Where the Chefs Eat: Thomasina Miers’ favourite restaurants in Oaxaca

Many of us jest about moving abroad for six months – packing up the house and fleeing to a hot and steamy far-away shore. But few of us do it. And while Thomasina Miers may be a Londoner, her heart is in the heart of Mexico, never more so than now, as she’s just returned from six months in Mexico City with her husband and their three daughters. They didn’t just talk about a temporary life change; they actually did it, and her new book, Mexican Table, is one of the very lovely results of their time away.

“I had felt I was in a bit of a rut,” she tells me. “I felt like I wasn’t making the most of life and didn’t feel like I was learning anything. I was feeling really quite frustrated and thinking, there’s got to be more to this.” As for many of us, Covid had stopped her travels in their tracks, and three children didn’t make it much easier, even when borders opened. “I had basically stopped travelling and I think, in my head, I thought maybe that was a chapter of my life that was in the past and I had almost reconciled that.” Yet, it was her children that really pushed her to move: “Mexico is so important, and we seemed to have this snatch of time when it was right for where the kids were in school. I felt like I had a guardian angel on my shoulder the whole trip, and we would have loved to have stayed longer, but we need to be grateful. I’m happy that we’ve had this time because it was magic, and the kids absolutely loved it.”

Thomasina’s links to Mexico are well documented. She won MasterChef in 2005, though she admits she entered the show with little idea of what she wanted to do with her life. She had travelled through Mexico at the age of 19 and fallen in love with the country. So, after a stint at Petersham Nurseries under the skilled eye of Skye Gyngell, she opened the Wahaca restaurant chain and has been championing the beautiful recipes and produce of Mexico ever since. Her recent foray with her family took her to a country that, in many ways, had changed (“Our local supermarket was packed with Ultra Processed foods; Coca-Cola was everywhere”), but the essence of all she loved was ever-present. “The markets are just incredible,” she enthuses, “and there’s still a very strong food culture. The produce is so fresh – the greens, the tomatoes, all of it is so abundant.”

The evolution of Mexican food here in the UK and our understanding of its beautiful, balanced flavours has happened in large part thanks to Thomasina, who has published no less than seven books and writes for The Guardian. “I remember when I first started talking about Mexican food, it was still considered to be little more than Tex-Mex. When I lived there, 21 years ago, there was still that sense that European food was superior to Mexican. I think there was that feeling that there was nothing really to be proud of in Mexico, but then that changed, thanks to chefs like Enrique Olvera. He had just opened a restaurant when I lived there, and he started presenting Mexican ingredients and Mexican street food in a fine-dining style. He was so proud to celebrate Mexican cuisine.” Interestingly, Thomasina views the massive metamorphoses of the British food scene as occurring in tandem with those of Mexico. “I feel that Mexico and London were almost aligned in that sense. When I did MasterChef, I was told to Ballantine a chicken leg and stuff it with truffles; it was fairly old-fashioned then, and this absolute revolution of food hadn’t really happened yet, but then it felt like London in Mexico were both going through the same revolution at the same time.”