Feria Nacional del Mole opens in Mexico City's mole town
San Pedro Atocpan, on the capital's rural southern edge, says it makes 60 per cent of Mexico's mole. Its 49th fair runs to 25 October with 23 restaurants and 17 producers.
The 49th Feria Nacional del Mole opened on Saturday 3 October in San Pedro Atocpan, a town in Mexico City's southern borough of Milpa Alta, with 23 restaurants and 17 mole producers trading until 25 October.
The fairground sits at kilometre 17.5 of the Xochimilco-Oaxtepec road and the event lasts 23 days, El Financiero reported. Milpa Alta's mayor, Octavio Rivero Villaseñor, opened it, according to the local outlet Cúspide México, whose opening report counts 24 restaurants rather than the 23 announced. Artisans from Morelos, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala and the State of Mexico have stalls alongside.
Mole, from the Nahuatl word for sauce, is a thick blend of dried chillies, nuts, seeds, spices and often chocolate, ground to a paste and loosened with stock over turkey, chicken or pork. It appears on any list of what to eat in Mexico City, yet much of it starts here, an hour or more south of the centre.
A town of grinders and family shops has turned a sauce into its main industry.
Why one town supplies Mexico's mole
San Pedro Atocpan accounts for around 60 per cent of national mole production, a figure the organisers repeat and the national press carries. The trade magazine Merca2.0 puts output at up to 50,000 tonnes a year and says 95 per cent of residents work in mole-related jobs. Both numbers come from the town's side; none of the reports cites an independent count.
The house style is mole almendrado, built on almonds and made with more than 26 ingredients, among them several chillies, walnuts, hazelnuts, sesame and chocolate. At the fair it is served with turkey. The restaurants also offer red mole with chicken, pipián with pork and chilacayote squash, and rabbit in adobo, while the 17 producers sell paste and powder to take home. No report gives a price per kilo.
What the Feria Nacional del Mole costs and draws
Entry is free from Monday to Friday and costs 20 pesos per person at weekends, according to the travel site Escapada H. Attendance forecasts are loose: Cúspide México reported more than 250,000 expected visitors in late September and more than 300,000 on opening day.
The opening set piece was an enmolada, tortillas bathed in mole, laid out in a line nearly 80 metres long. Cúspide México says 160 people assembled it from 150 kilos of mole almendrado, 120 kilos of handmade blue tortillas and 100 kilos of chicken, and that it was shared among 2,500 people.
The Feria Nacional del Mole began in 1977 with four restaurants and four producers. The 50th edition falls in 2027. Until then the town does what it does the rest of the year, selling sauce by the kilo, with a ticket booth at weekends.
