The Traditions of Día de los Muertos Nourish the Living, Too

My family moved to Austin from Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico, when I was six. Until then, I’d grown up like all of my Mexican cousins, speaking strictly Spanish, celebrating el quince (the night before Mexican Independence Day rather than the Fourth of July), and memorizing the words to all the Luis Miguel songs my mom had on constant rotation. Throughout my childhood, I clung fiercely to every fragment of my Mexican identity that I could grasp, refusing to accept my new American reality. One of the things I held onto most tightly was my love for Día de Muertos. 

In Mexico, Día de Muertos is a major holiday, during which we remember the dead and honor their return to the land of the living with citywide parades, cemetery vigils, and all manner of festivities. These take place throughout October and culminate on November 1 and 2, when people who have passed on to the afterlife are believed to return to this mortal plane. The holiday is most meaningfully observed in people’s homes, where families build ofrendas (altars to departed loved ones), prepare their favorite foods, and share memories. 

I’m not alone in my love for this ethereal holiday: 2023 F&W Best New Chef Edgar Rico, of Nixta Taqueria in Austin, maintains an altar at his restaurant and encourages his staff and community to bring in photos of loved ones to add to it. “You don’t ever mourn … You remember all the good times you had with them and all the beautiful memories that you made together,” he says. Rico prepares entomatadas for his grandmothers, Martha Vega and Josefina, his paternal grandmother who was “an awesome little firecracker” who made “really lovely food,” he says. Before opening Nixta Taqueria, Rico lived with her in San Luis Potosí for a couple of months and absorbed her tortilla-making knowledge and kitchen know-how. Martha, his maternal grandmother, worked for many years as a molendera; his entomatadas recipe includes her standard table salsa, which was always at the ready when something needed to be whipped up quickly. Perfect for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, Rico’s entomatadas are simple enough for an everyday meal but work for a special occasion, too. As he puts it, “It’s just tortillas, salsa, and cheese. How is this hitting so much?”

In 2022 F&W Best New Chef Ana Castro’s family, Día de Muertos is serious business. So much so that one of her cousins has dedicated himself to making altars professionally, even designing an installation for the holiday at Rockefeller Center. The person that Castro is most excited to welcome back is her grandfather Manuel Castro Fernandez, who she credits for instilling in her a reverence for tradition, a generous spirit, and above all, a love of food. What he enjoyed most was a plate of arroz a la Mexicana topped with a fried egg. He loved it so much that Castro put a version of it — albeit a much more elevated version with bottarga — on the opening menu of her first restaurant, Lengua Madre, in his honor. Castro says you can add in frozen peas and carrots, and corn if you like. But whatever you do, don’t skip the fried egg. “It binds the entire dish together and makes something every day, whatever, into something completely different,” she says.

For her ofrenda, chef and television personality Claudette Zepeda doesn’t make just one dish but a whole delectable spread for Día de Muertos. “I think the occasion demands it,” she says. Its breadth reflects the influence of her grandmother, Paula Valadez, who was her confidante, roommate, and “one of the toughest ladies in the world.” A matriarch who operated on the belief that a woman could take on the world with good lipstick and good eyebrows, Valadez had a tough life, moving constantly to wherever there was work to be found. It was thanks to this, though, that Zepeda was able to experience the flavors of far-flung parts of Mexico as a child. “I was blessed with an entire map of Mexico on my table,” she says. With the recent passing of her dad, Hugo Herberto Zepeda, who shared the chef’s love of sweets, this year she’ll add a tin of cookies, candied pumpkin, and a cheesecake with cajeta that’s enhanced with another of her dad’s favorites: tequila. “I visualize us having that, and I’m like, ‘Oh, can you taste the earthiness and the grassiness of it?’” Zepeda says. “My dad was an intellectual guy, and I thought this would be a good conversation starter.”

2021 F&W Best New Chef Fermín Núñez of Suerte in Austin has been working on the mole negro that he’ll make in memory of his grandmother, María Eugenia Chávez de Núñez, for years. He has a few rules for making it. First, if he’s in a bad mood, he won’t make it at all. When it’s mole day, he plays the Mexican rock band Maná’s album Sueños Líquidos, both to set the vibe and to let everyone at the restaurant know that he cannot be disturbed. It’s the first album his family let him play on road trips; he knows where he should be in the process based on the track that’s playing. “This mole is an expression of who I am and what I’ve gone through to get to this version,” he says. “I hope that my grandmother can see that and the trajectory that I took to get here.” What would his grandmother’s feedback be if she were to try it? “I would think that she would hopefully say it’s perfect, and I’m perfect, and I’m the best f—ing mole maker ever.”

In addition to placing photographs of loved ones on her ofrenda, 2023 F&W Best New Chef Isabel Coss includes chefs who influenced her, like Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain. Still, the most important addition is her grandmother Matilde Olvera. A former ballerina who had to follow a strict diet for many years, Coss credits Matilde for sparking the love of food that led her to become a chef. It was Matilde, always a rule breaker, who would give Coss the special treats that she so cherished. “She was always an icon for me,” says Coss. Today, she makes pan de muerto, a confection traditionally enjoyed on Día de Muertos, in Matilde’s memory. “It’s fluffy and delicious,” she says. “And it’s colorful, so it makes you feel like a kid while you eat it.” The best way to enjoy it is probably while taking a moment to remember your loved ones and the significance of the day. “You serve the food because it’s what your family is going to love to eat. But also because food is an everyday ceremony of consuming something that died for you to have life. So it’s a circle,” she says.

To close my own circle, I traveled to Oaxaca last year to experience the magic of Día de Muertos back on Mexican soil. It felt electric to be there. Storefronts were decorated with cempasúchil, orange marigold flowers — the traditional flower of the dead in Aztec lore. Papier-mâché skeletons hung from window frames and looked down from rooftops. Stalls of face painters transforming people into elegant calaveras (skulls) were on every corner, and the streets were packed with vendors. Comparsas, mini music-filled carnivals of costumed Oaxaqueños, took place throughout the city. At those, participants stay on their feet all night, dancing into the wee hours of the morning. Oaxaca leaves no doubt: Día de Muertos is a time for celebration. 

The same mood extends to cemeteries. Every year in Atzompa, one of the more traditional cemeteries on the rural outskirts of the city, elegant tapered candles illuminate graves embellished with blankets of cempasúchil. Attendees quietly tell stories of their loved ones while watching over the flames, making sure they don’t go out. Some build fires to heat a pot of ponche or champurrado that will keep them warm during their all-night vigil. Over in another cemetery, Xoxocotlán, the vibe is decidedly more of a party. Here, as you walk from grave to grave, the soundtrack reflects the tastes of the deceased — in one corner, there’s a full mariachi band, in another some catchy banda tunes, and just a little farther along there are the synths of the ’80s hit “Lobo-Hombre en París.” 

While each cemetery has its own personality, all share an overwhelming feeling of reverence created by families who have taken time out of their busy lives to be graveside with those who are no longer here. As stories and laughs are exchanged over mezcal, there’s a strong feeling of closeness to one another and to departed loved ones.

That sense of closeness is even stronger in people’s homes, where Día de Muertos celebrants dedicate a space — whether a little corner or an entire room — to building an altar. The importance of these points of reverence is palpable at shops and markets, which are in full swing, with vendors hawking fruits, papel picado (colorful paper decorations), sugar skulls, copal trays, and mountains of cempasúchil — everything you could need to make your altar — well into the night. At a bakery in Mitla, an hour southeast of Oaxaca City, I met baker Héctor García, who has spent his entire life making pan de muerto. “On these days, we leave behind the quotidian,” he told me. “We disconnect from reality to be in communion, the people who are alive and those who aren’t. We feel in our surroundings their presence — that air, that vibe — and that’s what makes Día de Muertos special.”

García’s words drove home to me what the holiday is all about — taking time away from your daily routine to build an altar, to reach out to the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins you may not have seen all year — and to take the time to prepare a plate of food for, and celebrate the memory of, someone who won’t be coming to the table. It can feel that it takes a bit of magic to do all that, it’s true. But it’s precisely that magic that moves me to celebrate this holiday with an altar of my own year after year. 

This Día de Muertos, I’ll be adding a few more pictures, having recently lost my grandmother, one of my uncles, and my grandfather-in-law. But unlike other times of the year, I won’t be sad. I’ll be welcoming them with a path of cempasúchil, a plate of enchiladas verdes, some cigarettes, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, and an immense gratitude to delight in their presence, thanks to the magic of a culture that instilled this belief.