Drink this! Sweet-spicy-sour mangonada at Maxwell St. Market
Mangonadas look fun, and they are. A Mexican concoction served in plastic cups, mangonada is made of sliced mango, mango ice cream or sorbet, a generous squeeze of lime and...
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Eat this! These Oaxacan-style tamales are the best $3.50 you’ll ever spend
At Mi Tia Maria’s Tamales in the Maxwell Street Market, you hand over the best $3.50 you will ever spend. Here, you’ll fall hard for the Oaxacan-style tamales, tender rectangles...
Find 700 kinds of tequila — and other intriguing Mexican spirits — at pioneering Moreno’s Liquors
In a small, dusty Mexico City neighborhood with streets so narrow Uber drivers hesitate to turn into them, you’ll find Almamezcalera, the tasting room of Erick Rodriguez. We were there...
Sotol, spirit of the North American desert
In Seminole Canyon State Park, just west of Comstock, Texas, ghostly red figures, painted on rough cave walls in ancient times, silently watch over pits where indigenous people cooked desert...
Eat This! Lechon kawali — crunchy nuggets of pork — should come with addiction warning
At Lola Tining’s Cuisine in Oak Park, they make lechon kawali throughout the day, “so that it’s always crisp,” explains manager Ashley Strong. In the Philippines, this terribly delicious traditional...
To find Honolulu’s most interesting eats, hit the streets
“Iron Chef” Masaharu Morimoto was delicately finessing a sashimi presentation that could have been mistaken for a bouquet of tropical flowers. He lit up when we mentioned another type of...
Put down the cocktail shaker: Some rums are made for sipping
Rum, especially when mixed with fruit or juice, can be a sweet sip. Better rums are less sweet and best taken straight, perhaps with a little ice. That was the...
Chicago’s Carlos Gaytan opens Ha restaurant in Mexico’s Riviera Maya
The sun was setting over the Yucatan Peninsula as chef Carlos Gaytan of Chicago’s Mexique walked up from the beach carrying a large wicker basket filled with greenery. “Just shopping...
Go beyond the Cancun coast for a deep dive into Mayan culture, past and present
For millennia, the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern Mexico has been home to the Maya, indigenous people who built magnificent cities centuries before Columbus. Cancun, on the coast, draws the tourists...
Simplest of cocktails, amaro and Coke, stretches budget during holidays
Just hours before dinner last Thanksgiving, we realized that all we had on hand for drinks were wine and beer — fine but insufficiently, um, festive. Cocktails are festive, but...