Mexico City has some of the greatest street food in the world. It’s famous for it! And this fame means that visitors expect great things as they walk through our streets in search of authentic food. To some degree, street food is about discovery and adventure, so while we absolutely recommend trying specific parts of the city for the best food, we also encourage some experimentation and exploration.
That said, you can only eat so much food in a day, so we’d like to do our best to narrow down your search a little. Here at Sabores México Food Tours, we offer a range of food tours in Mexico City, doing our best to help guests sample some of the best cuisine our city has to offer. If anything in this blog inspires you to taste the city with us and you have some follow-up questions, please feel free to get in touch.
Some General Mexico Street Food Advice
We can’t possibly start listing all of the places worth eating at in Mexico’s biggest city. But we will give you plenty of pointers. For many readers, it could be best to simply follow some of our general advice.
Street food stands come in all shapes and sizes, and most of the hygiene standards are really good. However, it’s a good rule to gravitate towards food stands where the person making the food isn’t handling the money. Of course, if the food looks incredible and the cook is handling the money, feel free to break this rule. You only live once, after all!
It’s also a good idea to go gentle on the different foods on your first couple of days in Mexico City. Trying a range of rich, tasty foods your body isn’t used to can sometimes upset people’s bowls a little until they’re used to it. This isn’t food poisoning, but it’s best to avoid it. Pace yourself with perhaps one or two food stands, max, for the first two days. Then start adding more food stands from day three onwards. Play the long game and you’ll be able to taste way more delicious local food.
Don’t worry about your spice tolerance. Mexico has the most complex chilli culture in the world, with an almost never-ending range of fresh, dried, smoked, and pickled chillies to choose between. We also have a huge range of spice levels. If you’re not great with hot peppers, don’t be ashamed to say to whomever is preparing your food. They will do their best to accommodate you.
The best advice is to look for any street food stands that are very popular with locals. This advice holds in any city you visit, but it’s especially relevant in Mexico City as the locals are all very discerning. While most of them wouldn’t consider themselves foodies, they feel strongly about food and they will go out of their way to visit that one food truck that makes the best tacos al pastor — because good food is always worth it!
Street Food in Mexico City’s El Centro
Right in the heart of the city, this is where we offer our most popular Mexico City food tour. The streets and architecture is beautiful, with plenty of high-end restaurants if you’d like a completely different kind of culinary experience. The street food is also some of the best in the city.
There are plenty of great little cafés that sell authentic coffee grown in Southern Mexico, so coffee lovers should definitely sample a few of the different brews. The street food stalls are scattered throughout El Centro, so follow our advice above and look for stalls popular with locals.
On our tour, we will show you all our favourite stalls, but the beauty of street food is that you can see and smell exactly what’s on offer, so the experience starts before you even take your first bite. For some of the best churros you’ve ever tasted, check out Churrería El Moro. And for the quintessential street taco experience, make sure you visit Tacos Cocuyos. For even more advice, check out our tour in the link above.
Street Food in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma
Mexico City’s Colonia Roma was one of the first residential districts built in the city. It is one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods to live in, with plenty of swanky restaurants and street food stalls to explore.
Our Colonia Roma food tour will take you on a 4-hour adventure through the picturesque streets, helping you learn about this vibrant area while sampling a range of food, with everything from fish tacos and gourmet vegan tacos to Mexican craft beer and local wine pairings.
If Mexico City has a trendy, hipster food area, then Colonia Roma (often referred to as La Roma Norte) is it! Only it’s not all modern experimental dishes as there is also a lot of traditional fare to try in this part of the city. We can be your guide but we also encourage you to follow your nose as you can’t really go wrong in Roma!
We didn’t want to overwhelm you with this guide, so we haven’t bombarded you with lists of streets and food stalls where you can find the best food in Mexico City. But we have given you some key areas to get started and given you some tips and tricks for sniffing out the better street food stalls. If you start out with El Centro and Roma, you can’t go wrong! And if you have any questions about our tours, please just reach out; we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
