Mexico’s Atole Is a Drink That Spans Centuries

The words “velvety” and “restorative” aren’t the most common choices to describe a beverage, but they describe atole perfectly. It’s Mexico’s pre-Hispanic hot beverage that goes back 10,000 years to when humans first domesticated corn and consumed it in every way possible—including drinking it. It’s also special in the sense that it is both an everyday beverage and one reserved for rituals or medicinal purposes to many Indigenous Mexican communities, according to Larousse Diccionario Enciclopédico de La Gastronomía Mexicana.

Atole is satisfyingly thick, blending water with the same masa used for tortillas, tamales, and antojitos. The root of all these delicious things starts with nixtamalization, a process in which the field “dent” variety of corn—starchier than the sweet corn that’s often eaten straight from the cob—is boiled with calcium carbonate, shortened to “cal” in Spanish. The process makes field corn more easily digestible and unlocks its nutrients. The resulting nixtamal is ground using stones to create masa, the dough that’s ready to be used in food and drinks.

This staple food has existed since 1500 B.C.E., and some food historians argue that masa was the first form of processed food, owing to the steps required to make it. In 1949, a Mexican businessman named Roberto González Barrera thought to dehydrate the masa and sell it in flour form, called masa harina (the biggest brand is Maseca), which revolutionized masa-based foods by making it much easier to prepare at home (though at the expense of some freshness and quality).

Atole is still sipped throughout Mexico, with different regional variations in almost every state. In the U.S., as heirloom corn tortillas begin to fill supermarket fridges and an increasing number of modern Mexican restaurants and bakeries embrace making their nixtamal from scratch, atole is poised to become the next Mexican staple beverage that captures attention far from home. Especially as temperatures begin to drop, this silken drink delivers a deeper warmth than powdered hot chocolate, warming from the inside out.

From Baja California to Chiapas, atole is typically consumed in the morning, before or after (or sometimes instead of) coffee. It’s blended with local seasonal fruit, such as strawberries or pineapples, or tropical fruit like guavas or coconut along the coast. Sometimes it contains milk, sometimes it’s made with just masa, water, and sugar. There are instant versions of atole, too, available in supermarkets, and many make it from Maseca masa flour because it’s cheaper than nixtamal. These are found in powdered form, typically with artificial flavorings and cornstarch. A breakfast of champions for millions is an atole and a tamal, which fills you up for many hours, well into lunch and beyond.

In U.S. cities like Los Angeles, with thriving street food scenes and communities of Mexican immigrants, atoles have always been a part of the diet for the working class. Street food vendors that sell tamales and atole are some of the first to rise in the city, and they’re usually found at major bus stops from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach.

In Brooklyn, atole is finding a new clientele at For All Things Good in Bed-Stuy. Owners Matt Diaz and Carlos Macias source their heirloom corn from central and southern Mexico, much of it via Sobremasa, which buys pallets of it from Tamoa, a Certified B Corporation specializing in direct trade with Mexican farmers. Some also comes via a distributor from Masienda, the influential masa pioneer that first started offering heirloom corn in 2014.

Diaz is from New York, but his family is originally from Puerto Rico. He went to school for winemaking in Argentina, but switched passions to nixtamal after discovering a similarity between the two processes. “The idea was to open a bar in Mexico City, since I was always visiting Carlos, but then we realized that you couldn’t get heirloom corn in New York, despite the billion-dollar Mexican food industry in the U.S.,” Diaz says. “Opening a place that specialized in heirloom corn while also making sure the money made it back to the farmers in Mexico became more interesting to us than opening a bar for no reason.”

For All Things Good—named after a popular saying with mezcal—was inspired by the idea of bringing corn and masa to New York and showcasing the forms that masa can take. The concept shares similarities with Enrique Olvera’s casual Molino “El Pujol” in Mexico City, where the lauded Mexican chef offers a dairy-free milky atole blanco and a campechano, which is an atole with an espresso shot. At For All Things Good, Diaz and Macias stick to mostly traditional fruit-enriched atoles inspired by the color of the heirloom corn itself. For example, they’ll pair yellow corn with mangos, and use blue corn for their champurrado (an atole mixed with chocolate, milk, and sugar).

“Atole isn’t a hot seller, but we offer it as a non-caffeinated warm beverage seasonally because when you make fresh nixtamal, it’s so easy to have on the menu,” says Macias. Some guests may have first tried atole in Oaxaca, at a place such as La Atolería por Tierra Del Sol, where 10 to 15 varieties are offered on the menu. Macias and Diaz say that their champurrado is an easier sell for New Yorkers, mainly because of the stunning color of the blue corn they use for it. They are also thinking of bringing back their frozen atole cocktail made with Nixta corn liqueur and Pox Siglo Cero, a distillate made in Chiapas from corn, wheat, and sugarcane. “It’s a fun drink for the fall or winter, since it has a rich body to it. Over ice, it’s refreshing,” Macias says.

Atole’s luxurious mouthfeel begs for it to be combined with good coffee. It makes perfect sense that atole found its ideal match in Seattle’s coffee culture, where the ancient masa drink became a top-seller at Maíz in Pike Place Market. Owner Aldo Góngora Rivera fell in love with the Pacific Northwest when he first immigrated to the U.S. 25 years ago from Ensenada, Mexico. After getting his degree in gastronomy and restaurant management in Baja, he opened Maíz in Seattle in 2021. The concept was inspired by his background, and by his personal frustration with the preservatives in store-bought tortillas and the lack of authentic chilaquiles locally.

“We’ve worked with 24 different varieties of corn,” Góngora says. In addition to experimenting with planting heirloom corn in Baja, he also works with Tamoa and Masienda—two leading exporters in the country—to supply his nixtamalería, and he’s proud to only work with heirloom corn from Mexico. An atole latte is always on the menu; it’s made with his champurrado, which is prepared with 70 percent cacao Oaxacan dark chocolate that he buys from a French-Mexican family he knows personally (the brand and family are both named Texier), milk, cinnamon, piloncillo, and the same finely ground masa used for tortillas.

Occasionally, he makes an atole blended with tamarind or strawberries as a special treat. Maíz also offers a pinole latte as a seasonal special. Pinole is a pre-Hispanic beverage similar to atole but made with non-nixtamalized, toasted ground corn. Góngora describes pinole as a superfood from northern Mexico long used by mountain communities such as the Rarámuri, and when mixed with espresso, the flavor is toastier than that of coffee.

Góngora credits Seattle’s coffee culture—with its high standards for transparency and openness to innovation—as key to his atole and pinole lattes becoming menu staples. The heirloom corn he sources from Mexico mirrors specialty coffee’s traceability practices. He also roasts his own beans for all of his concepts, some of which he sources from Chiapas. “I want our atole lattes and dishes on our menus to sing, ‘Sin Maíz, No Hay País,’” Góngora says. That’s Mexico’s decolonial manifesto that many chefs, artists, and even the President of Mexico have echoed recently as a reminder of corn’s sacred role in Mexico, asserting it as the foundation of Mexican identity, history, and sovereignty against GMO corn.

Góngora’s commitment to heirloom corn—and the powerful ethos of “Sin Maíz, No Hay País”—reflects a broader movement among Mexican and Mexican American chefs reclaiming maize’s cultural legacy. But at Gusto Bread in Long Beach, co-owned by partners Ana Salatino and Arturo Enciso, atole is evolving in real time. While traditional atole simmers in clay pots over wood fires, Enciso has made it relevant for a new generation of consumers who prefer richer, sweeter flavors and creamier textures. He makes it into an atole cream with heavy cream, milk, vanilla bean, cinnamon, and cane sugar, using unrefined piloncillo and evaporated sugar. The cream goes into his atole sheet cake and his decadent atole latte.

“Atole holds a special place in our original Gusto menu, as it reflects my journey of learning to nixtamalize at the cottage bakery back in 2018,” Enciso says. “I was excited to explore nixtamal’s versatility—transforming it into sauces, porridges, drinks, and more. My goal was to introduce our guests to the rich flavors and cultural significance of nixtamalized maize through my baking, creating a deeper appreciation for these traditional ingredients.”

He first introduced his atole cake in 2020 after discovering the capitalistic true story of tres leches cake, which originated with Nestlé in 1940, when they first printed the recipe on the back of their cans of evaporated milk. “I wanted to turn that concept on its head and create a more wholesome cake for Latin American baking. I thought, ‘Why not soak the cake in a creamy atole?’ since I wasn’t a fan of heavily processed condensed or evaporated milk.”

Enciso makes and grinds his own nixtamal at the bakery once a week. After a couple of years of using Mexican heirloom corn, he switched to an organic yellow corn grown locally in California, which he thinks makes more sense for sustainability and social responsibility. “I thought, ‘Why not source local options?’ This not only reduces emissions but also helps keep the precious heirloom maize grown in Mexico within Mexico.”

Sitting in Gusto’s sun-dappled parklet with the ocean breeze swirling, an Atolatte in one hand and a slice of atole cake in the other, is a revelation: Proof that a 10,000-year-old tradition can still taste exciting.