"You call that a knife?"
That's how I feel about Mexico City.
All the other cities I've met in my life...SF, LA, Buenos Aires, NYC, London, Paris, even Hong Kong. You call those cities?
MEXICO CITY is a city.
Mexico City crackles with energy. I don't know if the people or the place have some super-charged chi going on, but this city feels electric.
I'm going to dive right into the danger topic first, because, on the one hand, it sucks. On the other hand, it adds an element of anxiety that makes each moment...intense.
The danger here has a particular flavor.
Before we arrived a friend told me about getting attacked in a market in Mexico City five years ago. In his own words, "I turned a corner and within 15 seconds two guys were choking me in front of 10 people that didn't care or were too afraid to intervene." Jeez!
That reminded me of a story I read in a newspaper several years ago (2004) about two undercover police who were burned to death by a crowd in Tlahuac on the outskirts of Mexico City. To be clear, this event that was not in any way condoned by the people of Mexico City. It was seen as desperate vigilantism in the face of lawlessness and police indifference.
Nonetheless...burned alive?
I don't mean to romanticize something so terrible. What I'm trying to get at is that there is a sense of...the gothic...or an imagination of darkness...that is darker...than anything I am familiar with. (I'm not going to write about Santa Muerte. If that interests you, here is the Time magazine article about it.)
Certainly this impression of gothic-ness was heightened because we were visiting Mexico City during Dia de Muertos. I didn't know this before coming to Mexico City, but November 1 is dedicated to angelitos, or children who have died. Perhaps in reference to this, there were children everywhere dressed like skeletons. I was slightly shocked rounding a corner and running straight into a mini-casket with a doll in it, being pushed on a dolly by a eight-year-old girl dressed like a bloody bride skeleton! You'll notice that I don't have many photos of my own from this trip because I was paranoid about whipping out the nice new camera.
The photo I snapped above captures a little flavor of the scary-looking people out and about...
At Templo Mayor, the archeological site of the important Aztec/Mexica temple, right in the heart of Mexico City with the Spanish Metropolitan Cathedral just beyond -- I accidentally bought a postcard with an image of Tepeyolohtli on it. The postcard described the figure as "God of sin and misery" (also "heart of the mountain"). My immediate, superstitious reaction was to get rid of the postcard, get it as far away from me as possible. But I didn't do that.
Later I learned that Tepeyolohtli is an incarnation of Tezcatlipoca, who together with Quetzalcoatl, is one of the creators of the universe. It is the conflict between these gods, not loving cooperation, that brings about the universe. Interestingly, the wall text at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia also says,
Black was his defining color, which is why he was considered the god of darkness and of all that occurred at night, such as theft, adultery, etc. He was the god of masculinity, the patron of procreation;
This was stunning to me. Masculinity associated with darkness? I am accustomed to the ancient Greek duality of Apollonian reason/light/masculinity and Dionysian chaos/darkness/femininity.
Hmmm. This association of masculinity and darkness somehow helps to explain the dedicated section for women and children on the Mexico City Metro. When I heard about this I thought, Do women and children need to be protected from men on the train?
And speaking of transportation, when you are sitting in the worst traffic you have ever seen in your life (as we did for one hour driving the 10 km from the airport to our hotel), you may see some of the same street performers that busk in traffic in other Latin American cities. What's the difference? In Santiago you might see a juggler with a clown nose. In Mexico City, it's a man juggling fire, painted head to toe in silver, standing on a ladder directly in front of an enormous line of traffic...
Or maybe they're just breakdancing in traffic. This, to me, encapsulates the whole thing. The whole MEXICO CITY is a city-thing. Mexico City has style, balls, imagination, ambition.
You wanna talk ambition? E knew (I did not) that the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim Helú, worth $63.3 billion, is from Mexico City. Mr. Slim, interestingly, is the son of two Lebanese immigrants to Mexico (his father brought the first Arabic printing press to Mexico). Among other things, Slim is the man behind Telmex and Telcel. When you're the richest man in the world, you have to get serious about philanthropy. One thing Slim has done is create the radical-looking Soumaya Museum designed by architect Fernando Romero, who I just learned is his son-in-law.
It's painful to write this, but...I didn't go to the Soumaya Museum. It pains me even more that I wasn't able to visit the UNESCO World Heritage listed home of modernist architect Luis Barragán.
I also missed the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids outside of Mexico City and Xochimilco and the Frida Kahlo Museum...and probably a ton of amazing contemporary art. By the time we were leaving, I was in kind of a panic...there is simply too much to see and do.
There is also way too much to eat.
I love Mexican food. I didn't realize how much until this trip.
By chance I had the pleasure of dining with a new friend from Chowhound, Cristina Potters. Although born in the USA, Cristina took like a fish to the waters of Mexican culture 30 years ago and is now a Mexican citizen too. Cristina writes a deliciously informative blog called Mexico Cooks!, designs culinary tours of Mexico, and helps to organize the Michoacán Festival of Traditional Cuisine that takes place in early December. She is also a translator!
We started lunch with...tequila. No, it wasn't tequila. It was mezcal. What's the difference? Technically, tequila is a type of mezcal, which is simply liquor made from agave. By Mexican law, tequila can only be made from blue agave in a specified geographical region, mainly in the state of Jalisco. In practice, Cristina said, tequila is now made by big liquor companies while mezcal is the provence of small producers. In Mexico City, people like to drink mezcal.
We had a Oaxacan mezcal made from organic agave espadin by a company called Delirio. This photo from their Web site shows the piñas, or sheared hearts of the agave plant, that are baked in underground charcoal ovens before the aguamiel (honey water) is crushed out and fermented.
The custom is to drink mezcal from a jícara (goard) with a slice of orange and a sprinkle of sal de gusano, which is (everyone shudder) worm salt. People who love sal de gusano really dig the stuff. For some reason I couldn't get what was distinctive about it. It tasted like slightly tangy chili salt to me. But the overall ensemble -- tangy/spicy/salty, refreshing/aromatic/sweet, oaky/smokey/intoxicating -- was a wonderful opening of the senses for the start of a meal.
We shared many powerfully-flavored dishes at Azul Condessa, a restaurant run by chef Ricardo Muñoz Zurita, who just won the Travel and Leisure award for best regional and traditional cuisine. The most memorable dish for me was the chicken enchiladas de mole negro, which had such a complex set of concentrated flavors with chile humming in the background all the while. Very, very...stimulating. Unfortunately I was so stimulated that I forgot to take a picture!
But there were more memorable moles...
E keeps talking about the duck with black mole at Izote by Patricia Quintana. A pile of shredded, tender duck in the most intense, sweet, salty, savory, spicy, unfamiliar...addictive, overwhelming sauce that looks like hot tar. Under a little pile of paper-thin onion shavings and a little flat disc of a tamal to mellow the flavor and settle your tummy. It was really good.
So was the scallop ceviche. I felt like I was back in Hong Kong. Eh? Texture! Toothiness, fleshiness, delicacy. Tiny little bites. Like nibbling on someone's earlobe. In a strangely tangy-salty juice that must have had soy in it. And saltines! Somehow it was perfect. I couldn't have eaten more than they served, but it was absolutely memorable.
Let me take you into a different texture universe... Ooh, but first, imagine nuns. With buns ;-)
Sorry, couldn't resist. It's true...if you have been seduced by the display of voluptuous baked goods in the window of Café Tacuba, and charmed despite yourself by the stained glass, brass, and dark wood...so that you drift hopelessly against your will inside the tiny doorway... You will find nuns. And you must confess to the nuns that what you really want in your deepest heart of hearts is one of those conchas with the sandy chocolate crust and buttery dough. Oh my lord, I am really defenseless when it comes to pan dulce.
The whole time we were in Mexico City I felt the same way I do when there is a chocolate bar in the house. I was aware the entire time that there was pan dulce to be had.
To make things worse, because it was Dia de Muertos, there was pan de muerto everywhere. A big, puffy turban-shaped bread crossed on the top with two "bones" made out of dough, dusted everywhere with granulated sugar and flavored subtly with orange flower water. Pan de muerto, sugar skulls, and all sorts of skeleton-shaped pastries were flying off the shelves at the much-loved Pasteleria Ideal on Uruguay Street in the historic center.
We are not done with sweets yet. Oh no. We had some extraordinary sweets by a really talented young chef named Sonia Arias. If I understand correctly, she is originally from Mexico City, trained at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in NYC, worked in some top NYC restaurants, and returned to Mexico City with her husband Jared Reardon, himself a CIA grad (and Bostonian), to start a restaurant together that celebrates his savory cooking and her sweet creations. The restaurant is an amalgam of their names -- Jaso -- a la Bennifer or Brangelina.
Ok, so first the sweet...
This was a coffee-chocolate salty-sweet temperature-texture explosion. Doesn't look like much in the photo, I know. But those are triangles of some kind of creamy, nutty ice cream. Then there was coarse, gravely espresso granita (not too sweet), and then gooey molten chocolate cake with a crispy surface. Maybe there was something else in there too. There was so much going on, and it was so decadent, that I disappeared into my plate. When I came up for air, E had scarfed down his entire postmodern crème brûlée so I can't really tell you what that was like.
And now for the savory... This was the star of the savory show, in my opinion. It was called a squid dumpling. What it seemed to be, in fact, was a tenderly cooked piece of squid that was wrapped, like dumpling pasta, around a delicious crab filling. On top was a sauce that had something like crème fraîche in it, a perfect balance of tangy and creamy. On top of that, maybe a dusting of black truffle? I dunno. I disappeared into my plate on this one too.
Since we were still recovering from nonconsensual steak over-consumption in Argentina...we ate a lot of seafood in Mexico City. And I have to say that tuna tostadas at Contramar were not only some of the best seafood we had there, but strong contenders for one of the yummiest things I've ever eaten. Fabulous quality tuna tartar, dried or deep-fried onion shavings, chipotle mayo, lime, all on top of a fresh, crunchy tostada. My whole body just relaxed when I had a bite, and I said to E, "This is perfect food." It was a fresh, balanced, totally coherent dish. Yay!
Another thing I loved at Contramar were their sopes. Oh man. I love the smell of corn. A satisfyingly thick patty of it, not too big. Brilliantly tenderly crispy, with black beans on top, shredded lettuce, Cotija cheese, and natilla (?). I feel happy just thinking about them!
And then there was this salad I thought was going to be one of those throw-away dishes. You know, it balances out the menu, but it's nothing to write home about. Well, here I am writing home about it. Super grilled shrimp in a marinade that enhanced, rather than overwhelmed the shrimp flavor; thin slices of avocado, and tender chunks of sweet grapefruit, on a bed of arugula in a light vinaigrette. Delightful!
Oh, another thing about Contramar. Their waiters are really good: fast, focused, knowledgeable and polite. Really first class. Whoever owns the restaurant knows what they are doing. And I apologize to those guys because we had a reservation at their new restaurant called Merotoro, but we no-showed because our supposedly hotel-vetted taxi tried to charge an extortionate amount of money (200 pesos to go 3 km) and we both kind of melted down. Everyone tells you that it's dangerous not to take a vetted taxi (really, everyone), and every taxi ride was proceeded by a kind of edgy negotiation in which we tried to just get ripped off (not royally ripped off). Anyway, melt down, no cell phones. PF Chang. We punished ourselves!
One last thing... I'm a sucker for old-school good service. Not fussy service, but formal service. It makes me feel like all is right in the world. Estoril, a truly old-school Mexico City restaurant with very good food, has those kind of waiters who actually do take care of you. When they say, "Good evening Ms. X" it sounds genuine. Their menu is a funny combination of traditional Mexican dishes with some gourmet flair and then creaky old European classics like Chateaubriand and escargot.
They are famous for their shrimp tacos with deep-fried parsley (in Bacon fat!). Crispy, light, fresh. It rocked. Their sauteed squash blossoms in an artichoke heart was nice too.
Ooh, ooh, one more thing...
A disappointment: Biko.
Perhaps you have heard of the San Pellegrino Top 50 Restaurants in the World list? Well, Biko (another example of Basque culinary overachievement) is #31 on the list. I don't know what happened. But our meal did not go so well.
My Spanish is usually good enough to navigate most menus and dining scenarios. At Biko however, I simply could not understand anything coming out of our waiter's mouth. And he did not speak English. Nor did anyone else. And they were very busy. And then...it was a conceptual menu. Actually two parallel conceptual menus, one with the theme "abundance" and the other...I don't remember. Something like "discovery" or "innovation." Anyway, faced with dishes titled (in Spanish) things like La Naturaleza de Atun (the naturalness of tuna), I was screwed. I ordered badly and they over-sauced. E gritted his teeth. It was not fun.
One bright spot: a brilliant tender baby squid appetizer with smoked potato architectural constructions on the plate and the word "txipis" which I think means "squid" in Basque. Conceptual food by someone who hasn't worked at El Bulli and can actually conceptualize for themselves. Wow.
To me, this meal was a service failure on their part and a research failure on mine. But nonetheless interesting.
So, whoof, I am exhausted, overstimulated, overfed, and could easily spend months, if not years, getting my head wrapped around Mexico City, if such a thing is even possible.
