This is the home of authentic Mexican food. And it's more than just tacos and burritos: Mexican cuisine -- depending on the region -- can share similarities with Caribbean, Spanish and even East Indian cooking. In the coastal states - Yucatan, Campeche and Veracruz, for example -- the emphasis is on fresh seafood (shrimp, crab, squid, octopus, redfish, snapper). The Yucatan also boasts wonderful sopa de lima (soup with tortilla strips, chicken and a lime like fruit) and pollo pibil (chicken marinated in sour orange juice and cooked in a pit in banana leaves).

The state of Michoacan is known for the tart-piquant flavours of such dishes as salpicon de res (shredded beef cooked with pickled serranos, cilantro and tomatoes), while Oaxaca boasts a number of different moles (sauces made with such unusual ingredients as chocolate, raisins, peanuts and pumpkin seeds).

Elsewhere, poultry, beef and pork dishes are featured. In Colima, try tatemado (pork baked in a clay pot over an open fire); in Tampico, try tampequena (fillet of beef, usually with refried beans, fried tortilla chips and guacamole on the side). The basic bolillos (crispy bread rolls) and tortillas are magnificent because they're usually prepared fresh daily.

Be sure to try chilies rellenos (poblano peppers stuffed with cheese or meat, then fried in egg batter); crepas de huitlacochle (corn fungus); papadzules (a dish of tortillas in pumpkin-seed sauce - its antecedents go all the way back to the Maya age); chicharrones (fried pork skin); and the different kinds of tamales (wrapped in corn husks, banana leaves or even Swiss chard).

Among the ingredients you'll find in Mexican markets are recado (a reddish paste flavoured with achiote seed and bitter oranges), epazote (the herb that gives black beans their distinctive flavour and de-gases them), avocados, tomates verdes (green tomatoes), plantains (a variety of banana that's not sweet and is always cooked before eating), limes, nopalitos (cactus) and, of course, the many, many varieties of chili, ranging from the mild poblano to the smoky chipotle to the hotter-than-Hades habanero.