Toluca's food has two specialities you should not miss: chorizo verde, a fresh pork sausage made with green herbs and chiles that has no real equivalent anywhere else in Mexico, and tacos de plaza, dripping carnitas tacos wrapped in pink paper. Both are best eaten standing up at a market stall or under the Portales.
For sit-down meals, Hostería Las Ramblas on the Portales does well-regarded regional cooking in a colonial space. La Vaquita Negra del Portal is a small, busy taqueria famous specifically for its chorizo-verde tacos. Mercado Juárez upstairs has dozens of cooked-food stalls for cheap, fresh, traditional food at any time of day.
Moscos — the small bottles of orange-flavoured liqueur that you see for sale under the arcades — are a Toluca tradition worth a bottle as a souvenir, or as a digestif after dinner. The drink is sweet and strong.