Food Safety and Getting Sick in Mexico

It’s a hot topic. So let’s talk about food safety in Mexico and how to eat the good stuff and not get sick.

Q: Can you eat the food in Mexico?
A: Yes!

Q: Can you drink the tap water in Mexico?
A: No!

Hopefully we’re long past the trope that you can only eat at your resort or McDonald’s otherwise you’ll get violently ill. Food safety is taken seriously in Mexico. That said, you can still get sick. Trust us, we did.

Food Safety Tips That Are No longer true:

Salads or raw fruits and veg are off-limits
Not accurate. Restaurants use disinfectants on all of their produce. They don’t want you to get sick.

Look for the places with tourists
Naw, fam. Those are the most bland and expensive restaurants.

Order all your drinks without ice because ice is made with the non-potable tap water
Again, no. Mexican residents only drink purified water (not tap) and use purified water to make ice.

Only eat very hot foods or very cold foods
I get where this is coming from a food safety standpoint but it just isn’t practical in real life.

Only eat at places with running water
This is fine, but you’re never going to eat street food or late night tacos.

How to Find A Restaurant in Mexico

The first step in addressing food safety concerns while you’re traveling is to seek out reputable restaurants, street food stands and market vendors. Here’s how we find restaurants with a good track record.

1) Google “best restaurants in [city]” and look for a foodie blog

Pros: You’ll have a place to start and you don’t have to do any work for it. Plus you might learn about some local specialties.

Cons: These lists are endlessly recycled and stagnant. Blogger googles Top Ten, visits Top Ten, writes Top Ten featuring the same Top Ten. Rinse. Repeat. If it’s on the blog circuit Top Ten, you can guarantee that there will be a line of [pale] tourists to get in.

You’ll have to dig through generic yelp and travel advisor generated lists to find a blogger with good taste. Help break the food blogger cycle by trying a few unblogged places and giving them a google review.

2) Use Google Maps to search nearby

Often I’ll search something like “best tacos” within my map area. It helps to have an idea of what you want to eat but this usually works out.

I’m looking for:

• A good number of reviews
• A star rating above 4.2 (over 4.4 is better)
• Positive reviews translated from Spanish – this signals that the residents like it
• A photo or two of the food and if I’m lucky, a menu

I am not looking for:

• A website (so so many restaurants don’t have one)
• A menu (same same)
• Professionally photographed dishes (not happening)
• The listed open hours or days to be accurate in any way

3) Follow your nose

We’ve found many favorites by simply wandering. Sometimes we walk by something yummy looking and google it and has great reviews despite not show up in my search. The best example of this is Honcho’s Churros in Oaxaca. OH MY GOD.

Several times we’ve walked past a place that smelled like heaven and veered right in and sat down. This is how we found Taqueria El Paisa in SJC, which became our go-to spot.

If you walk by a spot and there’s a huge crowd of locals living their best life, try it. Las Glorias in Lo de Marcos makes one of the best quesadillas we’ve ever had, and we just stumbled in because it looked popular.

Often you can check google reviews right then and there. But sometimes the hottest spot in town isn’t on google or yelp. Imagine your grandma, toiling over her secret recipe, serving the neighborhood dinner each night. She’s not about to learn SEO and register a gmail account, let’s be real.

This describes the tiny nighttime taco stand in Melaque that we found one evening. When we strolled by all the seats were taken so we figured we should try it. Amazing tacos… still have no idea what the place is called.

Traveling in Mexico Food Safety Bonus Tips

Wash or disinfect your hands before eating (carry hand sanitizer with you).
Keeping Pepto Bismol, Immodium and Tums on hand doesn’t hurt.
Disinfect any produce you buy before prepping or eating (microdyne or similar).
Doctors no longer recommend getting or taking antibiotics preemptively.
If you do get sick, walk-in clinics at the major pharmacies are quick and inexpensive.
Include yogurt or other probiotics in your diet before, during, and after travel.

Things I Ate That Didn’t Make Me Sick Somehow

Let’s talk about the times that I completely ignored basic food safety in Mexico and still didn’t get sick.

This is a partial list that I plan to add to:

• Shrimp tamales I bought from a lady on the side of the highway
• A cannoli-like pastry from a guy on the beach in San Blas for 50 cents
• Fish tacos from a lady with a glorified sidewalk tent in Todos Santos
• Fish tacos near Lake Chapala (if you know you know)
• A whole roasted chicken, again from a grill on the side of the highway
• Unrefrigerated ham and cheese pastries that sat all day in a bakery
• An entire grilled octopus
• Salsas from shared containers
• Cheap – like criminally cheap – tuna ceviche
• Juice (agua fresca) from countless street vendors in countless parks

Getting Sick in Mexico

Sooooo… How did we get sick?

Years ago, my friends and I went to Cabo San Lucas and decided, with total disregard for food safety, that we were going to eat at every taco stand we walked by. We all left for home with what we called “Fuego” which might otherwise be called “traveler’s diarrhea.” It’s a thing and it’s not really the same as food poisoning. Pack Pepto and Immodium.

More recently, Lincoln got food poisoning in mainland Mexico (I did not) and we determined that it was from unwashed produce. We cooked mushrooms but probably he accidentally ate some raw untreated produce while cutting it. Now we soak all produce in a disinfectant solution.

We both got good and sick in San Cristobal de las Casas. We’re not sure where from and know that speculating is futile because incubation periods vary. It was likely from a well-reviewed restaurant because we knew to be careful in San Cris. From what I’ve read, this is common throughout Chiapas. Unfortunately it’s a poor state with limited access to clean drinking water and less food safety awareness. We would still go back though, haha!

As many people before us have figured out – just because you’re careful doesn’t mean you can’t get sick. But it isn’t the end of the world.

What To Order at Restaurants in Mexico

First of all, some restaurants have English menus if you don’t speak Spanish. If you need an assist, download the Spanish to English dictionary on Google translate. And then get ready for it to only work sometimes.

Because of colloquialisms, you won’t always be able to directly translate a dish or ingredient name. EG: nieves means snow but is actually shaved ice, and barbacoa means barbecue but is actually stewed meat. Try to google search the dish instead (the images tab can be helpful).

A lot of our meal decisions in Mexico were made by pointing to someone else’s dish (that looked delicious) and asking the server “Disculpe, qué es eso?” “Excuse me, what is that?” This is how we discovered tlayudas, queso fundido, gringas and more.

If you need help, we wrote a glossary of dishes and street food in Mexico (beyond tacos).

Helpful Pro Tips For Restaurants in Mexico

Restaurants and, in particular, street food stands are usually open limited hours. There are your breakfast spots, your lunch spots (sometimes these cross over), your dinner spots and then your late-nights spots.

More expensive and more traditional restaurants may be open all day, but you should under no circumstances assume that google hours are correct.

There are a million food stands, restaurants, local favorites that aren’t even listed on Google Maps.

Google reviews should be taken with a grain of salt (this is always true), but in Mexico there’s more of a chance that good reviews were written by family members and bad reviews were written by rival businesses.