As an enterprising teenager growing up in San Mateo Yucutindoo (population 2,500) in Oaxaca’s remote Sierra Sur region, Thalía Barrios García financed her first bakery by peddling goods she’d buy in bigger cities to locals. As a culinary school student, she almost got expelled for selling home-made tacos and fruit ices to classmates. 

Her grit and persistence paid off. In 2019, she used her savings to open a little patio restaurant, Levadura de Olla, naming it after the homemade ferments that women used to bake claypot breads in her village. Here, she began to nurture her real calling as an anthropologist chef, traveling to remote Oaxacan communities to ferret out ritual recipes, such as the one for the austere mole chichilla, smoky and bitter because it’s served at wakes.  

After her little place proved such a success, in 2023 Barrios moved to a far more spacious patio restaurant seating over 100. In 2024, aged 28, she was awarded a Michelin star for food that manages to be ethnographic, yet creative and personal.

Upon entering Levadura de Olla one passes a dedicated “tomato room” with a wooden table arrayed with hundreds of Oaxacan nightshades of every color and shape. Some of them star in Barrios’ signature salad set on an electric pink beet purée and dressed in a house-fermented fruit vinegar. 

From the anthropological part of the menu called platillos de salvaguarda, one can order a complex mole de fiesta thickened with masa and served with taut crunchy pozole kernels, or a village breakfast dish of crumpled tortillas called machucadas presented with cheese and three different chile sauces. 

The most delicious offerings though are on the menu’s “creativo” side, like the super-tender requesón (fresh cheese) tamal enriched with some butter and served with two moles, negro and coloradito, and a lovely zucchini flower. Or the unusual almond-and-chile mole scented with guava, which sauces battered fried cauliflower and shrimp. Among the inspired desserts there’s a pre-Hispanic corn-thickened gelée called nicuatole, here made of burnt milk and accompanied by a prickly pear granita.