In Guadalajara, Chasing Art, Fantastic Food, and the Love of a Good Time

The second day of my first trip to Guadalajara, a decade ago, began, like so many mornings in Mexico's second city do: with blazing sunshine and a blazing hangover. I'd spent the previous evening sipping agave distillates at Mezonte, a miniature plywood-clad tasting room that pours some of Mexico's most exciting spirits, and dancing clumsily at what may be the world's most perfectly named bar: Pare de Sufrir, or Stop Suffering. My inevitable headache required an antidote. And so, in the fine expiatory fashion of this famously Catholic, famously hedonistic metropolis of nearly six million, I chose sublimity. I remember heading east that morning from the café-studded streets of the Colonia Americana neighborhood, the epicenter of Guadalajara's buzzy restaurant and art scene, through the historic center, to the Hospicio Cabañas, an early-19th-century orphanage turned museum. From 1937 to 1939, the muralist José Clemente Orozco filled the Hospicio's central chapel with 57 frescoes that trace Mexico's history from colonial savagery through the brutalizing hope of industrialization. A Promethean prophet, the celebrated Man of Fire, strides across the central dome, ringed with allegorical representations of arts, crafts, and sciences: learning and labor as equal paths to enlightenment. I left reeling, almost in tears. I'd never encountered a more heartrending room. I still haven't. Since then I've returned to the city, and to Orozco's murals, at least a dozen times, and I always leave reluctantly. I've lived in Mexico City for 10 years, and while I adore my adopted home it's hard not to be seduced by Guadalajara's gorgeous weather and gorgeous people, its offhand elegance and easy pace, its languorous lunches and, perhaps above all, its commitment to the disciplines represented in Orozco's dome, which taken together are known as oficios. In actual usage, oficios, which translates to “vocations,” encompasses all the artisanal practices (ceramics and glassblowing, carpentry and bricklaying, painting and cooking) that make the city one of Latin America's most thrilling destinations. “If you want to find a particular oficio in Guadalajara, you'll find it,” said Oliver Pendragón, a young architect who I met up with on a bright Sunday in January at the entrance to the Mercado San Juan de Dios, a Brutalist public market a few steps from the Hospicio Cabañas. Immense and intimate, rigorous and rooted, with texture and drama to spare, San Juan de Dios has for years been my favorite building in Mexico, and I wanted to visit with someone who knew it well. Pendragón spent three years overseeing the restoration of a childcare center on the market's roof, part of the ambitious original 1957 design. Inside he led me past stalls packed with food, clothes, electronics, and leather goods. Dark, narrow aisles opened onto leafy patios and soaring atria crowned with voluptuous canopies of cast concrete. Founded in 1542 and morphing into a commercial capital for western Mexico, Guadalajara was, for much of its history, small in scale and spartan in its tastes. The relative lack of monumental architecture made it easy, as the city grew in the 1950s, to demolish huge swaths of the historic center in the name of modernization. That process yielded its share of masterworks, like the Mercado San Juan de Dios. But on the whole, Pendragón told me, “tearing down all of those historic properties was basically an atrocity. That's why we Tapatíos”—the peculiar demonym for Guadalajara's residents—“are so lacking in architectural memory.” This struck me as an odd contention in a city so enamored of its traditions. Mariachi, tequila, and the florid masculinity of charrería, Mexico's national equestrian sport, all originated in Jalisco, the state for which Guadalajara serves as capital. The muralist Orozco was born in Jalisco. So were architect Luis Barragán, the author Juan Rulfo (his novel Pedro Páramo is to Mexican literature what The Great Gatsby is to American), and Vicente Fernández, the singer and film star who for decades embodied a chivalric ideal of Mexican manhood. Still, Pendragón had a point. Compared with the stage set perfection of cities like Puebla and Oaxaca, Guadalajara's historic center is gleefully chaotic, with functionalist schools abutting neoclassical chapels and midcentury parking garages looming over the rudely dismembered remains of former convents. Yet, today, few cities in Latin America have a clearer architectural identity. The morning after my visit to San Juan de Dios, I met up with Francisco Chavarría, a young design researcher, for a guided walk around La Americana, where, he told me, “Guadalajara's modern architecture was born.” On a single block Chavarría pointed out a pair of eclectic Beaux Arts villas—survivors from the area's early days as a turn-of-the-century garden suburb; the more modest of the two was restored five years ago to become the 17-room Casa Bosque Eduviges, where I stayed. Across the street a functionalist school clad in clay tiles sits next to the half-moon arches of Barragán's Casa Clavijero. With its fountains and patios, its spare ornament and spatial poetry, Clavijero epitomizes the idiosyncratic regionalist style that flourished here in the 1920s. Even today Guadalajara's most forward-looking designers continue to experiment with these deeply rooted tropes, from the lyrical modulation of their city's radiant light to the proud application of local oficios. As we walked Chavarría identified not only the neighborhood's many significant modern buildings but also modest midcentury houses and apartment blocks dignified by their subtle use of the city's raw materials. Handmade earthenware brise-soleil (an external shading technique) turned otherwise bland boxes into undulant clay tapestries, while expanses of golden limestone linked functionalist schools and modernist churches to historic structures like the Hospicio Cabañas: architectural memory as free association. “Guadalajara has this long tradition of craft, so the integration of craft into our buildings is very Tapatío,” Chavarría said. “It's a matter of identity.” I spent the rest of that afternoon in La Americana, where I saw that Tapatío genius for craft in countless shops, showrooms, galleries, and cafés. At Plataforma, a two-year-old contemporary art space, the architect Sergio Ortiz, the designer behind Casa Bosque Eduviges, had stripped away the crumbling exterior walls of an abandoned funeral home and replaced them with glass blocks. Inside he'd removed false ceilings to reveal shallow brick barrel vaults—an artisanal colonial building technique still used today—and set a central staircase into a dark cedar chamber, like a wardrobe that transports you from one luminous floor to the next. Two years after its opening, Plataforma has become “a place where you can take the pulse of what's happening in the city,” said José Noé Suro, the space's cofounder and director of Cerámica Suro, a ceramics factory that produces work for artists and architects around the globe and a nodal hub for Guadalajara's design scene. After leaving Plataforma I stopped at the workshop of designer Alejandro Julián Núñez, where, left to my own devices, I scattered a dozen hand-embroidered guayaberas across a broad wood table, as though shopping for carpets in Istanbul. I browsed textiles and photographs at Albergue Transitorio before continuing on to Occidente, a sleek showroom that offers a panorama of the city's contemporary design scene. At Lofa Ceramics, ceramist Andrea Mantecón showed me her collection of sculptural wall tiles slicked in mineral glazes, while at newly opened Musgo I perused ceramics by artists transforming their city's traditions with Japanese-inspired glazes and 3D printing. Around the corner at Chamula Hecho a Mano, narrow shelves overflowed with objects from across central and western Mexico, including burnished jugs from Tonalá, 1 of 10 municipalities now absorbed into greater Guadalajara. More than anywhere else in Guadalajara, “Tonalá is the place where craft is actually made,” said Sofía Cruz del Río Castellanos, a former director of Jalisco's state agency for the development of craft, a government office dedicated to economic advancement for artisans, when we met the following morning. If the shops in La Americana offer a thrilling window to where Tapatío design is going, then Tonalá, a 30-minute drive from the city center, is the best place to understand where it comes from. In Tonalá's bustling center, Castellanos guided me among craft workshops tucked discreetly into private homes. We visited the Valdivia family, who've produced utilitarian red-clay ceramics for generations, and the Bernabes, who specialize in the exquisite cross-hatching technique known as petatillo, before ducking into the humble atelier of Ángel Ortiz, “one of the great masters in Tonalá,” Castellanos told me. Ortiz and his son worked in companionable silence inside their earth-colored studio illuminated by a narrow blade of light that cut through their open doorway. Ortiz, his rope-veined hands remarkably steady, traced elaborate webs of vines and flowers onto a large clay rooster, while his son used a small black stone, smooth as obsidian, to burnish the surface of a water jug, a process called bruñido. “If bruñido disappears, that's the end of Tonalá,” Ortiz said. “Bruñido is the mother of all crafts.” To my mind, the true mother of all crafts is cooking, particularly in Guadalajara, which is, beyond any doubt, among the best food cities in Mexico and, by extension, the hemisphere, if not the world. Any trip here should be organized, first and foremost, around what and where you eat. Options are endless. You might start your day with chilaquiles at Comala Café or with a gordita de chicharrón, a griddled masa casing folded around minced pork, at two-year-old Nejayote. Another morning, stroll among the modernist buildings around Parque Agua Azul before paying a visit to Tortas Ahogadas Don José el de la Bicicleta, one of countless stalls and storefronts dedicated to Guadalajara's most improbable culinary delight: the famous—and, to most nonlocals, preposterous—torta ahogada, or drowned sandwich. Made by stuffing braised pork onto crusty bread and dousing the whole thing in a tomatobased sauce, tortas ahogadas are impossible to miss and impossible to eat politely. At Kobuta Co, a sunny slip of a restaurant, husband-and-wife owners Ivan Salcedo and Yukari Tanaka serve a superlative katsu sando with a side of curry for dipping—a sly wink at the city's emblematic sauce-soaked dish. Guadalajara is fundamentally a lunch city. (This past January I spent eight full hours lunching at old-school power spot La Matera on chewy riojas and thick cuts of steak.) But for dinner you could hardly do better than Xokol, where chefs Oscar Segundo and Xrysw Ruelas turn out dishes as heady as they are satisfying. On my most recent visit, I devoured buttery slices of tongue served with deep-fried masa-wrapped marrow and marveled at a single perfect tortilla folded around field greens from Segundo's grandmother's farm. New bars, which seem to multiply by the second, are no less invigorating. Some favorite new additions include Fandango, which serves an excellent Negroni, and Mecenas, known for its brainy concoctions using house-made liquors and infusions. Happily, Guadalajara's bars and restaurants, even at their most cerebral, treat cooking as no more and no less than another revered oficio. “We want to make food that inspires nostalgia,” Segundo told me over a leisurely lunch early in my trip. “When we cook we're imagining how people will feel when they eat what we're making.” I'd met Segundo and Ruelas that afternoon at their favorite seafood joint, El Desconchadero de Caguamo, located in an open lot on the northern edge of town. As we crunched through bracingly acidic tostadas de aguachile, we were joined by the restaurant's owner, Juan José Padilla, known to everyone by his adolescent nickname, El Caguamo, the word used for liter-size bottles of beer. “That's how I used to greet people: ‘Take out the caguamas!’” he told me with a laugh. “Now even my nieces and nephews call me that.” Padilla started El Desconchadero during the pandemic to sling beer and ceviche for close friends under an open sky. Today it may be the city's worst-kept secret, as it fills every weekend with large groups that linger for hours, as is Tapatíos' wont, over eternally replenishing micheladas, mountains of raw oysters, and steaming platters of chargrilled shrimp. “This place is a total disconnect,” Segundo told me as empty beer bottles accumulated on our folding metal table. “It wasn't built to rake in cash or create an ‘experience.’ It was for friends to hang out and let life go by.” In Guadalajara there's no raw material more basic, and more sacrosanct, than time. Beauty and pleasure, as any Tapatío can tell you, don't rush. Sadly, I had to. I'd made plans for that afternoon (rookie mistake), which I already pushed back twice. When I announced my departure, scudding my chair over the concrete floor, Segundo poured a final caguama and, eyebrow cocked, slid my glass across the table. It was a classic Guadalajara goodbye, which is also always an invitation to stay. Stay With its 17 quiet rooms in a charming house and small modern tower in Colonia Americana, Casa Bosque Eduviges is about as quintessentially Tapatío as it gets. Set in a 1940s house in La Americana, Casa Habita has been the gold standard for design hotels in Guadalajara since its opening in 2015. Rentals we recommend: Eat and drink At Xokol, surprising, sophisticated cooking in a theatrical black box of a room is always rooted in the extraordinary diversity of Mexican ingredients and regional culinary traditions. La Panga del Impostor is a local favorite for seafood tostadas and fish tacos on a sunny terrace in La Americana; it's easily among the best places in town for a long, leisurely lunch. Traditional Mexican breakfast dishes like chilaquiles and eggs with beans are served on a long communal table in the entrance to Yunaites, one of the city's historic public markets. Lines form early on weekends. Mezonte is a minuscule tasting room pouring small-batch agave distillates sourced with care from across western Mexico, with particularly exciting options from Jalisco and neighboring Michoacán. The fragrant smoke from the grill will guide you to street stall Tacos Don José, at the edge of La Americana, famous for its tasty tacos de birria and enfrijoladas. Shop One of Mexico's most exquisite clothing stores, Alejandro Julián Núñez displays its hand-embroidered cotton shirts, each one uniquely beautiful, on a seemingly endless wall of open shelves. The recently opened design store Musgo places a special emphasis on contemporary crafts and homewares, particularly ceramics, made by young artists and designers in Guadalajara. The showroom for Joselo Maderista, one of the city's finest carpentry studios, shares a building with contemporary art space Plataforma, which is also a great place for a streetside coffee. Chamula Hecho a Mano is an overflowing wunderkammer of witty, whimsical crafts from western and central Mexico. A sunlit showroom shared by over 20 local makers as well as an exhibition space run by the nonprofit Foro de Arquitectura, or Architecture Forum, Occidente offers a fascinating panorama of the city's vibrant contemporary design scene. Explore If you'd like to go deeper into the city's architectural history, Francisco Chavarría organizes personalized walks for up to four guests starting at $100 an hour. Guadalajara is one of our Best Places to Go in 2026. Find the full list here. This article appeared in the September/October 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.