El Parnita in the Colonia Roma. Photo by Martin de la Torre
El Parnita, a fonda in the Roma, calls itself an “antojería.” The word antojito can mean two things in Mexico — a corn-based street snack, or a little craving. So an antojería is a place where you’d find those two things. And fulfill your cravings, of course.
The menu here is stocked with Vitamina T: tacos, tortas, tlacoyos. The presentation and flavor are more thoughtful than what you’d find on on the street. Stalks of jicama, a free appetizer for customers, arrive in a perky cluster doused with Valentina sauce. Another dish — a smoky, stuffed chile meco — comes bathed in a lagoon of piloncillo sauce. It’s eye-wateringly hot and sweet all at once.
The staff is friendly, too. Bertha Acra, who owns El Parnita with her children Paulino, Nicolás and Jorgina, greets almost everyone who walks in the door. She’s an elegant woman with black eyeliner and silver hair. The word Parnita comes from her late husband’s nickname, “Parner.” (As in John Wayne-style pardner.)
I took my friend Martin to lunch there several months ago and went back again this week. Both times the food was excellent, especially for the price point. Nothing is over 75 pesos.
Vintage toys on a shelf.
The menu, which has a similar vintage feel.
Salsas at El Parnita. Photo by Martin de la Torre.
The idea here is to order a lot of small things, so we started with a grasshopper taco and a cup of the cream of chard and purslane soup. Sometimes cream soups in Mexico City can be heavy and greasy. This one tasted like real vegetables, with just a hint of butter underneath.
The grasshoppers, meanwhile, were limey and tart, almost mouth-puckering. A thin stripe of the red salsa added the mandatory heat and fruit and salt.
Did I mention how good the salsas are here? The habanero salsa is always on the table and the rest rotate out. “We don’t want to bore people with the same salsas,” owner Paulino Martinez said.
The soups change daily, too, and there’s a daily taco special. This week it was shrimp sauteed in a chile canica sauce.
Habanero salsa. "Está rica pero picosa," the waitress warned.
Taco de chapulínes at El Parnita in the Colonia Roma
Creamy chard and purslane soup. I wanted to take home the little crock it came in.
After the appetizers, Martin and I went on an ordering spree: tlacoyos, a salad, a quesadilla, three types of tacos. The waitress kept asking, “Do you want to try this?” and we kept saying yes.
The tacos viajeros were standouts. Juicy, falling-apart lomo and pierna de cerdo sat in a peppery, citrusy sauce, kind of like cochinita pibil but tangier. Juice dripped onto my plate and I lapped it up with a piece of tortilla.
It’s worth ordering the breaded shrimp “Carmelita” taco just to spoon the habanero salsa on top. One bite made my nostrils sting, but the garlicky, burned-chile taste melded perfectly with the pickled red onions and mayonnaise in the taco. I sneezed and coughed and spooned on some more.
The carnitas taco
The shrimp taco, aka "Carmelita", at El Parnita
At this point we probably should’ve stopped eating (I haven’t even showed you pictures of everything we ate), but the waitress enticed us with the offer of a torta. The sandwich was small and dangerous-looking. I squeezed it a bit, and meat juices oozed out.
”]
I only wanted a bite but ended up eating half. The bread — crisp on the outside, soft in the middle — and meat and avocado were too voluptuous to pass up. Martin pronounced it “a good proportion of meat to bread.”
We ended the meal with amaranth-cajeta pudding. It tasted like a slightly grainier version of dulce de leche. Martin wasn’t a fan, but I liked it. It was sort of like eating cajeta frosting (for those of us who like that kind of thing), and the amaranth gave a fun pebbly texture and cut some of the sweetness.
El Parnita did a remodel in December, adding nearly double the space to the restaurant. Before you used to have to arrive before 2 p.m. to get a table; now, if you get there by 2 or 2:30, you should be fine.
El Parnita
Avenida Yucatán 84, #E2 (Near the corner of Yucatán and Monterrey)
Tel. 5264 7551
Hours: 1:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday
El Parnita on Facebook (their website is under construction)