What to eat
This is highland Hidalgo cooking: hearty, warming, meat-and-maize food that suits the cold air at 2,100 meters. Nobody comes to Huasca for a fine-dining scene, and that is fine, because the good eating here is homestyle and cheap if you know where to stand.
- Trout (trucha). The regional specialty, farmed in the forest ponds nearby and served grilled, fried, empapelada, or al mojo de ajo. If you eat one thing in Huasca, make it this. Expect roughly 150 to 250 MXN a plate at a sit-down spot (approximate), usually with rice, salad, and tortillas. This is a lunch dish, eaten early to mid-afternoon.
- Barbacoa de borrego. Pit-cooked lamb, a Hidalgo staple, best at the Mercado Municipal and morning stalls on weekends. Order it in tacos or by weight (por kilo) with consomé on the side. This is breakfast-to-late-morning food; go before 11 am because it sells out. Roughly 30 to 60 MXN a taco (approximate).
- Pastes. The Cornish-style filled pastries that Hidalgo’s 19th-century mining history left behind, filled with potato-and-mince (papa con carne), mole, tinga, or sweet fillings like pineapple. Better and more famous up in Real del Monte, but you will find them around Huasca too. Roughly 20 to 40 MXN each (approximate), great to walk with.
- Escamoles and gusanos de maguey, in season. For the adventurous, this region does the classic Hidalgo dishes of ant larvae and maguey worms when they are around, usually spring into early summer. Pricey and treated as a delicacy.
- Pulque. The fermented maguey drink is genuinely local here. Look for a small pulquería or a market stall rather than anything bottled for tourists.
Where to eat
- The Mercado Municipal. For barbacoa, tamales, and a cheap breakfast, the market stalls beat any sit-down place on price and honesty. Mornings only for the good stuff. This is your first stop on any day here.
- Fondas off the plaza. The best value lunch is the small family kitchens a street back from the square, where a fixed midday comida corrida runs roughly 90 to 140 MXN (approximate) for soup, a main, and agua fresca. Sit where the chalkboard is handwritten and the tables fill at 2 pm.
- Trout restaurants by the ponds. Bosque de las Truchas and similar spots out in the forest let you eat the fish more or less where it was raised, some letting you catch your own first. Touristy but genuinely good, and the right setting for a long, slow lunch. This is the sit-down splurge of the trip.
Order this, not that
Order the trout by the ponds and the barbacoa at the market, not the trout at a plaza-facing restaurant with a laminated menu and a host waving you in. The plaza places charge the visitor rate and the fish is the same fish, just less fresh and more expensive. Walk one block off the square, or drive out to the forest, and you eat better for less. And do your barbacoa early: by lunchtime the good stalls have sold through and you are left with the reheated version.