Inside the Magical World of Mercado La Merced (2024)

Mexico City is full of food markets, and most of them are places of wonder. Cleaver-wielding butchers jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder with spice merchants and vegetable-sellers carefully tending their mountains of jewel-like white and purple onions, everyone sharing space with food vendors hawking everything from tamales to tortas. You can't go wrong spending a few minutes ducking into any market you see, but it's La Merced — the largest market in DF, and the city's commercial hub since the seventeenth century — that's the most magnificent of all.

It's easy to get lost in La Merced. Actually, it's hard not to get lost there, even if you're a seasoned pro. No matter how good you think your Spanish is, it's worth hiring a tour guide to take you through — not only will your guide know how to navigate the twisting maze of narrow, confusing passageways, she'll also be able to tell you which taco vendor is worth the wait, which mole stand is the most liberal with the free samples, and generally be able to put names to many of the unnameable wonders that sprawl for acres and acres.

Just inside the main entrance to the market are some of the best food vendors, including this unnamed stall that's only there a few days a week, but which everyone seems to agree makes some of the best tlacoyos around.

Helen Rosner

Helen Rosner

Helen Rosner

See Also

18 Fascinating Facts About La Merced (Mexico City)How to Eat Your Way Through La Merced, Mexico City’s Largest and Most Delicious Market

There are dozens of packed booths along the main food-stall drag, where market workers and shoppers cluster at all hours to eat caldo de gallina (hen stew, extra good if it's served with an un-laid egg), fresh tacos (famously topped with french fries), pancita (a vibrant stew made from cow's stomach), and rich, porky posole.

Helen Rosner

The food vendors eventually give way to the meat section of the market, where you can buy una vaca entera (a whole cow) for several thousand pesos or, if you're feeling less ambitious, one of the steaks or chops freshly hacked off by the butchers showing off their skills in front of their stalls.

Helen Rosner

If cow head is more your speed, swing by one of the vendors selling tacos de cabeza, who slice off the steamed meat to order (and, ingeniously, keep their carts from rolling off by bracing them against the stripped skulls).

Helen Rosner

In a dark, improbably quiet corner of the market, past the gauntlet of nopales vendors (who vocally don't like to have their picture taken), you'll find specialty vendors selling things like crisp-fried insects — crickets, grasshoppers, ants and escamoles (ant larvae) — and their aquatic counterparts, like these tiny crayfish.

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Chicken intestines (cleaned, cured, and cooked) may look unsettlingly wormlike, but they taste like the richest, most savory bite of chicken you've ever eaten.

Helen Rosner

Helen Rosner

You can spend hours (or days or weeks) making a mole from scratch — or you could go to one of the market's mole vendors, where rows of intensely flavored pastes are sold by the kilo.

Helen Rosner

Helen Rosner

Helen Rosner

Just outside the market are the sweets vendors. A half-dozen stands lure in customers with chunks of candied fruit stacked up like bricks; their sticky-sweet surfaces attract swarms and swarms of bees and flies.

Helen Rosner

While most of the market is dedicated to food and food-related products, there's a vast tianguis (open-air market) surrounding the official footprint of La Merced, that may as well be part of the market proper. There, you'll find everything from calendars to piñatas to cheap, made-in-China off-brand sneakers.

Helen Rosner

A final word of advice: Close to the end of the main row of food vendors, just past the cow butchers on the right-hand side as you walk in from the entrance, there's a taco stand where everything from the carnitas to the tortillas are sizzling in a blisteringly hot mix of lard and suet. Get a taco — steak, not pork — and maybe consider getting another one. This is, without question, the single best taco I've ever had in my life, and in my opinion it's worth going back to Mexico City — not to mention braving the overwhelming chaos of La Merced — to have another one.

Helen Rosner