Chef Pilar Cabrera Arroyo, acclaimed Oaxacan chef, restaurant owner and cooking school proprietor has recently launched Oaxaca Culinary Tours, offering fully personalized, custom designed gastronomic tours of Oaxaca, for small groups of chefs, foodies and aficionados of the cuisine of Mexico, with an emphasis on Oaxaca.

(TRAVPR.COM) MEXICO - April 11th, 2011 - Internationally acclaimed native Oaxacan chef, restauranteur and cooking school owner Pilar Cabrera Arroyo has recently launched her newest venture, offering custom designed culinary tours for small groups visiting Oaxaca, Mexico, wanting an emphasis on the food and drink of the region.

Oaxaca has often been considered the gastronomic capital of Mexico, steeped in great culinary tradition dating to the era of the Conquest, when the Spanish introduced many new foodstuffs to the state. Those unique herbs, spices, fruits, vegetables and meats, combined with an already rich and diverse indigenous food culture, set off a series of chain reactions, today represented by Oaxaca's moles, tlayudas, pozole, estofados and more.

Chef Pilar combines her sound academic background (degree in food sciences and nutrition) with over 40 years of experience dating to when she would attentively watch and learn from her grandmother's every dip of a spoon into a large clay or cast iron cauldron.

For this venture Chef Pilar has partnered with her friend and colleague Canadian Alvin Starkman. Alvin brings to the table a background in social anthropology and twenty years of touring throughout the central valleys of Oaxaca.

Chef Pilar and Mr. Starkman have worked together in the past, twice in arranging culinary tours of Southern Ontario, to promote Oaxaca's culinary traditions to Canadians, and twice in bringing Americans and Canadians to Oaxaca to experience the state's gastronomic greatness.

For this new venture, tour participants will have an opportunity to design their own tour, of course with suggestions from the tour organizers based on particular culinary passions and curiosities. Visitors will have an opportunity to attend cooking classes with not only Chef Pilar, but also other renowned chefs; visit native marketplaces; learn about organic and sustainable production; dine in the finest restaurants as well as in the quaintest of roadside eateries; sample and perhaps participate in the production of tejate, mezcal, pulque and other drinks for which Oaxacan is known; and learn the secret recipes of Zapotec natives through visiting with them at their rural homesteads.

"Of course," Chef Pilar reassures, "first time visitors to Oaxaca will also have an opportunity to learn more about why Oaxaca is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; we can also visit the ruins, marvel at panoramic mountain vistas, learn about craft production, and explore Oaxaca's many Dominican churches, museums, art galleries and much more."

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