Inside the Mexico City Market That Serves Lion Steak and Tiger Burgers Duncan Tucker - VICE Munchies
go to original October 10, 2015

Exotic San Juan Market in Mexico City (MuchosMexico)

Built in 1955 at 21 Ernesto Pugibet Street in the heart of Mexico City’s historic enter, the indoor San Juan market is famed for its selection of exotic meats, indigenous delicacies, and rare foreign imports.

Eduardo Santana has been working at his family butcher’s stall, Carniceria Santana, for 20 years. They sell meats rarely found in Mexican cuisine, such as rabbit, quail, venison, ostrich, buffalo, and wild boar, as well as staples of the pre-Hispanic diet like grasshoppers, maguey worms, and escamoles (ant larvae also known as “Mexican caviar”). Today, Santana says, these insects are most commonly eaten like chips, served in tacos, or used as an adornment for other dishes.

Santana does not stock lion, but he does sell cuts of frozen crocodile meat. These meats only began to appear in San Juan about five years ago, he says: “As our gastronomy has become more popular in culinary schools and on TV shows, people have begun to introduce more exotic meats for consumption. It’s become kind of fashionable for restaurants to create new dishes with them, although they’re still not very common in our day-to-day life.”

Most exotic meats used to be imported, with the crocodile coming from the United States and the venison being shipped from New Zealand, but now many of the animals are reared at specialist farms in Mexico, Santana explains. The buffalo is still imported from the United States, he says, but the crocodile now comes from an licensed provider in the eastern state of Veracruz.

Crocodile meat, which Santana sells at 550 pesos (about US $32) per kilo, can be fried, grilled on a skewer, or served raw in ceviche. Some people try it out of sheer curiosity, he says, but the most common buyers are cookery schools and restaurants, such as Chon, a popular local joint that serves an array of intriguing pre-Hispanic dishes like crocodile in mole verde.

Read the rest at VICE Munchies

Related: Eating Insects in Mexico with Andrew Zimmern (VICE Munchies)

Photo: Duncan Tucker

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