Beyond Sushi and Tacos: A Deeper Journey into Japanese and Mexican Cuisine
There's a restaurant in Oaxaca I stumbled into back in 2017, exhausted from walking cobblestone streets in the midday heat, where an elderly woman was grinding chocolate on a metate stone that her grandmother had used. And there's a tiny izakaya in Kanazawa where the owner serves only what came in that morning from the fishing boats, no menu, just trust. Both moments shattered what I thought I knew about these cuisines. Because here's the thing about Japanese and Mexican food—we've fallen in love with their greatest hits, but we're missing entire symphonies.
I've spent the better part of a decade chasing flavors through both countries, and what strikes me most is how much depth exists beyond the dishes we've embraced in the West. Sushi and tacos are brilliant, yes. But they're also just the beginning.
The Roots Run Deeper Than We Think
Mexican and Japanese cuisines both earned UNESCO recognition as Intangible Cultural Heritage, and for good reason. These aren't just collections of recipes—they're living traditions that stretch back thousands of years, shaped by geography, spirituality, and an almost obsessive attention to ingredient quality.
In Mexico, the story begins with the domestication of corn around 9,000 years ago. But it's not the corn we know from summer barbecues. Traditional Mexican corn goes through nixtamalization—soaking in limewater—a process that transforms both the nutrition and flavor while releasing aromas that smell like earth after rain. I watched a woman in Michoacán make tortillas from heirloom blue corn she'd nixtamalized herself, and the flavor was so complex, so fundamentally different from anything I'd tasted before, that I actually stopped mid-bite just to process it.
Japan's culinary foundation is equally ancient but follows a different philosophy. The concept of washoku—traditional Japanese cuisine—centers on harmony with nature and the changing seasons. There's this principle called shun, which means eating ingredients at their absolute peak. A spring bamboo shoot in April tastes nothing like one in June. The Japanese have mapped these moments of perfection across hundreds of ingredients, and their entire food culture revolves around catching these fleeting windows.
What connects both traditions, though, is reverence. In Mexico, corn isn't just food—it's sacred, woven into creation myths and daily prayers. In Japan, rice holds similar spiritual weight. Both cultures developed elaborate fermentation techniques (miso and soy sauce in Japan; pulque and tepache in Mexico) that preserved food and created entirely new flavor dimensions.
Regional Variations Tell the Real Story
The trick that changed everything for me was stopping the hunt for "authentic" Mexican or Japanese food and starting to ask which Mexico, which Japan.
Take mole, for example. Everyone's heard of mole poblano, that dark, chocolate-tinged sauce from Puebla. But Oaxaca alone has seven distinct moles, each one a completely different universe. Mole amarillo is bright and herbal, thickened with masa and loaded with guajillo chiles. Mole negro involves charring ingredients until they're almost burnt, then grinding them into something so dark and complex it tastes like smoke and time itself. I once helped a cook in Tlacolula make mole chichilo, and we roasted avocado leaves over an open flame until my eyes watered. The final sauce was earthy, slightly bitter, completely unforgettable.
The Yucatán Peninsula might as well be a different country culinarily. Their food shows Caribbean and Mayan influences that the central highlands never touched. Cochinita pibil—pork slow-cooked in banana leaves underground—uses recado rojo, an achiote-based paste that stains everything orange and tastes like paprika met oregano in the tropics. And their soup, sopa de lima, with its distinctive sour orange flavor? Nothing like the Mexican food most Americans know.
Japan's regional diversity is just as dramatic. Osaka's food culture revolves around kuidaore—eating yourself to bankruptcy. Their street food, especially okonomiyaki (a savory pancake I can only describe as organized chaos on a griddle), reflects a working-class philosophy of making something delicious from whatever's on hand. Meanwhile, Kyoto cuisine—kaiseki—is so refined, so concerned with aesthetic perfection, that I felt underdressed just looking at the plates.
Hokkaido, up north, has Russia and Ainu influences. Their seafood—sea urchin so sweet it tastes like butter, scallops the size of your palm—gets simply grilled because it's that good. They also do miso ramen with a richness that comes from Hokkaido's dairy culture, something that would be unusual further south. And the Kansai region's obsession with dashi, that fundamental stock made from kombu and bonito, reaches almost scientific precision. I met a chef in Kyoto who ages his kombu for five years before using it.
Techniques That Deserve More Attention
Over the years, I've learned that techniques often matter more than recipes. Both Japanese and Mexican cuisines have methods that transform basic ingredients into something transcendent.
In Mexico, the comal—that flat griddle—is where magic happens. Charring tomatoes, tomatillos, chiles, and onions on a comal before blending them into salsa creates layers of flavor that raw ingredients can't touch. The Maillard reaction, that chemical process that browns food and creates new flavors, does heavy lifting here. But there's a moment, usually right when the skin blackens and blisters, when you have to pull everything off or it crosses from charred to bitter. That timing, that feel, that's what makes the difference.
Then there's the molcajete, the volcanic stone mortar. I used to think it was just a rustic alternative to a blender until a cook in Mexico City explained that the grinding action breaks down ingredients differently, releasing oils and creating textures that a blade can't replicate. The stone also seasons over time, building up layers of flavor from everything it's touched. Her molcajete was maybe 40 years old, inherited from her mother. The salsa she made in it tasted like it had been pre-seasoned by decades of use.
Japanese knife work deserves its own essay, but what really gets me is the technique called katsuramuki—rotary peeling. Chefs can peel a daikon radish into a single, continuous sheet thin enough to read through. It's usually for making garnishes, but watching someone do it is hypnotic. The knife barely moves; instead, the vegetable rotates against the blade in one smooth motion.
And then there's the art of making dashi. Proper ichiban dashi (first dashi) requires heating water to exactly the right temperature—just before boiling—adding kombu, removing it at precisely the right moment, bringing the water to a boil, adding katsuobushi (bonito flakes), and turning off the heat. The whole process takes maybe ten minutes, but every second matters. Too hot and it becomes bitter. Too long and it becomes cloudy. When done right, dashi tastes like the ocean condensed into pure umami, light but deeply savory. That flavor is the foundation of miso soup, noodle broths, and countless other dishes.
Mexican barbacoa represents another level of technique entirely. Traditional barbacoa involves wrapping meat (usually lamb or goat) in maguey leaves and burying it in a pit lined with hot coals and stones. It cooks underground for hours, steaming in its own juices while picking up smoke and earth flavors. A few summers ago, I attended a barbacoa cook in Hidalgo that started at 3 AM. We lined the pit with cactus leaves and corn husks, lowered in a huge pot of consommé to catch the drippings, then covered everything and waited. The meat that emerged around noon was so tender it fell apart at a glance, infused with flavors I still can't fully describe.
The Ingredients You're Missing
What I wish more people understood is that both cuisines rely on ingredients that rarely make it into exported versions of their food.
Mexico has over 200 varieties of chiles, and most Americans have encountered maybe six. Chiles de árbol are sharp and bright. Chipotles morita are smokier and fruitier than the more common chipotle meco. Chilhuacles (black, yellow, and red) are the heart of Oaxacan moles but almost impossible to find outside Mexico. Each one brings not just heat, but distinct flavor—fruity, earthy, smoky, vegetal, bright—and Mexican cooks blend them like painters mixing colors.
Herbs, too. Epazote tastes like oregano's weird cousin—sort of medicinal, sort of minty, absolutely essential in black bean dishes. Hoja santa has this anise-like flavor that shows up in Veracruz cooking. Mexican oregano isn't even in the same plant family as Mediterranean oregano; it's more citrusy, more complex.
And then there are the quelites—wild greens foraged from the countryside. Quintonil, verdolagas, huazontle. Most Mexicans grew up eating these, but they've almost disappeared from restaurant menus in favor of more "refined" vegetables.
In Japan, the ingredient precision goes even deeper. There are specific varieties of negi (green onions) prized in different regions. Negi from Shimonita have thick white sections and cost more than I want to admit. Quality katsuobushi (those bonito flakes) should be hard as wood and shaved fresh; the pre-shaved stuff in bags is convenient but loses aromatics within days.
Japanese mountain vegetables—sansai—come into season for maybe two or three weeks in spring. Fuki (butterbur), takenoko (bamboo shoots), warabi (bracken ferns). They're slightly bitter, intensely seasonal, and absolutely central to springtime kaiseki menus. Miss the window and you wait another year.
And yuzu. This citrus fruit tastes like lemon, lime, and grapefruit had a baby with more floral notes. Japanese chefs use it sparingly—the zest in a hot pot, a few drops of juice in a sauce—because the flavor is so powerful it can overwhelm everything else. I've seen high-end restaurants in Japan where they treat a single yuzu like liquid gold.
What We Gain by Going Deeper
I used to think the best way to understand a cuisine was to master its most famous dishes. Learn to make perfect sushi. Master the taco. But that's like trying to understand jazz by only listening to Miles Davis—you miss entire conversations happening across regions, generations, and styles.
The real revelation comes when you stop treating these cuisines as monoliths. There's no single "Mexican food," there's the food of abuelitas in Sonora making carne asada with mesquite smoke, and entirely different traditions in Veracruz where Spanish and Caribbean influences created dishes like huachinango a la veracruzana. There's no unified "Japanese food," there's the food of mountain villages that preserve vegetables in tsukemono to survive winters, and coastal towns where breakfast might be fresh bonito seared and served with nothing but salt.
What strikes me most about both cuisines is how they've managed to preserve their depth while also adapting. Mexican food in Mexico has incorporated new ingredients and techniques without losing its soul. Japanese chefs train in French techniques then return to create entirely new genres of washoku-inspired cuisine.
But the traditions persist. On DÃa de los Muertos, families across Mexico still make pan de muerto and prepare their loved ones' favorite dishes for the altar. During Japanese New Year, osechi ryori—a carefully composed array of symbolic dishes—maintains centuries of tradition even as modern life pulls in different directions.
Tracking Down the Real Thing
If you want to experience these depths without booking flights, there are ways. Seek out regional specialists—Oaxacan restaurants, not just "Mexican." Look for izakayas that change their menu seasonally, not places serving the same rolls year-round.
Better yet, find communities. Mexican grocery stores carry ingredients that never make it to mainstream supermarkets. Piloncillo, crema mexicana, dried chiles by the pound, fresh masa on weekends. Japanese markets stock different grades of miso, real katsuobushi, and seasonal items timed to traditional celebrations.
And read. Really read. Books like Diana Kennedy's The Cuisines of Mexico or Samin Nosrat's work on Japanese technique open doors. Follow cooks on social media who are preserving traditional techniques—there's a whole generation documenting processes their grandmothers knew by heart.
The other option is to just start experimenting. Buy a chile you've never heard of and taste it. Pick up a piece of kombu and make dashi from scratch. The worst that happens is you waste a few dollars. The best that happens is you discover why people have been obsessing over these flavors for thousands of years.
I think about that woman grinding chocolate in Oaxaca and the izakaya owner in Kanazawa more than I probably should. Both of them were doing what their families had done for generations, but they weren't stuck in the past. They understood their traditions deeply enough to honor them while also adapting to the present.
That's what exploring beyond sushi and tacos offers—not just new flavors, but a different relationship with food itself. One where seasons matter, where ingredients have histories, where technique is respect made tangible. These cuisines have so much more to teach us if we're willing to look past the familiar and comfortable.
The irony is that sushi and tacos led us here. They're gateway dishes—approachable enough to fall in love with, complex enough to hint at something deeper. And once you've crossed that threshold, once you've tasted proper mole negro or experienced what fresh wasabi does to your sinuses, there's no going back. You're chasing flavors for life.
