Mexican cuisine is known for its intense and varied flavors, colorful decoration, and its variety of spices. Mexican gastronomy, in terms of diversity of appealing tastes and textures, is one of the richest in the world in proteins, vitamins, and minerals, though it is characterized by some as excessively spicy.

Most of today's Mexican food is based on pre-hispanic traditions, including the Aztecs and Maya, combined with culinary trends introduced by Spanish colonists. Quesadillas, for example, are a flour or corn tortilla with cheese, beef, chicken, pork, and so on. The indigenous part of this and many other traditional foods is the chile pepper. Foods like these tend to be very colorful because of the rich variety of vegetables (among them are the chili peppers, green peppers, chilies, broccoli, cauliflower, and radishes) and meats in Mexican food. There is also a sprinkling of Caribbean influence in Mexican cuisine, particularly in some regional dishes from the states of Veracruz and Yucatán. The French occupation of Mexico also yielded some influences as well: the bolillo, a Mexican take on the French roll, certainly seems to reflect this.

Mexican food varies by region, because of local climate and geography and ethnic differences among the indigenous inhabitants and because these different populations were influenced by the Spaniards in varying degrees. The north of Mexico is known for its beef production and meat dishes. Southeastern Mexico, on the other hand, is known for its spicy vegetable and chicken-based dishes. Seafood is commonly prepared in the style of Veracruz.

There are also more exotic dishes, cooked in the Aztec or Mayan style, with ingredients ranging from iguana to rattlesnake, deer, spider monkey, and even some kinds of insects. This is usually known as comida prehispánica (or prehispanic food), and although not very common, is relatively well known.