Cuernavaca's restaurant scene is driven partly by the city's large expatriate community and partly by the sophisticated weekend visitors from Mexico City who expect good food. The portales around the zócalo offer reliable, tourist-oriented comida corrida at all hours. The more interesting eating is a few blocks from the centre, in the residential neighbourhoods where locals eat.
Morelos cuisine features rice dishes, stews cooked with local chiles, and cecina — a thin salt-dried beef that is a regional speciality, often served with black beans and avocado. Pozole, the hominy soup, is another local staple. The cheapest and liveliest place to try all of it is upstairs among the comida stalls of the Mercado Adolfo López Mateos; the other end of the spectrum is the peacock-filled garden of Las Mañanitas, with the courtyard classics of La India Bonita — serving Cuernavaca since 1927 — somewhere happily in between.