The Daily Joy of Buen Provecho
Mexico's version of "bon appétit!" is a daily part of life.
Part of the fun of visiting another country and immersing yourself in a new culture is being exposed to new ways of life. You’ll find things you love and things you can’t stand, but being a tourist, a temporary guest, clads you in a type of shielding that makes you more of a spectator than a participant. The problems and oddities of a place largely will slide off your back, like raindrops running off the slick surface of a raincoat. Living somewhere removes the raincoat.
It’s hardly all bad, though. For all of the troubles and moments of discomfort moving internationally will bring, you’ll also find things that will bring you great joy, and one of the most endearing customs in Mexico is “buen provecho!”, a statement uttered casually and repeatedly between complete strangers in, as far as I know, every restaurant in the country.
Buen provecho is the Spanish version of “bon appétit,” a polite way of saying to someone else that you hope they enjoy their meal. There doesn’t seem to be a completely wrong time to say it to someone, other than perhaps when they’re in the middle of a conversation or have a mouth full of food, but most often it’s said to someone at either the start or end of a meal. In Oaxaca, it’s mostly a sentiment expressed by happy and sated people leaving a restaurant who happen to make eye contact with the tables they’re passing by.
Daily pleasantries are a big part of life here in Oaxaca. This is less common in the city than it is in the towns outside of the city of Oaxaca, but practically every single person you’ll pass on the street will wish you a buenos días (or the appropriate equivalent depending on the time of day). People will even give you a friendly nod if you make eye contact with them while driving slowly down the street. But buen provecho transcends even that rather extraordinary degree of stranger-to-stranger engagement. It’s so common to say buen provecho in a restaurant that not buen provecho-ing someone, or not being buen provecho-ed yourself, can feel like deliberate rudeness, a heartless snub. If you’re in a large enough restaurant around comida (Mexico’s primary meal of the day), the chorus of buen provechos can be so significant that it takes on the energy of being in a field of chirping grasshoppers.
Buen provecho is one of the happiest and most welcoming customs we’ve encountered since moving to Mexico, a repeated moment of charming courtesy that has helped to mark just how far away we are from the United States. In the U.S., a country of toxic and aggressive individualism, the idea of this type of routine courtesy between strangers is unthinkable. If you were in a restaurant in the U.S. and said, “Have a great meal!” to every table you passed, people would think you were either simple-minded, a pervert, or a serial killer.
I imagine buen provecho is a national occurrence in Mexico, but I don’t know for sure just how far beyond Oaxaca the custom extends. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a common and universal greeting all across the country, and we’ve certainly experienced it in Mexico City, but Mexico has 130 million people living within its borders, and regional differences in norms and culture can vary substantially. It’s a real possibility that the famously (sometimes egregiously) laid-back Oaxaca is simply a little friendlier than other parts of Mexico and a little more liberal with its food-related well-wishing. But I hope it’s as common in other regions as it is where we live, and that the place we’ve come to live is simply a little nicer and a little more welcoming than the country we left behind.
We said Buen Provecho in Costa Rica all the time, and we still say it when we eat back in the U.S. It's a little reminder of the simpler, nicer way to live!
Loved "buen provecho-ing", haha.