The Vegetarian Side of Mexico City Nobody Told Me About

Mexico City's food scene runs deep. The longer you spend here, the more you realize how much of it you haven't found yet. That's what keeps it interesting — there's always another layer.

Guests started asking me about vegetarian options and I got curious. Not just about what to point them toward — about what was actually out there. So I did what I always do in this city when I want to understand something: I went and found it myself.

I started exploring the vegetarian scene in Condesa. No tour in mind yet, no agenda. Just walking, eating, paying attention. And in a small vegan spot tucked into the neighborhood, I found something that stopped me completely.

The meal that changed everything

I knew going in that it was a vegan restaurant. That wasn't the surprise. The surprise was how extraordinary the food was.

The sopecitos — small, thick masa bases, pinched at the sides, fried until the outside is just set and the inside stays soft — came with mushrooms as the meat. Not a topping, not a side. The mushrooms were the filling — chorizo-spiced, cooked with the depth and intensity you'd expect from meat, finished with a homemade salsa made fresh that morning. I ordered the empanadas. I had the strawberry agua fresca. Every single thing on that table was exceptional — the kind of meal where you slow down because you don't want it to end.

The place was warm, unpretentious, and completely serious about the food. Right around the corner from one of my favorite taco spots in Condesa — somewhere I'd been going for years. Two completely different food worlds, half a block apart.

I went looking and found something that exceeded every expectation I had. That's when I knew this city had a vegetarian food culture serious enough to build a tour around.

That's Mexico City. It doesn't announce itself. You have to go find it.

The dish that started it all — Sopecitos with Mushrooms as the Meat: Small, thick masa bases — soft inside, just set on the outside — with mushrooms as the filling. Cooked with the depth and intensity you'd expect from meat, finished with a homemade salsa. One of the best things I've eaten in this city. The reason the Sin Carne tour exists.

What I found when I actually started looking

I went deep. Studied the city's food history. Built new relationships with vendors and cooks I hadn't worked with before. Spent serious time in markets paying attention to what was actually being made — not what I assumed was being made.

What I found was that plant-based cooking isn't new to Mexico City. It's where this city's food began. Pre-Hispanic Mexican cuisine was built on corn, squash, chiles, nopales, mushrooms, and quelites. The meat came later. A lot of what gets served on the street today has roots in that tradition — roots that most people, including me, had been walking right past.

Nopales cooked properly — tangy, slightly smoky, nothing like anything you might have tried elsewhere. Huitlacoche, a corn fungus with an earthy depth that makes you stop mid-bite, inside a blue corn quesadilla made on a comal. Rajas con crema — roasted poblano strips with fresh cheese — that don't feel like a substitution for anything. They just taste like this city.

And tacos de canasta — one of Mexico City's most iconic street foods — are naturally plant-based. Bean, potato, chicharrón de queso. Most vegetarian visitors never realize they can eat them freely. Most never even get to try them. On this tour, they're on the table.

How the tour grew from there

The Sin Carne tour isn't a tour of vegetarian restaurants. It's a private walking food tour through Mexico City's plant-based food traditions — moving through the neighborhoods where the best of it lives, a completely different window into what this city knows how to do.

Here's what makes it different from every other food tour in Mexico City: nobody has to ask for a substitution. Not once. Every single stop was chosen because the food is genuinely exceptional on its own terms. Vegans and vegetarians coming on this tour get the full experience — not a modified version of it, not a compromise. A tour built from scratch, entirely for them.

That's what most people don't realize exists here. You can come to one of the world's great food cities as a vegan or vegetarian and never once feel like you're on the outside of it. The food culture was here long before the meat-heavy version of it — you just need someone who's done the work to find it.

Sin Carne is now one of our most booked private tours in Mexico City. The food is that good. And there aren't many people who have spent the time to find it, build the right relationships, and put it together into something you can actually experience in an afternoon.

Sin Carne — Private Vegetarian Taco Tour: A private walking food tour through Mexico City's plant-based food traditions. Built entirely for vegans and vegetarians — no substitutions, no compromises. Every stop is exceptional on its own terms.

• Private tour for groups of two or more
• Fully customizable
• Approximately 3 hours
• All food and drinks included
• 100% vegan and vegetarian
• No substitutions needed — ever

If you'd told me two years ago that a private vegetarian taco tour in Mexico City would be one of my most booked routes, I would have had questions. Now I just tell people to come and eat the sopecitos.

Book the Sin Carne tour →