The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Mexico City

Celebrating the Bicentenario, Mexico’s biggest party of the year

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The Bicentenario kicks off tonight, marking Mexico’s 200th year of independence from Spain. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime celebration and a huge deal here in Mexico City.

The Zócalo — which has hosted a clock for more than a year, counting down the days to 12:00 a.m. on Sept. 16 — is going to be nuts, with 50,000 people expected there alone. (I will not be one of them; I’ll be near the Angel, celebrating with friends.) They’ve constructed a huge stage to host a flame show, acrobats and music. There’ll also be patriotic images projected over the cathedral. (I caught a TV special devoted to the Zócalo party last night. An entire 30-minute TV special!)

Reforma is going to be crazy, too. Starting at 6 p.m., there’s going to be a parade of “allegoric cars,” detailing different parts of Mexican culture and history. Lila Downs will give a free concert at the Glorieta Cuauhtémoc, only a short walk from our old apartment. Kinky and Maldita Vecindad will perform at the Caballito, while Natalia Lafourcade, Ely Guerra, Aleks Syntek, Paulina Rubio and Los Tigres del Norte will perform at the Angel.

The city has even prohibited alcohol sales through early Friday morning at midnight, except at restaurants and bars. (So there’ll be no drunken runs to Oxxo at 12:30 a.m.) I repeat: it’s going to be crazy.

The mood here is strangely calm, but excited. Just like they did last year, vendors have popped up selling straw sombreros, flags, fake moustaches, tri-colored bandannas and beads. The facades of several buildings in the Centro have been festooned with flags and papel picado. Yesterday I saw one dude wearing tri-colored face makeup and a red-green-and-white wig, already.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned this earlier, but many U.S. news media outlets are reporting that Mexicans don’t feel much like celebrating this year. A few links for you:

CNN: Mexico Bicentennial No Cause for Celebration Among Many Citizens
The New York Times: Mexican Bicentennial Falls Short of Fervor
El Paso Times: Drug Violence Mutes Juarez Grito Commemoration

A few photos from the Centro yesterday:

The fantastic chile en nogada from El Popular, a restaurant in the Centro


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The desperate sounds of Mexico City traffic

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Mexico’s Bicentenario celebration, marking 200 years of independence from Spain, is next week on the evening of Sept. 15.

It’s going to be the biggest party of the year. There’ll be concerts, music, and a bunch of people running around in fake mustaches and sombreros. I’ll personally be wearing a tri-colored headband and earrings, which I bought from a street vendor.

There’s one big downside to all this fun: the insane, soul-crushing traffic.

The city closed off a portion of Reforma earlier this week for “security reasons,” so every major thoroughfare nearby has turned into a parking lot. A few days ago I stared at the line of cars on the avenue near my house and remarked to Crayton: “This feels like Christmas.” (Christmas is another time of the year when traffic is particularly horrible.)

On top of all of that, there was a manifestación on Reforma today that shut down the area near the Angel.

The drivers this morning weren’t having it. At around 8:30 a.m., I captured a serenade of angry (and sometimes mournful) honks from my office window. Amazing how loud it was.

Please don’t stop listening when the track gets quiet — the drivers are just resting. They’ll start up again in a few seconds.

La Nicolasa: Organic, gourmet Mexican groceries in Mexico City

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I’ve been meaning to write about La Nicolasa for a long time. It’s a small store in Azcapotzalco that offers organic, natural food products, all of them 100 percent Mexican.

There’s no other store I know of here where everything is both all-natural and domestic. Among the products for sale at La Nicolasa are:

Brie and Camembert cheese, olive oil, turkey burgers, whole frozen organic chickens, tejocote jam (my absolute favorite in the universe), organic ate, ground chiles, homemade potato chips, dried xoconostle, bottled spices to make vegetable caldo, and Mexican wine. You can also buy lead-free clay bean pots at La Nicolasa, similar to the one I purchased last year.

The prices aren’t cheap for Mexico standards, but they’re less than what you’d pay for similar high-quality items in the United States or elsewhere.

Really, what I love about this store is that I know exactly where the products are coming from. In Mexico, food transparency laws are still in their beginning stages and as a consumer, I have no way of knowing whether the packaged ate I purchase in the mercado was really made using fruit from China. (By the way: I heard recently that China supplies a lions’ share of dried chiles in Mexico. So you really never know.)

At La Nicolasa, I know I’m supporting Mexican farmers and food-makers, many of whom live in small rural communities. It makes it worth the trip. Plus Azcapotzalco — a quiet colonia north of Polanco — is quaint and cool anyway. I’d love to live there someday, if Crayton didn’t have to commute to Reforma.

Here are a few pictures of the place. If you’re looking for all-natural, artisanal Mexican food products, this place must be on your list.

Roasted, dried chiles, already ground up and ready to add to soups and sauces. They're made by a community of women in Guanajuato.

Olive oil from Baja California

Organic guava jam. The Savia brand is one of my favorites.

Piloncillo, the traditional Mexican sugar, made in polvo (dust) instead of the usual cone shape.


Xoconostle salsa, banana vinegar, agave syrup and more.

La Nicolasa
Clavería 235, at the corner of Avenida Cuitlahuac
tel. 5342 0099
Open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

More Mexico City street sounds: The wailing woman who buys mattresses and stoves

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I’ve posted before about unique Mexico City street sounds. In our old place, the gas vendor yelled “Gaaaaaas!” every morning at 7 a.m., and you had to run downstairs and flag him if your gas tank was empty.

There was the pandulce guy who tooted his bicycle horn in the mornings, and the raspy-voiced tamales oaxaqueños vendor who came at night.

In the new place, the most common street sound is something I’d never heard before. It’s a woman who says over and over that she’d like to buy old junk — specifically washing machines, mattresses and stoves.

The weird thing is… she sounds scary. Like, she should be up in a haunted house somewhere, lamenting that she has no children to eat.

Jesica heard it for the first time a few days ago, while we were at my house working on Eat Mexico stuff. I’d assumed Jesica would’ve heard her before, since we don’t live too far from each other. But apparently the wailing woman does not make it to certain parts of Condesa.

“She sounds like La Llorona,” Jesica said.

I don’t know if the actual vendor is a woman, or even if it’s the same person every day. I’ve peeked my head out the window but I can’t see down to the street. All that wafts up to my window is that haunting yet eerily catchy voice.

I think this tune may have the power to displace the famous tamales oaxaqueños.

What do you think?

*Photo above is not of the wailing mattress woman, but another mattress-buyer spotted on Rio Lerma earlier this year.

A Mexican wine tasting with Eat Mexico

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I’m pretty excited about the latest Eat Mexico tour Jesica and I are working on. It’s a preview of some of Mexico’s best-known alcoholic beverages: mescal, pulque, tequila and Mexican wine.

Sounds fun, no? I mean, I know I’m biased because I helped come up with the idea. But even if I wasn’t involved in this, I would be all over this tour like tomato sauce on Mexican rice.

A few weeks ago, we went on a test-run, dragging along some interested friends and two Danish students (friends of friends) who were visiting here on holiday. Our first stop was El Encrucijada, a cute wine bar in Condesa.

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The Mexican craft beer revolution

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It’s tough to find a beer in Mexico City that isn’t produced by one of the country’s two giant beer companies. With few exceptions, restaurants and bars serve the same four or five beers — the only question is whether an establishment will carry FEMSA brands (Sol, Indio, Bohemia) or Modelo (Victoria, Pacifico, Negra Modelo).

That’s changing lately. A Mexican craft beer trend is sweeping the city, with independent, non-monopoly produced brews suddenly popping up in bars and restaurants. Many of these beers are made in Guadalajara, but some are produced in Mexico City. While craft brews have been popular in the United States for a while, this is staggering news for Mexicans and expats. More brews mean we have a choice now. A choice!

Probably the best new craft-beer bar is El Depósito, which opened a few months ago in Condesa. They stock around 140 beers from around the world, including Shiner Bock. I think my heart stopped beating when I saw Shiner’s distinctive yellow bottle — Shiner was the nectar of my 20’s, along with Silk Panties shots at Cosmos in Dallas.

El Depósito also sells Belgian lambics, smoked German Rauchbier and other bottles that are hard to find in Mexico. And they carry eight artisanal Mexican brews, including Cucapá, Poe, Malverde and Minerva.

Crayton and I snagged the last table a few Fridays ago, around 8 p.m. It’s an open, airy place, with shelves of beer and fridges on one side, and a bar on the other. Music videos played on mute on flat screens. Guns’n’Roses “Don’t Cry” swept out of the speakers, launching us into a discussion about the great power ballads.

At the register, I ordered a Cucapá Clasica for me and a Poe for Crayton, both of which are Mexican brews. We munched on popcorn and people-watched. (If you’re hungry, El Depósito also sells burritos.)

The super-hip waitress reminded me of the chola girls who used to intimidate me in junior high — feathered bangs, straight hair, big hoop earrings, heavy black eyeliner. Funny how things change because now I liked her look. Everyone else was in jeans and T-shirts.

We each had two beers and then had to move on to meet a friend for dinner. But I’d definitely go back. It’s a casual place without any of the pretentiousness that sometimes comes with Condesa. Plus it’s great to see a place that supports the independent beer scene in Mexico. If you’re in favor of opening up the Mexican beer market to something other than Victoria or Indio, you must pay them a visit.

You can even pick up a six pack to go — the price is slightly cheaper than drinking it there.

INFO
El Depósito
Baja California 375, near Benjamin Franklin
Phone: 5271-0716
Check them out on Facebook.

Mexican food the old-fashioned way at El Bajío

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Chef Carmen “Titita” Ramirez walks a straight, firm line when it comes to Mexican food traditions. She scoffs at chefs who think carnitas can be made with Coca-Cola and milk. Or any chef (even if he is American and famous) who promotes such a thing as “Mexican chimichurri.”

Mexican food has a base and that base should be followed, says the chef, who runs the El Bajío restaurants in Mexico City.

“This idea of fusion, it’s confusion,” Ramirez said in Spanish, while hosting a four-course meal at her restaurant’s Polanco location. “Yes, I’m a purist. Yes.”

Ramirez learned her recipes from her mother and her nanny, while growing up in a small town in Veracruz state. I was lucky enough to try some of the food last Sunday, as part of the Ruta Aromas y Sabores tour. The tour runs through June 10 and is specifically for food writers, chefs and photographers from all over the world. It’s sponsored by various arms of the Mexican government, and organized by Izote chef Patricia Quintana.

The idea here is to show off Mexico’s culinary history and culture, and its wide variety of regional dishes and flavors. The tour started in Mexico City on May 29; today it moves onto the state of Mexico, and then Guanajuato and Michoacán.

I was originally scheduled to attend the whole thing, but unfortunately I had to cancel. My health hasn’t been top-notch lately and I’m dealing with our recent move. But it was really neat to attend even one event. At El Bajío, our group of about 10 included writers and photographers from Mexico, Spain and Germany. Titita sat with us the whole time and answered any questions we had.

I’d eaten at El Bajío once before and thought the food was okay. Guess I ordered the wrong thing back then, because this meal was among the best I’ve had in Mexico. Everything tasted like it had been prepared carefully and lovingly, from the homemade corn tortillas in the basket (Maseca has been the downfall of tortillas, Titita says) to the sweet potato pudding with pineapple, to the agua de guayaba speckled with bits of pulp. I really wished I could follow Titita for a day, watching her prepare some of these things that she’s so passionate about.

Some photos of the meal…

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A Mexico City taquería, in pictures

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The first time I saw Taquería Jalisco, it was right after we moved to Cuauhtémoc, and Crayton and I were walking down Rio Lerma at night, checking out our new environs. (Or “rumbos,” as Mexicans say.)

Taquería Jalisco looked charming: it was a tiny fonda-slash-puesto, half indoors, half out, situated next to a parking garage. A few plastic tables and chairs had been set up near the driveway. Four orange stools, accented with chrome, stood in front of a small counter area. A big bunch of greens sprouted from a tin can.

Steam wafted about about the taqueros heads as they moved about, chopping and scooping and slicing. I was across the street, but I could almost smell that greasy meat smell. I wanted that greasy meat smell.

Taquería Jalisco offers several types of tacos, but my favorite is their suadero, a tender, fatty cut that comes from the area underneath the cow’s skin. (The definition from Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s Mexican gastronomic dictionary.) When suadero’s cooked, it’s greasy, crisp, meaty. Topped with a spritz of lime juice and a spoonful of red salsa, it’s very hard to eat just two, which is my usual limit with street tacos. Last time I visited Taquería Jalisco, I ate four.

Really, it’s not just about the taste for me, but the way taco-making works in Mexico. The precision of it, the efficiency. The taquero tosses a handful of meat onto the comal, and watches the fat bubble and sizzle. He palms a few barely silver-dollar-sized corn tortillas, scoops up the meat, and tosses it, meat-side up, onto a plastic plate that’s lined with a square of paper. He asks: “Con todo?” and that’s a shortened code for “Do you want cilantro and onions?” The whole transaction — the making of the taco itself, whether you’ve ordered one or four — is done in under 30 seconds. It’s like this everywhere.

My pictorial tribute is below. Oh, and here’s the info on the place, should you ever be in the ‘hood:

Taquería Jalisco
On Rio Lerma, between Rio Sena and Rio Tigris
Col. Cuauhtémoc
They’re open 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday.
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A stroll through Chimalistac

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Last week I met a new friend, Rachel, a food historian here in Mexico who blogs about all sorts of interesting things, such as what couscous must have been like in Mexico in the 1800s. (I’m fascinated by her blog.) She invited me for coffee down in her neighborhood, Chimalistac.

I was excited. I was looking forward to meeting Rachel, and I’d never heard of Chimalistac before. Perhaps it was near Tecamachalco, the other hard-to-pronounce colonia with a prehispanic name?

Turns out, no. Chimalistac is next to San Angel, south of the center of town, near the Metrobus La Bombilla stop. And as for me not knowing about it — I’m sure that if I lived there I’d want to keep it to myself, too, lest tourists start crowding the streets and gawking at the ornately carved front-doors. (Yes, I did this.)

Chimalistac feels like a far-flung pueblo. It’s leafy and quiet, with cobblestone streets, colonial churches and flowering bushes that leave their petals all over the road. In prehispanic times, the neighborhood was called Temalistac, meaning “the place where sacrificial stones are made.” Supposedly the famous Aztec sun stone was made there.

The land eventually became part of San Angel’s Carmelite convent. You can still see bridges the friars constructed from lava rocks, over what used to be a river. (The river is now a dirt path.)

It’s funny, because being so close to San Angel, you’d think Chimalistac would have a similar high-end, upscale type of character. It doesn’t. There are no fancy stores or hip young people dining at sidewalk cafes. It’s just… a quiet residential neighborhood. A really lovely one. That also happens to be extremely close to Insurgentes and the Metrobus.

After we walked around the neighborhood, Rachel and I sat in her garden and drank agua de guayaba. It was so quiet that you could actually hear the breeze. This was a little jarring. Tranquilidad in Mexico City? I thought at the very least I’d be able to hear the Metrobus’s puny Roadrunner-sounding horn. But no. There were no traffic sounds. No horns. No nothing.

Chimalistac is now on my list of “Places to Buy a Home and Live Forever and Ever.”

More pictures below.


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