If you’ve ever wandered near the eastern edge of the Zócalo, over by the Templo Mayor, you might have heard them: street vendors selling scarves, hats, sunglasses, purses, desk items and whatever else might be useful from tarps spread out on the sidewalk. As people pass, the vendors call out: “10
“A red trickle flowed from the young victim’s nostrils, and when he stopped blinking the crowd started to thin, people walking away in a silence as yet unbroken by the wailing of an ambulance. At that moment, Araceli fully and finally comprehended the cruelty of her native city, the precariousness of life in the presence [...]
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a neat little pamphlet put out by SAGARPA, Mexico’s agriculture ministry. Transparency around food isn’t exactly common here, so I was surprised to see a neat, organized chart listing the seasonal availability of some of Mexico’s most popular ingredients.
I checked out the accompanying website when I [...]
Continue Reading →I finally brought them home from cooking school. On the upper-left corner of the metate, you can still see the stains from the cacao beans from the time we made chocolate from scratch.
Continue Reading →For awhile now, I’ve liked green salsa more than red. Green was always brighter, more acidic. A drizzle on my taco set off sparks on my tongue. And when the salsa had avocado, as green taquería salsas often do here, I wanted to curl up and take a nap in its creaminess.
[...]
Continue Reading →A year and a half later, it’s come to an end. I’m now the owner of a diploma in Especialización de Gastronomía Mexicana from the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana in Mexico City.
I should’ve been excited at graduation last week. Instead I was nervous. What if I wouldn’t get my diploma after [...]
Continue Reading →On my second day in town I booked a tour with Around SP, a small company in São Paulo that offers tours of the city’s cultural sites. I told my guide, Luis, that I wanted a culinary tour, so we zoomed off in his car one morning with plans to hit some of the [...]
Continue Reading →I didn’t know anything about São Paulo when I arrived there last week.
Crayton had told me it was big, but I didn’t expect how big: skyscrapers and high-rise apartment towers, a solid chain of them, squeezed together end-to-end on the horizon like a mountain range. Multi-story buildings loomed against the highways. More [...]
Continue Reading →My story for Spenser magazine on where to eat birria in Guadalajara and Jalisco is finally up. Check it out — here’s a link to the article — and let me know what you think!
Spenser is a new food magazine based in LA. You can follow them on Twitter [...]
Continue Reading →Who is Mija?
Mija is Lesley Téllez, a food writer and culinary guide based in Mexico City. In 2010 I co-founded the tourism company Eat Mexico.Get The Mija Chronicles in your inbox
Mexico politics, culture and art
More Inspiration


