La Teca

Although La Teca has been around for over three decades, it still feels like a secretive discovery. Take a taxi to a busy street in Oaxaca’s residential Reforma neighborhood far from mezcal-swigging tourists, then admire the quaint family vibe of La Teca’s front room hung with artworks by Oaxacan luminaries including the late artist-activist-legend Francisco Toledo. As you settle down in the overgrown tropical patio worthy of a magical realist novel, chef-owner Deyanira Aquino appears—in her eighties, regal of bearing, and glamorous in her bright lipstick and traje de tehuana, the colorful embroidered dress popularized in Mexico by Frida Kahlo.

The dress as well as the culinary tradition that Aquino nurtures at La Teca belong to Istmo de Tehuantepec, the slender finger of land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. There the fiestas are wild, and the cooking is opulent with tropical produce and foreign influences—Arabic, French, Chinese—from the region’s past as an important pre-Panama Canal trade route.

Among Le Teca’s regulars, many are Aquino’s fellow Istemeños. They come here for a taste of sweet-tart molotes—fried plantain torpedoes served with lashing of crema and gratings of Parmesan-like queso Istmeño—and for the intriguing funk of dried shrimp in the ocher-hued mole de camaron. They also come for the homey comfort of tamales de chambray, banana-leaf bundled pillows of masa fashioned from small-grained low-altitude zapalote chico corn and filled with chicken, raisins, and capers. And every table orders garnachas, little fried masa discs filled with shredded pork and served with a puckery cabbage salad.

“Istmeño food is its own curious blend,” Aquino explains. “Sure, we eat iguanas and armadillos—but we also love mustard and mayo!” The latter flavors the Istmeño classic called papas horneadas, a coarsely mashed baked potato puree that tastes oddly Germanic. It accompanies Aquino’s majestic estofado de boda, a baroque-tasting “wedding” mole of pulled beef in a mind-bogglingly rich sauce of chiles, apples, plantains, and pineapples that requires hours of continued stirring.