Crespo 415 (
&
52/951/514 1102;
www.
casacrespo.com).
