Restaurant reviews

Where to eat in Mexico City: Charro

May 4, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Some of my favorite restaurants in Mexico City are the ones that take traditional Mexican ingredients and turn them on their heads. For instance, Mexicans have traditionally eaten amaranth grain as a sort of sweet snack. But why not take amaranth and use it in a savory dish? Heck, why not go the other direction and take a quesadilla and roll it in sugar?

It’s surprising how few Mexico City restaurants veer in this type of direction. They’re either entirely traditional, or Mexican-French, or Mexican-something-else. Nothing wrong with those things, but it can be an absolutely inspiring experience to dine in a place that opens your mind a bit.

Charro in Condesa is exactly this type of restaurant — creative and fun, and playing with the boundaries of what exactly we should consider as Mexican food. The restaurant opened in December on Vicente Suarez street, under the direction of chef Daniel Ovadía.
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Barrio Cafe in Phoenix: Truly chingona Mexican food

March 22, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

My father-in-law and I hit up Phoenix’s Barrio Cafe last night. It’s one of his favorite restaurants, and my mother-in-law’s, too. The restaurant’s motto is “comida chigona,” which roughly translates to “f**ing good food.”

They were a little worried that it wouldn’t be authentic enough for my chilanga tastes, but I checked out the menu beforehand and it looked pretty creative: salads with queso fresco, roquefort, apples and toasted pecans; upscale tortas topped with goat cheese and chicken and caramelized onions; steak paired with blue cheese, longaniza sausage and caramelized shallots. (You can download the whole drool-worthy menu for yourself here.)

The authenticity question is tricky, because to be honest, you wouldn’t find this type of menu in DF. (Tortas with goat cheese? No one has gone there.) But the food isn’t the typical for the U.S., either. There aren’t any chips and salsa here, or nachos, or the gloppy Monterey Jack/Colby cheese melt that usually comes draped over enchiladas. The food at Barrio Cafe takes a traditional Mexican idea and amps it up with an American twist — just a small twist, really, so it still retains its Mexican roots.

Anyway. Mexican Food Philosophy 101 is now over, I’ll get onto the food.

Oh, but wait. Before I do that, I have to let you know that the chef, Silvana Salcido Esparza, picked a real Latino neighborhood for her restaurant. It’s in downtown Phoenix, across the street from a dollar store, down the road from an income tax store called “Tio Rico Te Ayuda” and near several dive-y Mexican joints with crumbling, paint-peeling signs. It is an upscale Mexican restaurant in a a lower income Mexican neighborhood, and you don’t see that very often.

Ok, now really onto the food.

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Where to eat in Mexico City: Casa Mexico

March 8, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

I first went to Casa Mexico maybe three months ago, after reading about it on Good Food in Mexico City. Crayton and I weren’t immediately drawn to the place, to be honest. We were on our way to another restaurant in Roma when we walked by Casa Mexico, an empty, open restaurant with white tablecloths. It looked out of place amid the Zona Rosa’s fast food joints and cheap-beer bars.

Two uniformed waiters stood out front, as they are wont to do in Mexico. They looked bored, as if their only wish was for us to come and check out the menu.

So we stopped. I was kind of astonished at the prices. Forty-five pesos for a starter? Whoa. You don’t see that at an upscale place in Mexico City. Normally they’re at least 70 and above. Plus the menu looked interesting: organic chicken with two types of pre-hispanic sounding mole sauces; itacates (no idea what those were) with quelites. I’m a sucker for quelites, so we ditched the Roma restaurant idea and decided to stay there.

I didn’t regret it. Two very attentive waiters took our drink order almost immediately and walked us through the menu. (One complaint: the menu has no descriptions.) Many of the items ended up being regional, comfort-food Mexican dishes I’d never heard of before: itacates were corn-husk wrapped packages of steamed greens, sprinkled with goat cheese; tacos de chan chan were a piquant mix of fish with lime juice and adobo spices.

They also had sopa de milpa, a traditional, farmer’s-style soup with corn, epazote, squash and squash blossoms, poblano peppers, and chicken stock; and pellizcaditas de tuétano, a Veracruzan antojito comprising a type of masa-and-lard sope with pinched edges, topped with bone marrow.

We ordered the itacates; soap de hongos, or a mushroom soup thickened with masa; chilaxtle de cerdo, a chunk of roasted pork in a red toasted-chile seed sauce, and a green-bean salad with sesame seeds. (The latter was for me, attempting to keep the ol’ waistline in tact.)

Crayton also ordered a mezcal, which came with sliced grapefruit, oranges, chile powder and a few chapulínes.

The itacate, topped with crunchy fried tortilla strips

The green bean salad with grilled baby corn and tomatoes

Chilaxtle de cerdo, or pork in a red toasted-chile seed sauce

Chocolate mezcal cake

Everything was exceptional, save for the somewhat bland mezcal cake. The prices were extremely fair, and the service was probably the best I’ve gotten in Mexico, although I daresay the waitstaff might have hovered a wee bit too much. But that was a tiny complaint.

About two weeks later, Crayton and I went back with his parents who were visiting Mexico City for the first time. We weren’t as wowed as we were during our first visit — this time, the service was a bit more disorganized, and our waiter insisted on speaking English even though he couldn’t translate the menu as well as he thought he could. The waiters hovered much more.

Still, though, it was an above-average experience. Some things were brilliant: the pollo en alcaparrado oaxaqueño was probably the best chicken dish I’ve had since living in Mexico City, with tender meat covered in a luscious, tangy-sweet mix of capers, tomatillos, chiles and raisins. I also loved Crayton’s pollo al chilmole, a leg of chicken that’d been smothered in an ashy, carbony mole sauce.

I’ve since recommended Casa Mexico to two friends. One liked it, and the other said it was good, but the food was a little inconsistent. I still think the prices and the regional dishes make it a strong contender. There aren’t many places in this city that offer this kind of off-the-beaten-path Mexican food, in an imaginative yet unfussy way.

More info below if you’d like to check it out.

INFO

Where: Casa Mexico, Genova 70 between Londres and Liverpool in the Zona Rosa
What to order: Definitely get the itacates and pollo en alcaparrado oaxaqueño.
Prices: Appetizers start at 44 pesos; main plates range from 90 to 152 MXP. The wine list is also very reasonable, with several Mexican bottles in the 300/400 peso range.

MORE

Read the Washington Post’s take on Casa Mexico.
Download Casa Mexico’s menu in PDF here.

UPDATE: Casa Mexico has closed as of spring/summer 2010.

Old-school fine dining in DF: Les Moustaches

January 5, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Crayton and I happen to live really close to Les Moustaches, a French restaurant that’s generally thought of as among the best in the city.

The menu harkens back to a time when butter-laden, meat heavy dishes defined elegance. It’s sprinkled with items that Roger Sterling would have loved — oysters rockefeller, beef bourguignon, beef wellington.

Chandeliers glitter inside, and a roaming violinist serenades the tables. This music is also piped outdoors through a set of speakers, so passersby can get a feel for the place. The street name is even written on the building in French: “Rue de Seine” instead of Rio Sena.

To Crayton and I, the whole upscale faux-French elegance thing seems a bit absurd. So instead of eating there, we usually joked about going.

Crayton: “Where do you want to eat dinner?”
Me: “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I made reservations at Les Moustaches. Beef Wellington, baby!”

Last week, Crayton was off work and he was sick of eating leftover bacalao. He proposed Les Moustaches for dinner, but serious this time. We did live around the corner from the place, and I liked the idea of a fancy date. So we went. I put on a blue-and-maroon striped dress I love, black heels and a fuchsia shawl. The walk took us less than five minutes.

We got a table easily, since the place was mostly empty. (More diners came later, after 8 p.m.) A waiter delivered the drink menu and the wine list, which was surprisingly reasonable. I’d expected the cheapest bottle to be around 900 pesos, or about $70. We ordered a 2006 Cotes Du Rhone for around 450 pesos, or about $35.

Waiters bustled around our table, whisking away the drink menus, dropping off the food menus, serving us bread. We chose the oysters, the wellington, and chicken kiev.

“I keep wanting to call you ‘Bets’,” Crayton said, referring to Betty Draper from Mad Men.

One of the waiters served the amuse-bouche, which was a sliced fig topped with what looked like a round ball of blue cheese.

“This is….?” I asked him.

“Fig,” the waiter said.

“Yes, I see it’s fig, but fig and… what else?”

“Cheese,” he said, and he rushed off.

Oo-kay.

The oysters arrived on a bed of rock salt and came with a tiny spoon, a tiny fork, and a flat, scalloped-edged spoon that I had no idea what to do with. Didn’t matter, because they were fantastic. Buttery and rich and topped in a thin crust of cheese. (Crayton later compared them to potato skins, but with oysters.) A waiter almost removed my plate before I was finished, but I stopped him with my hand. Must suck out every ounce of the buttery juices.

My chicken kiev and Crayton’s beef wellington arrived with stainless-steel, domed plate covers, just like you see in the movies. Two waiters removed them at the same time. I was waiting for someone to say “voilá” but no one did.

“Shall I cut your chicken?” the waiter asked me. “Because it’s filled with butter, they tend to explode if you cut them open too quickly.”

Of course, I told him.

My chicken…

Crayton’s beef. Apologies for the blurry iPhone photos.

The chicken was very good, soaked with buttery herb sauce. It wasn’t spectacular though, and I can’t point my finger on exactly why. It needed an extra zing. I wanted to swoon like Meryl Streep/Julia Child tasting the sole meuniere in Julie & Julia, but it didn’t happen.

Crayton’s beef wellington had been cooked to medium instead of medium rare; it tasted a wee bit too tough for his taste. The waiter hadn’t asked how he wanted it cooked, though, or mentioned that medium was the standard.

After such a rich meal, I wanted to skip dessert. But Crayton insisted on getting bananas foster.

“When are we ever going to get bananas foster again, in a place like this?”

“Never, and I’m okay with that,” I said.

I’m glad I gave in, because the presentation was cool. A waiter rolled over a cart draped in a white tablecloth, and lit the gas burner that had been placed on top. He added sugar and butter, then the liquor, and then the bananas. He served them over a scoop of vanilla ice cream, nestled in a martini glass.

Would I go back? Probably not. There are too many other restaurants to try in this city. The service could have been better, and the menu, to me, felt too old-fashioned for my taste.

If you’re in the mood to relive another era, though, it’s worth it. The prices aren’t outrageous for fine dining in Mexico City — my entree was under 200 pesos, and I don’t think Crayton’s was more than 250.

Les Moustaches
Rio Sena 88, Col. Cuauhtémoc
Located between Reforma and Rio Lerma
Phone: 55 33 33 90

High-class Mediterranean cuisine: Oca in Polanco

December 21, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Before I moved to Mexico City, Crayton and I went to fancy restaurants in Dallas about once a month. (Ah, the joys of two incomes!) I studied which restaurants were new and noteworthy, and we’d get dressed up, take a taxi, order a bottle of wine.

I figured I’d dive into the upscale restaurant scene here, but I haven’t. This is partly because the traditional Mexican food cannon interests me more. But also because: what if it’s not any good? In my experience, Mexico City restaurants have been inconsistent. It’s not worth it when you can get fresh, hot street food every day for a fraction of the price.

That said, on Tuesday, I ignored all my past behavior and booked a table at Oca, a new fancy Mediterranean restaurant in Polanco. Chilango gave it great reviews, and I figured: I’ll try just this once.
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A new contender for best concha roll: El Cardenal

November 20, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Two of my Mexican friends, Jesica and Martha, have been teasing me about my high concha roll standards. They can’t understand how I didn’t like Maque’s conchas. “We’re going give you a blind taste test!” they said. My response: Bring it.

A teensy part of me was starting to lose faith, though. How could I have only found one great concha roll so far, after so much testing?

The concha gods must have felt my pain, because yesterday, they redeemed my faith. I finally tried the conchas at El Cardenal, the famous restaurant in the Centro Historico. Mexico guidebooks tout the place as having the best breakfast in the city. And some of you also recommended the restaurant’s conchas in the comments.

I admit, I wondered whether the hype would be justified. In my experience in Mexico, people rave about a place, I go, and half the time it ends up being just okay. But this place was different.

We waited 20 minutes for a table — which my dining companion Ruth told me was typical for a weekday — and were given menus full of amazing-sounding breakfast items: “apporeado con huevo,” or scrambled eggs mixed with thin slices of beef in a guajillo chile sauce; “hacienda de Puebla,” a concoction of sunny side-up eggs on tortillas with refried beans, cheese and strips of poblano peppers; “revueltos con chilorio,” or eggs Sinaloa-style mixed with minced pork, tomatoes and dried chiles. We chose three plates and decided to share.

First up were the gorditas hidalguenses, a dish from the state of Hidalgo comprising tortillas soaked in salsa verde, filled with shredded meat and topped with shredded cheese. They looked like they’d taste heavy, but they didn’t. The dish was light but still comforting, and brightened up by a big dose of cilantro.

Then came the huevos ahogados, two poached eggs that sat in a stew of warm black beans, onions, chiles and thick chunks of panela cheese, which is made at the restaurant’s own dairy. The bean broth was so good, you just had to soak it up with a crusty piece of bread.

We had a tortilla, or Spanish omelet, with escamoles (ant eggs) and diced nopal. It was the first time I’d tried ant eggs, and sadly, they didn’t really taste like anything. In the photo below, the ant eggs are those little white-bean looking things.

Before all of it, though, we had the concha. It arrived on at tray, carried by a black-and-white suited waiter. I pointed at it and he placed it on my plate. It was still warm.

Fork in hand, I cut into it and it gave easily — good sign. The last thing you want is a concha that’s so tough, it requires a knife. This roll was still soft. Pliable. I took a bite and tasted warm butter and just a smidge of yeast. The topping crunched slightly, due to all the sugar granules.

It was everything you’d want a concha roll to be: comforting, lightly sweet, moist but not too dense. And actually, I almost liked the topping better than Bondy’s, which tends to smother the top of the bread. El Cardenal’s concha topping looked more authentic, with thin stripes quilted over the roll’s crown.

The best way to experience this roll is with a cup of the restaurant’s homemade hot chocolate. The waiter offers it as soon as you sit down. I’m not generally a big hot chocolate fan, but the experience of the two together was — I’m going to say it, and I don’t care if it sounds overstated — luxurious. It’s one of those things that leaves you shaking your head in awe. Or at least, it left me shaking my head in awe.

Can’t wait to go back. I only tried two pieces of sweet bread from the waiter’s tray.

A five-course lunch in Condesa

October 16, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

My friend Hugh moved to New York this week, and we went out to lunch as a last hurrah. He found the place: The Colegio Superior de Gastronomía, a Condesa culinary school that offered a five-course meal for 250 pesos (about $19 USD). The price also included four drinks.

I’ve never eaten at a culinary school restaurant before, but I’ve been intrigued by the idea. Two culinary-school restaurants sit just a 10-minute cab ride from my house, and I’ve been reading a lot about another cooking school restaurant in the south, Alkimia, which is supposed to be one of the top restaurants in the city.

I hadn’t heard anything about this Condesa place, but you can’t beat five courses for $20. Hugh made reservations and arrived before me, so I met him in the open, airy dining room. A flat screen TV played a slideshow of the menu items, including beef wellington with fig compote (pictured above), and slices of duck stuffed with pistachios and spices.

A young waiter (who I think was sweating from nervousness, poor guy) arrived and took our order, announcing that day’s drink special as “green beer.” It was a mix of beer, curacao and lime juice.

Oh hell, why not. The drinks are included!

It was actually kinda good, if you ignored the color.

I was surprised not to see more traditional Mexican dishes on the menu. A lot of the menu items leaned toward molecular gastronomy, which I thought the restaurant world had moved on from — meat topped with airs and foams, deconstructed soups, a chemical-reaction take (picture an oozy puddle of chicken broth, surrounded by dollops of corn) on Mexico’s famous corn-in-the-cup.

I would have loved to see simple dishes, oomphed up with high-quality ingredients. But the “plain food, done well” movement hasn’t really hit here yet. People still really love foams and beef wellingtons.

I ended up ordering the sliced duck, fideos en adobo, tuna with risotto (my only dish that was truly bad; it’d been saturated with wine), and a chocolate tart with beer ice cream.

My favorite dish was the fideos, which were served with a big ol’ scallop that wasn’t mentioned on the menu. Good thing I’m not allergic to shellfish.

Overall: The food was average, but worth the price. I’d go back with a girlfriend or two, because it’s a different experience, and the menu makes you feel like you’re dining somewhere elegant. I don’t think I’d recommend it to visitors, though. Unless they were looking for a deal.

I plan to visit Alkimia in a few weeks — they have a Mexican wine dinner on the last Wednesday of each month, and Crayton and I are going for my birthday. Will let you know how that turns out!

Colegio Superior de Gastronomía
Av. Sonora no. 189
Col. Hipódromo Condesa
México D.F. 06100
To reserve a table: 55 84 38 00 Ext. 103
A five-course meal, including four drinks, is 250 pesos. It’s cash-only.

Korean food in Mexico City

October 8, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

As I’ve mentioned before, Mexico City’s Korean neighborhood sits just a few blocks from my house. A few weeks ago, we finally made it out to a restaurant there, courtesy of my friend Hugh.

He’d raved about this certain Korean restaurant in an email, saying he didn’t know the name, but it was at Oxford and Hamburgo in the Zona Rosa, “the spot next to the strip club, with the suits of armor out front.”

A big group of us agreed to meet there on a Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. We walked up and sure enough, there were two suits of armor. (Great landmark, Hugh!) The restaurant ended up being a narrow, two-story building next door, with a terrace overflowing with balloons. A back room on the first floor held one table just big enough for the 11 of us.

While we waited for the staff to clean it, a group of Korean kids, maybe nine or 10 years old, stared in awe at our friend John, who happens to be really tall. One kid walked up to John and jumped up and down, eager to see what life might look like in John’s orbit. It was adorable.

The Mexican waiter brought us thick menus, and I felt a little panicked. I’ve eaten Korean food a few times before, and loved it, but it’s kind of overwhelming to stare at five pages items, and you’re not entirely sure what they are. We all agreed to share everything family style, so I ordered soup with merluza (hake), egg and vegetables, and we got several orders of grill-and-your-table ribs and skirt steak, and bibimbap, more soups, and dumplings.

Just a few minutes after we ordered, the waiter brought out dozens of small dishes: kimchi, plates of what looked like glass noodles, a type of mayonnaise salad with apples, tempura shrimp….

We nibbled. And then the meat came out. We turned on tabletop grill, and designated Joy’s friend H. as grillmaster.

When the meat was done, H. showed us how to make these lettuce-wrap packets, by grabbing a lettuce leaf, slathering it with spicy red sauce, adding garlic, a piece of meat, and then a jalapeño. Of course I had to add two jalapeños, because I’m hard like that. Then my eyes started watering and I had to take a break.

The food was great, though. I loved the communal aspect of the meal — passing the small dishes, the lettuce leaves, holding up our plates to the grillmaster, and waiting for our little gift. And it was amazing how many flavors and textures were represented — anything from the mild mayonnaise salad with apples, to the starchy, eyewateringly-hot bibimbap, to the garlicky kimchi.

After we’d paid the bill — and by the way, Korean food is expensive for Mexico City — the owner came out and introduced himself, and shook all of our hands.

I think we rolled ourselves out the door, but it was worth it. I’d go back again in a second. (As long as I haven’t eaten much that day. This is a huge meal, people.)

GO THERE
The Unnamed Korean Restaurant*
(*unnamed to us; it does have a Korean sign, if you speak the language)
Located on Oxford Street, just north of Hamburgo, next to the black building with the suits of armor out front
Avg cost per person, including drinks: $30-$40 USD
Note: To drink, they offered Mexican beers and Korean soju, a distilled beverage typically made from rice. I haven’t seen soju yet here, so this was an interesting find.

For the love of Maria cookies, and Maison Belen

September 3, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Last week, a friend and I went to a cute new cafe called Maison Belen. After lunching on some truly fabulous pasta with wild mushrooms, I had a dessert that pretty much blew my mind: A slice of cake, made entirely from compressed Maria cookies. That’s it above — it’s called a “tarta de galleta.”

If you don’t know Maria cookies, you should run to your local Mexican grocery store and buy some. They’re thin biscuits, lightly sweetened, and they’re perfect with coffee or eaten as a snack. When I got stomach-sick a few months ago, the doctor prescribed them on my list of “bland” foods, and they helped keep me sane while I shoveled in boring steamed vegetables and plain chicken breasts.

At the time, after eating Maria cookies for a week or so, my mind started to hum with the possibilities. Why not use them as the crust for a creamy banana pudding pie? Or maybe as the crust for a Lesley-inspired Chocolate Delight, one of Crayton’s favorite dishes that involves chocolate pudding and cool whip and cream cheese, which I’ve been wanting to tweak for years?

Of course, I haven’t done any of this yet (been too busy making my own hamburger buns and butter), but a bite of the tarta de galleta brought all my old desires back. I took a bite and think I moaned. The layered cookies gave the dessert a dense, almost pudding-cake like taste. And it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. Just thick. It had hips you could grab onto.

Gonna attempt to make this over the weekend. And I’m going back to Maison Belen, because it was seriously the sweetest place ever, overflowing with scones, cupcakes on pretty plates, desserts in glass cases, and colorful upholestered chairs. Pictures below.

Maison Belen, my new favorite Mexico City spot for a girls’ lunch
Location: Galileo 31, at the corner of Galileo and Emilio Castelar in Polanco

What I ate for lunch: fusilli with wild mushrooms

The silverware here is wrapped in a napkin, and tied with a grosgrain ribbon.

Plump, luscious scones

A dessert I didn't get the name of, because I was too busy drooling

A dessert I did not get the name of, because I was too busy drooling

The small, inside dining room area seems perfect for sipping coffee and reading a fluffy magazine.

You have to try the lime meringue tart.

This little character is on all the menus, and the website. Isn't she adorable?

A day trip to UNAM and Café Azul y Oro

June 17, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Last week, in the spirit of Exploring Mexico Now That I Don’t Have a Full-Time Job, Alice and I took a trip to Ciudad Universitaria to see UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

It’s considered among the largest universities in the Americas, with nearly 200,000 undergrad and grad students enrolled this past school year. Can you imagine? The place is huge.

They’ve also got a lot of really cool murals, and a new contemporary art museum called MUAC. (Which we reached by cab, because we couldn’t figure out how to take the free university shuttle.) It ended up being a neat day trip, though. We saw the famous Central Library mural created by Juan O’Gorman (pic above), and we wandered around and saw kids playing ping-pong and studying outside on bean bag chairs. We stopped at a cafeteria for a snack — a muy rico panela and avocado sandwich — and then hit MUAC, which ended up being this giant, peaceful breath of glass and steel.

We ate our real lunch at Café Azul y Oro, which I’ve been dying to go to. All the local magazines have hailed it as high-quality Mexican cuisine for a fraction of what you’d pay elsewhere. I loved that the place was casual (paper napkins; no AC), and the menu creative — my prehispanic corn-gelatin dessert was officially the highlight of the afternoon — but I’m not sure I’d make a special trip, especially considering it takes me an hour to get down there.

Definitely will eat there again next time I hit UNAM, though. Then hopefully then we can see the murals we missed, and the rogue auditorium that’s been taken over by students.

Lots of photos of UNAM, MUAC and Azul y Oro after the jump.
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