Celebrate cultural mix with Oaxacan feast.
From mole to mezcal — a colorful feast from Oaxaca.
Oaxaca takes pride in its food, says Octavio Diaz, chef of Agave Uptown in Oakland. It’s the land of moles and mezcal, of chiles and chocolate.
“When we are born, people celebrate life. When we’re no longer here, it’s the same way,” he says. “And we celebrate it with food.”
Diaz grew up in the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca, in the small village of Santa Gertrudis, about 30 miles south of Oaxaca City. It was there that he was first drawn to cooking, as a young boy watching his grandmother make chocolate con leche in her kitchen.
“Men were not viewed to be cooks or in the kitchen,” he says. “But I always made my way around the kitchen. I was always curious about what was going on.” It’s easy to understand why. From its numerous surviving indigenous cultures to the outside culinary influences of its colonial past, Oaxaca boasts a food culture that’s deeply varied.
Old world ingredients, such as almonds, olives and raisins, along with spices like cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns — introduced to the region by Spanish conquistadors — blend with Mesoamerican staples like chiles, tomatoes, chocolate and corn. This merge of cultures is particularly evident in Oaxaca’s many moles, including Diaz’s recipe for estofado. Other inextricably Oaxacan ingredients include agave, the plant used to make both Tequila and mezcal, and edible insects, including chicatanas (flying ants) and chapulines (grasshoppers).
“We have such a richness of other cultures that came from all over the world,” Diaz says. “When you talk about diversity, you talk about food in Oaxaca.”
While there’s an abundance of Mexican eateries in the Bay Area, there are only a handful of Oaxacanfocused ones. When Diaz opened his Healdsburg restaurant, Agave, in 2010, he wanted to introduce Wine Country diners to his tapestry of flavors. With the launch of his second restaurant, Agave Uptown, earlier this summer, which is located on the ground floor of the new Kapor Center for Social Impact, he’s hoping to do the same in Uptown Oakland.
But for Diaz, cooking isn’t just an opportunity to educate and break misconceptions about Mexican food. It’s also a chance to bring people from all backgrounds together, through food: “They call it Guelaguetza in Oaxaca; a party of every group.”
With Labor Day weekend coming up, there are plenty of reasons to throw a party. So, in the spirit of Guelaguetza, we’ve created a menu — from cocktails to dessert — for our own end-of-summer Oaxacan feast.