When Liz Hillbruner moved to Mexico City in 2010 from the United States, she found herself obsessed with tlacoyos, the little football-shaped street eats she saw cooking on griddles around her neighborhood. They were a perfect package of corn dough, wrapped around beans or cheese. As she ate her way through the neighborhood, she simultaneously enrolled in a master course on Mexican cuisine. When it came time to formulate a final project, it seemed only natural to study what was already on her mind. She decided on a map – the Tlacoyografía – a tool for the community and street food-loving transplants to find all the tlacoyo stands in the tlacoyo paradise that is the San Rafael neighborhood.

The vendor at this hole in the wall in Mexico City is selling tacos de canasta, cheap and filling tacos that are steamed inside a basket (hence the name, ‘canasta’ means ‘basket’), to customers. They make a quick and delicious lunch.

It wasn’t very long ago that finding a vegan restaurant in Mexico City was like finding a friend on the city’s overcrowded metro during rush hour (read: impossible). In fact, until this decade there were no exclusively vegan eateries in Mexico’s bustling capital. This is not to suggest that vegan options weren’t available, but exploring the city as a vegan could be a tricky business, and veganism was a little-understood concept. So unusual an idea it was, that journalist-cum-chef Mariana Blanco was often called a loser or perdedora by friends who found her animal-free and plant-rich lifestyle to be at odds with what they knew. So when she opened the first vegan restaurant in the city, and indeed the first in Latin America, she called it Los Loosers.

Visiting establishments with a lot of history always warms the cockles of our heart – even more so when that establishment is the oldest surviving cantina in the city. El Dux de Venecia didn’t start out as a cantina, but it became a drinking establishment in Azcapotzalco – a farming community that became part of Mexico City in the 1940s – during the Mexican revolution and has remained an important part of the neighborhood ever since. The story goes that an Italian traveler decided to open a grocery store at the end of the 19th century. He named it El Dux de Venecia (The Doges of Venice) because he was originally from that Italian city. He offered all kinds of imported products from Europe as well as local ones, including deli meats, bread and alcohol. Because some customers consumed these items in the shop, the owner installed chairs and tables for their comfort.

An aguas frescas vendor in the Xochimilco market stands at the ready behind his offerings: there were over a dozen different flavors on the day we visited. He served us an incredible lemonade with chia seeds, a very traditional (and delicious) pairing.

“What year did you marry your wife?” we ask Rafael Hernandez, known as El Negrito of Mercado Medellín, one Saturday afternoon at his vegetable stand. “I don’t know!” He breaks into uncontrollable laughter, “She knows though!” “What year did we get married, Gorda?” he asks the woman next to him. Her hair is tightly permed and her hands are ever-busy sorting vegetables and tallying accounts “I was 21 and you were 25, Negro – so more than 50 years,” Josefina says. Rafael, now 79, with a shock of white hair and an easy smile, happily bustles around his stand.

If Mexico had to choose a national flavor, the chile pepper would without a doubt be the winner. The only issue might be which chile would take the top spot in such an honor. The country is home to more than 200 variations of chiles, stemming from some 64 distinct varieties. Almost no meal is eaten without some form of chile-based salsa. And while the variety of chile ranges from eye-twitchingly spicy to robust, sweet and smoky, seeking out a dish in Mexican cuisine that doesn’t incorporate at least one type of chile would be a difficult – if not futile – venture. When FIFA held the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, the official mascot was Pique, an anthropomorphized green chile pepper wearing a sombrero. The meaning was not lost on the world, and least of all on Mexico itself. Let it be known: Mexico is home of the chile.

Nowhere in Mexico City does one feel the collective weight of the largest population in North America more than on Avenida Lazaro Cardenas, the traffic artery that gushes a surfeit of humans and cars up the heart of the city’s downtown. The gutters stink of rotting fruit. Dirt and littered garbage encrust the sidewalks. And, at rush hour, walking a block means suffering a gauntlet of elbows and hands pushing at you and past you. For the most part, the businesses that line this street offer little comfort. Goods lie in heaps on carpets or hang two feet deep upon the walls of stores seemingly designed to be fire hazards, cramming too many people onto too little floor space.

Has mezcal gone the way of avocado toast, an item that’s become shorthand for cliched hipster trendiness? If you think yes, a visit to Mis Mezcales in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma may be in order. There, you will find Omar Trejo sitting behind his unassuming makeshift bar, parceling out sips to the uninitiated and reminding everyone who stops by his small liquor store devoted to small-batch Mexican distillates that before it became a “buzzy” spirit, mezcal was an elixir heavily-rooted in the soils and stories of Mexico. As Omar makes clear to those who come in, every bottle of mezcal tastes different, even from the same brand, the same agave variety and same year. It’s one of the drink’s greatest strengths and probably one of the greatest frustrations for drinkers who expect the standardization of tequila.

On our Xochimilco culinary excursion in Meixco City, we learn about the chinampas, and how chinamperos are dedicated to keeping Xochimilco’s historic and world-renowned agricultural system afloat.

At Culinary Backstreets, we tend to opt for tradition over trendy, street over chic. We delve into a city’s blind spots when it comes to local favorites. Taking that approach makes it too easy to dismiss new spots out of hand. So, if it weren’t for our friend Liz hounding us for months about a newish “falafel place” near her house, we almost certainly would not have thought about visiting it. But that’s the great thing about friends – they take us out of our routine and generally bring us to unexpected places, as was the case with Kebab Nation.

Nine Inch Nails. Metallica. Tool. Rage Against the Machine. The driving beats, shredding guitar solos and iconic howls are attention grabbing to say the least as you meander through the colorful labyrinth that is Mercado de Coyoacán. From its famous tostadas and comida corridas to spiritual cleansings using Santa Muerte magic and all things Frida (it’s located just three blocks from Kahlo’s Casa Azul, arguably the most visited site in Mexico City), the Coyoacán Market is always abuzz with diners and shoppers, as many locals as tourists. In this case, the music is coming somewhat incongruously from behind an array of fresh-cut flowers: lilies, sunflowers, hydrangea, roses, carnations.

Alex Montes and his business partner, Askari Mateos, have spent years fussing over their recipes for tlayudas: large, thin corn tortillas topped with various ingredients. So what is the secret to a great tlayuda? Montes thinks for a moment. “The asiento [the unrefined pork lard that covers the tortilla],” he finally says, “and the beans, always with avocado leaf.” “The great thing about a restaurant,” he continues, “[is that] you make the same dish over and over so you have endless chances to perfect it.” We’d say that Montes and Mateos have done just that – the Oaxacan food at Las Tlayudas, the duo’s restaurant in Colonia del Valle, is pretty much perfect.

On a recent weekend evening, we came across two young men fanning the flames of a small charcoal stove on the side of the road near Mercado San Juan in the Centro Histórico neighborhood of Mexico City. They were making tlayudas, the signature Oaxacan dish, and already had a pair of traffic cops waiting in line. The smell of melting cheese and fresh tasajo, dried, smoked beef, was enough to convince us to join the queue. A tlayuda is a wide, crunchy tortilla filled with meat, cheese and beans. The young men had brought the ingredients fresh from their hometown in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte. Combining Oaxacan cheese; chewy, salty tasajo; avocado; and a thick layer of mashed beans, the tlayuda was simple and delicious.

On our “Market Watch” walk in Mexico City, we learn about the different ingredients that are the building blocks of Mexico’s culture and its inimitable cuisine. Like at this stall, which is offering various types of nuts, legumes and – our favorite – toasted crickets.