The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for January 2009

An ode to conchas at Bondy in Mexico City

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Conchas at Bondy's

Oh soft concha pillow
Quilted with cocoa and sugar
One crackling bite
She swoons
Dreams of lolling around on its gauzy mounds
Is there such a word as “Yummerifico?”
I just invented it

Seriously: Bondy inspires poetry. We went there for breakfast this morning and the waiter immediately set down one of these huge trays of bread. After using my knife to cut a small piece of everything, including a honeyed donut, a cinnamon roll, a cheese-stuffed pastry and said poetic conchas (they’re the dark brown rolls above), I ordered my real breakfast: Scrambled eggs with ham and rajas, or strips of grilled poblano pepper.

Oh god. The tangy, charred peppers, the smoky ham… where had this combination been all my life? It’s hangover food Numero Uno. (We stayed out a little late last night.) I am so making this at home when we get a kitchen. Crayton had huevos divorciados — poached eggs on soft corn tortillas, one doused in green sauce, the other in red sauce.

I did actually say “yummerifico” when we finished eating. I know you’re not surprised.

My first Mexico City tacos

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Tacos de cachete

The start of a beautiful relationship.

These came from a place in el Centro around 9:30 last night. They’re tacos de cachete, or beef cheek. I’m on a mission to try every part of the cow. Next stop: “tacos de nana,” or uterus.

Crossing the street and trying not to get killed

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One of the most time-consuming decisions I make every day is deciding when to cross the street. No one really follows the traffic laws around here, so even if you’re crossing legally, with the light, someone might still bear down on you like you don’t exist.

So when can you actually go?

Obviously, when there’s a break in traffic. But that’s not the case 90 percent of the time. My second day here I misjudged the distance of an oncoming car and got so scared, I froze in the middle of the street, like a deer in headlights. Luckily the guy let me go.

Lately I’ve done this weird half-hesitation, half-step-into-the-street thing, and I think it just makes people nervous. Drivers slow down and look at me like, “What the hell are you doing?” I’ve also tried following other people, but sometimes they’re maniacs who step in front of moving cars. (Sorry, can’t do that yet.) Crayton says you just have to cross at the slightest gap in traffic, and that you can’t hesitate or they’ll run you over. I say: You do your thing, I’ll do mine.

Funnily enough, on my apartment search today, I was chatting with the broker about how I’m too scared to drive in Mexico City. She said, half-joking: “Oh no, walking is much more dangerous.”

Added to the list of torta places to check out…

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Tortas Homero

Sorry part of the sign is cut off — I was standing in the median while I took this. Saw this place this morning on Calle Homero, on my way back from my very first Gold’s Gym “Body Pump” class. (As a totally unrelated sidenote, I had a VERY animated instructor named Wendy who kept yelling “Pompa, pompa” — as in English-ized “pump, pump”? — or “bomba, bomba,” as in, this stuff is hard, it’s like a bomb dropped on your head. In either case, I will be back. Preferably not the same day I eat a torta.)

My second love, after my husband

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Que Bo chocolate

The chocolates at Que Bo!, a shop in my neighborhood, are almost too pretty to eat. They look like marbles, almost.

One bite and it’s over. You want to eat all of them at one sitting, preferably with a big glass of wine.

Que Bo had a booth at the Chocolate Experience, and I happened to see the store on my way home from the supermarket today. I bought a slice of chocolate-dipped, chilied mango (how could I not?), and horchata, jamaica, mole, green tea and goat cheese chocolates. (I saved the saffron and red-wine flavors for next time.) They also sell gigantic brownies and chocolate cakes.

Since, you know, my glass of vino was already out, I went ahead and ate the horchata one while I was typing this. Creamy, sweet… mmmmm.

She is officially blissful.

How much do things cost in Mexico City?

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This was my biggest question before I moved here. So far, it’s been cheaper than Dallas, but not “we can live like kings!” cheap. (Because, um, only one of us has a steady income.) A quick run-down of stuff I’ve bought recently, using about 14 pesos to $1 USD:

Groceries: Box of cereal $2 to $3; 1 lb. chicken breasts, less than $3; gruyere cheese, $6… that was a moment of weakness, I’m sticking to Mexican varieties in the future.

Coffee: At a nice cafe, less than $2 for a cappuccino. Same place charged $3 for a veggie sandwich.

Beer: Around $2.50 at a trendy cafe in our neighborhood.

A giant torta spilling with grilled meat: About $1.50 in Condesa.

Gym: Double what you’d pay in the U.S.

Taxis: My fetish-taxista ride cost less than $8 and it took about 30 minutes. (Not including the foot massage.)

Big bottle of water at the convenience store: Less than $1

Rent: Can’t really gauge this yet, but the neighborhood we’re looking at, Condesa, seems at least $200 and $300 cheaper than what you’d pay in Dallas. (Which is also pretty reasonable, as far as big American cities go.) Other places in Condesa are way out of our price range. In Polanco, where we’re staying now, I think we’re pretty much priced out for what we want.

On that note, our apartment search continues. Today we’ve officially been in Mexico City one week.

If there’s such a thing as bakery porn, it resides at El Globo

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El Globo

Lola, the woman who does our housekeeping, told me last week that if I ever wanted a “trocito de pan,” they’re delicious at El Globo. It’s a French bakery chain that originally opened in el D.F. in 1884. There’s one in my neighborhood, a few blocks away.

Since we really don’t eat much bread — “Hmmm,” you say, “what about the bisquets?” — okay, since we, I mean I, TRY not to eat much bread, I thought I’d pop in and check it out from a cultural perspective. Also, I kind of adore bakeries, and the smell of baking bread turns me into one of those cartoon characters levitating with her nose in the air.

I’ve been inside Mexican panaderias before, but El Globo took things to a whole new level.
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A bisquet, a basket

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My current favorite morning/afternoon/whenever snack in Mexico City: Hot bisquets with butter and jam. They’re pronounced like “bis-KET” and they don’t really taste like biscuits at all. They’re dense and sweet, slightly crisp on the outside, and made with either white or wheat flour. They pretty much blow bland English muffins out of the water.

Here are the ones I got at The Break, a coffee shop near my house. (If anyone’s wondering, “wireless Internet” is the same in English and Spanish.)

bisquets

The mystic fetish taxista

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I took a cab home a few days ago from the World Trade Center, after my day at the Chocolate Experience. The cab came from a sitio, which is an authorized taxi stand in Mexico City. (This is supposed to be much safer than hailing one off the street, since sitio stands have a record of your destination and the taxi license number.)

The driver was a friendly 40s-ish man with graying hair. We started chatting and I mentioned that it was my third day in Mexico. “Felicidades!” he said, clasping his hands and giving me the universal “victory” gesture. He asked how I was, and I said I was tired from walking around all day.

“You know,” he said, “if you massage your feet in three spots around the ball of your foot, you’ll feel much better. I promise.”

A few minutes later, he asked: “Do you know what podomancia is?”

Podo-what?

“Podomancia. It’s the science of reading feet. You know, like you read palms. You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their feet.”

“Interesante,” I murmured.

He asked if I wore high-heeled shoes and I said sometimes. He asked if I had a high arch, and I said yes. He recommended one- or two-inch heels as easiest on my spine, and added some technical stuff about my vertebrae that I didn’t quite understand.

Then he continued, “I can tell about you already that you have a great positive energy, and people around you like to be near you. You’re also busy all the time, which is why your feet hurt. It’s hard for you to sit still. Is that true or not?”

It was true — or at least the latter part. I thought, he knows all this and he hasn’t even looked at my feet yet?

“If you want I can take a look at your feet,” he added.
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