Cooking with a Culinary Historian in Her San Angel Home

Lucia is a culinary historian and a university professor, and this class takes place in her house.

That combination is unusual enough to be the reason to book. Mexican food is one of the most documented and most argued-about cuisines in the world, with a pre-Hispanic base, a colonial overlay and a set of regional traditions that do not agree with each other, and someone who has spent a career on that will tell you things a cooking school will not.

The house is in San Angel, which is one of the oldest and prettiest neighbourhoods in Mexico City, cobbled and quiet and a long way from the centre in feel if not in distance.

The recipes are seasonal and they are family ones, made with fresh local ingredients, and you cook them together rather than watch. Then you eat at her table, which is a different thing from eating in a restaurant.

Three hours, private, with beer or tequila and the meal.

In English or Spanish.

Children are genuinely welcome, and the operator means it: there are child-sized tools, and children make sopes, tortillas and salsas from scratch, which most of them find more interesting than they expect.

Tell them about allergies, dietary restrictions or preferences at booking. The exact address comes on your confirmation voucher; the listed location is only the neighbourhood.