Restaurant reviews

The night I made Crayton eat brains and grasshoppers

June 16, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

My yahoo email account got hacked into last night. I got everything sorted out in a few hours, but by that time I was dying for a beer, and something comforting and horrible for me.

First we tried Chili’s for American brews and queso. (For all the non-Texans out there: Queso is a processed cheese sauce made with Velveeta and Rotel. It’s several notches above Cheese Whiz on the taste hierarchy, but below queso fundido.) Unfortunately, as soon as we sat down, we were informed that Chili’s no longer carries queso. So instead I suggested we go Cantina Belmont, a place I’ve read about in my guidebook.

It’s supposed to be popular with local politicians, and I was expecting a dive-ish place with cheap beer and tacos. Oh no — this place had white tablecloths, and waiters who draped linen napkins on our laps. And… cue the drums… an item called salsa en molcajete, which involved the chef making salsa tableside. Like they do with guacamole in the States. Except, it’s freaking salsa.

So of course we had to order it, and the chef showed up at our table with about a dozen chilies and condiments in separate earthenware bowls.

Among them were charales, tiny fish often served in Patzcuaro; pine-nut sized chilies called pico de pajaro, and dried, fried grasshoppers, among other things. The chef described everything and then asked what I wanted.

I turned to Crayton. “Do you want grasshoppers?” I used the Spanish word, chapulines.

“Sure,” he said.

Surprised at his adventurousness, I nodded at the chef, and he ground up some grasshoppers in the molcajete. Then he added cascabel chilies, chiles de arbol, the pico de pajaros, a good helping of chopped garlic and onion, a few stewed tomatoes, a toss of sea salt and a glug of bottled water. It looked soo good.

He drizzled a bit onto two tortilla chips, and offered them to us. We tasted.

Ooooh. Smoky. Garlicky. Picoso, but not too much. And just a little sweet. I think it was the best salsa I’ve ever had. I told the chef it was perfect, and he nodded and walked back into the kitchen.

“So, can you believe there are grasshoppers in here?” I asked Crayton.

“What?”

“Grasshoppers. I asked and you said you didn’t mind.”

“Ohhh… I thought you said champiñones,” he said. Champiñones means mushrooms.

However, since he’d already tried the grasshoppers, which you really couldn’t taste anyway since they were ground into bits, he let me order a round of quesadillas — one with squash flowers, one with huitlacoche, or corn fungus; one with brains, and one plain. I thought he’d love the brains, since they were meaty and kind of gamey tasting. He pronounced them “an acquired taste.”

For his main dish, he was much more his meat-and-potatoes self. He ordered prime rib tacos. I had a shrimp and octopus cocktail.

A lonely, leftover flor de calabaza quesadilla:

We left happy and stuffed, and got our leftover salsa to go. I might go have some right now. 10 a.m. isn’t too early, right?

Falling in love with birria at La Polar

June 14, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Birria is a spicy meat stew from Jalisco. It’s usually made with goat, but sometimes with lamb or mutton.

I’d always roped it into my “I’ll pass” category, along with pozole and menudo, which have never lit my fire for some reason. But then two days ago friends invited us to La Polar, a cantina near our house. It’s probably among the best-known places to get birria in the city, and it’s always recommended in guidebooks and local magazines.

So we went, and ordered tacos and avocado, and a few orders of birria. The menu had no description, so I was expecting meat wrapped in wax paper, like when you order carnitas in Quiroga. Instead it was a gigantic bowl of stew.

When I tasted it: LORD. The meat fell apart in my mouth, and the broth was spicy and chipotle-tinged. I wanted to slurp gulps of it. Instead I held back and picked at my tacos, since I wasn’t technically hungry, as I’d already had dinner like an hour before. (Did I forget to mention that? But sometimes you have to just eat when the opportunity presents itself, and worry about everything later. This is why my pants are getting tighter.)

La Polar also had live mariachis, and a table full of Mexicans singing at the top of their lungs. I loved it. Wish I would have brought my tape recorder, but alas, it was in my other purse. This gives you a good idea of what it was like, though:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPsMIkGYxFk&hl=es&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

On the way out, we saw mariachis playing foosball in the parking garage.

The search for good pizza in Mexico City

June 1, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

You know that saying, you never really miss something until it’s gone? That’s kind of like me and pizza. I’d always been pretty neutral about it, but since we moved here I suddenly want it at least once a week.

Not just any pizza, though. The recent Pizza Renaissance in Dallas spoiled us with thin-crust, brick-oven pizza, so that’s become our standard. (Well — my standard. Crayton will really eat anything with cheese.) After trying most of the Argentinean places in our neighborhood, and a few spots in Roma, we found one restaurant that passed the test: Berretín on Rio Lerma.

The pizza there — pic above — is cooked in a huge oven at the front of the store. Not sure if it’s wood- or coal-fired, but it creates a crackly, crisp crust, which is doused in a slightly sweet tomato sauce, a handful of cheese, and then — in my favorite version — strips of jamon serrano and arugula. After that, they drizzle the entire thing with olive oil.

At first, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit, we weren’t sure whether to tell anyone else about the pizza there, because we weren’t sure it was as good as we thought. What if our time in Mexico City had lowered our pizza standards? But my dad, an unbiased party visiting from the U.S., recently endorsed it, too. And a few of our Mexico-dwelling friends love it.

Now that my pizza restaurant craving is temporarily taken care of, I find myself dreaming of a pizza stone, so I can make my own crackly-crust pizza at home. The question is how to haul it back from the U.S. in my luggage. Or Maybe Wal-Mart might have one.

My new favorite bar, at Sanborns department store

May 12, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Crayton and I stopped by our local Sanborns a few weeks ago in search of a dish rack. Sanborns is a Mexican chain kind of like Target, but way smaller and not as cheap. They’ve got electronics, perfume, purses, drugstore items.

They don’t sell dish racks. But this Sanborns, a stone’s throw from El Angel, had a bar — a small doorway sandwiched between the digital cameras and boxes of chocolates.

It was odd. I’d never seen a stand-alone bar inside a Sanborns before. (Or any other department store, for that matter.) This one looked like no one had touched it since the 70’s. A sign above the door said simply, “Bar” and a wooden-easel menu advertised mixed, frothy drinks. Inside, cushioned, C-shaped brown chairs sat next to round tables. The entire place screamed “Ramada Inn, 1972.” Of course we had to stop by for a drink.

We made it there last Friday, after the bars finally reopened. We’d lucked into live music: An older gentleman onstage tap-tap-tapped on a tinkly Casio keyboard. “Bienvenidos, damas y caballeros…” he called, and launched into a flowery, synthesized ballad.

A waiter in a jacket and bow tie promptly took our order, and mentioned they had two-for-one drinks. (Dude!) Then he brought us fruit sprinkled with chile powder, peanuts and chicharrones.

Sipping my Paloma, eating free snacks and listening to an old guy espouse the beauty of love — how could you not adore this place? (Full disclosure: Half the crowd had gray hair.)

I kinda wanted to take one of these balloons home with me. They say, “I was at Sanborns.”

We’ll definitely be back.

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