Today was the high point of the trip to Oaxaca so far. We started with a delicious breakfast when Suzette instructed the cooks how she wanted Huevos Ranceros with eggs over easy and a scoop of pork in green mole sauce on the tortillas. We supplied the tortillas and green mole, since the hotel’s kitchen does not provide anything beyond an egg. Finally we are working the system.
The hotel still provides fresh fruit, granola, and yogurt which is enough to qualify as breakfast, barely.
I just find the hotel’s complete lack of enthusiasm for cooking breakfast disheartening.
After breakfast we walked to the gardens, which were closed until noon, when the first tour in Spanish would begin. The attendant, whose main job appeared to be turning tourists away, did direct us to the Museum of Culture next to the Cathedral of Santo Domingo, which was a short walk from the garden, because the gardens are within the original footprint of the cathedral complex. We walked up the street beside the cathedral and stopped at Casa Oaxaca to make a reservation for lunch at 2:00. Then we crossed the street and walked through the church and marveled at the ornate gold decoration. The entrance to the Museum of Culture is next door to the Cathedral for good reason. It is housed in what used to be the monastery and nunnery. It is the interconnected patios and buildings constructed beginning in the XVI century as the holy see for rOaxaca. There were miles of gothic crowned corridors surrounding at least three large cloisters. The cloisters were two and three stories high with patios at the end of many corridors that provided beautiful views of the garden. We decided quickly after our first glimpse of the garden from one of the verandas, that it was too much walking, especially since it took several hours to view the exhibits so we sat and enjoyed the garden from the openings. At around 1:00 we looked for Europcar and failed, so we drank a cold chocolate at a coffee shop across from the front of the church. We looked a little more and gave up and went Casa Oaxaca for lunch at 1:40. We were seated at a table on the roof under a canopy where there were six or seven other tables filled with diners. It did not take long to order. Suzette wanted the beet salad, which was unavailable at Origen last night. I wanted the Wild Mushroom Soup with Hoja Santa. We both wanted the rabbit in yellow mole sauce.
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Then a large blue corn tortilla sprinkled with queso fresco was served and we were encouraged to eat the salsa on the crisp flame grilled tortilla. Bread was not served, only tortillas roasted over the open flame. Soon our beet salad arrived. Besides edges of red beet it had sliced of rainbow beet, wedges of strawberry, cooked wedges of quince, fresh aramanth as the green, a quince reduction paste, some chopped honey roasted almonds and Pecans and dressed with a sweetened cactus water dressing.
The second course we split was equally interesting, a wild mushroom soup with hoja Santa. The soup was made by sautéing mushrooms and onions and then adding a heavily enriched chicken stock and more fresh mushrooms and hoja santa leaves and cooking the soup until the fresh mushrooms soften for five to ten minutes. The broth had a strong rich flavor making us think it had been a greatly reduced vegetable and chicken stock. This was no ordinary stock but one that seemed created by a curandero for medicinal purposes more akin to the bouillabaisse we tried to eat in Antibes once that was so reduced it overwhelmed our taste buds. We could not eat the bouillabaisse and I could only eat a small bowl of the soup today and Suzette only ate ½ of her bowl of soup.
We were finished after the soup. Our taste buds exhausted but we had one more course, rabbit in a yellow mole sauce. I have been wanting to eat yellow mole ever since I learned about it twenty years ago and I was not going to let the richest bowl of mushroom soup I have ever tasted stop me.
We were splitting dishes so we each received ¼ rabbit presented with blanched and sautéed halved carrots and several string beans and Fire grilled pieces of chayote. The yellow mole was poured over the dish. The yellow is made from tomatillo, hoja santa, Pasilla Mexicana, Pasilla Mina, and a few other herbs. It is actually a very pleasant mild tasting sauce that complemented the tender rabbit flesh. I picked my way through my leg and ½ of the breast. Suzette tasted hers but was unable to finish her portion.
We drank Bohemia beers. The bill before tip was 687 pesos or about $40.00 for the best lunch in Oaxaca for two.
After lunch we walked back to the hotel and rested. Suzette swam again.
At 6:00 ventured forth again. We walked up the hill past the Santo Domingo Cathedral to Santa Maria de Dolores. We stopped at the Institute of graphic arts and saw an exhibit of posters against GMO corn and some lovely paper jewelry in the gift shop. We were looking for a place to have a drink, so when we found the entrance to the church I spied what looked like a modern bar and restaurant named Mesquite across the street and went therefor a drink. We asked to be seated upstairs and after we sat down we recognized two of our tour mates, Tom and Mary Kathryn. I had sat next to Mary Kathryn and enjoyed talking with her yesterday during the Women’s Institute tour, so we joined them and each ordered a mezquite Cocktail, made with mezcal, pomegranate juice, and some sweet liquor that was surprisingly tasty. We talked until almost 8:00, when we said goodbye and walked across the street to the church for the choral concert. The choral concert included several religious pieces, by Hayden, a couple of Faure’ pieces, a couple of Bach pieces and a Mozart. The chorus was the municipal chorus of Oaxaca and there was a pianist who played his keyboard as an organ for the Bach and Hayden and as a harpsichord for the Mozart.
By 10:00 the program ended and we started waking down Alcala, but almost immediately ran into the two French girls who had been on the trip and who I sat next at lunch yesterday in the small village where we ate.
They were going to a cantina across the street from where we met them and they invited us to join them. We were seated and sipped a mezcal, which was quite rough straight and a tamarind fruit flavored drink with mezcal that was quite lovely. We all ordered beers and I ordered a coctel with octopus, shrimp, and oysters and the girls ordered a crispy tlayuda spread with beans and garnished with queso Fresca and tacos with carnitas. I loved my coctel except for the use of weird Mexican cocktail catsup sauce instead of fresh tomato sauce.
It was fun talking to the French girls, one was from Nice and now lived in Barcelona and the other was from Normandy and now worked in Luxembourg. They became friends when they studied in Paris at an international business college. They were both very sharp and it was fun speaking with them. We had a fun time and finally said goodnight at 11:15.
We went home and bed at 11:30. The girls took the bus to Monte Alban and we decided to try to do the same tomorrow.
Bon Appetit
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