The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Centro Historico

Hay nieves!

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It’s been hot in Mexico City lately, which means it’s the best time to buy nieves, or street-side ice cream or sorbet. A few days ago I found probably the best nieve I’ve never tasted, from a guy named Benny (that’s him under the hat) who set up on calle Ramón Corona just a short walk from Circunvalación. The street is just west of Mercado La Merced on the way to the Zócalo.

Benny’s helper, a young man, shouted “Hay nieveeees! Dulce de leche, mamey, limón!”

The sun shone high and bright. We wandered over. Benny lifted the aluminum lid and a creamy lagoon of orangey-peach mamey lay there, waiting to be scooped. It was the slightest bit runny, like freshly churned ice cream. My friend Ben and I split one order of dulce de leche and mamey, and I think I might’ve moaned on the sidewalk.

Benny says he makes the ice creams himself using fresh fruit and ingredients. He also takes special orders for birthday parties. His minimum is one bote — the size pictured above — which feeds about 300 people.

If you don’t have any weddings or baptisms coming up, you should seek him out for a scoop. He takes his cart along Ramón Corona, Mesónes and Pino Suárez, and he says he works year-round. He doesn’t venture onto the more touristic side of the Zócalo, where street vendors aren’t allowed. Here’s a handy map of where I found him below.

Tacos al pastor in Mexico City

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Tacos al pastor

I snapped this a few months ago at Plaza Meave on Eje Central, in the Centro Histórico. They’ve got the biggest spit (trompo in Spanish) that I’ve seen in the city. It’s always crowded, and fun to just sit and watch — the taquero works like a madman, slicing meat with one hand and catching it in a tortilla.

The tacos are decent. I’ve only had them at mid-day, when the meat isn’t quite caramelized enough. If you want to go, it’s located on Eje Central, north of Mesones.

Sounds of the Centro Histórico: the Zócalo

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Mexico City's Centro Histórico

If you’ve ever wandered near the eastern edge of the Zócalo, over by the Templo Mayor, you might have heard them: street vendors selling scarves, hats, sunglasses, purses, desk items and whatever else might be useful from tarps spread out on the sidewalk. As people pass, the vendors call out: “10 varos! 10 pesos mire! Todo le vale 25 pesos!”

The vendors all have slightly different cadences, so when they shout at the same time, their voices turn into this sort of chaotic roar, almost banshee-like at times. It’s amazing, annoying and slightly terrifying if you’ve never heard it before. What is all that noise in the background? Is it really people?

Moneda Street in particular — where the photo above was snapped, looking down Moneda from the Zócalo — is so crowded it’s often impossible to walk on the sidewalk. Pedestrians walk in the narrow strip of space between the cars and the gutter. Or they just walk in the street.

For the past few days I’ve been listening to the vendors’ cries from our second-floor kitchen at the Fundación Herdez, where I’m taking a cooking class. Today on my way home I recorded a snippet of what it sounds like to walk through there. This was taken in the small area of space that borders the Metropolitan Cathedral, at the head of Moneda Street.

I’m not necessarily complaining about these vendors, by the way. I’m just sort of… in awe. How do they not lose their voices at the end of the day?

What I love about Mexico City’s Centro Histórico

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The tiny patios, thick with honeysuckle and geraniums that hang from the railings, the clothes on the line, innocuous ghosts the wind sets flying between the green interjections of the parrot with a sulfurous eye, and suddenly, a slender stream of light; a canary singing;

the azure of the lunch-shops and the solferino of the cantinas, the smell of sawdust on the brick floor, the mirrored bar, ambiguous altar where genies with insidious powers sleep captive in the multicolored bottles;

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the fair and its stalls of frying foods where, amidst the coals and aromatic smoke, the hierophants with cinnamon eyes celebrate the marriage of substances and the transformation of smells and flavors while they slice up meat, sprinkle salt and snowflakes of cheese over bright-green nopals, shred lettuce, bearer of tranquil sleep, grind the solar corn, and consecrate bunches of iridescent chilies;

the fruits and the sweets, gilded mountains of mandarins and sloes, the golden bananas, blood-colored prickly pears, ocher hills of walnuts and peanuts, volcanoes of sugar, towers of amaranth seed cakes, transparent pyramids of biznagas, nougats, the tiny orography of earthly sweetness, the fortress of sugarcane, the white jicamas huddled together in tunics the color of earth, the limes and the lemons: the sudden freshness of the laughter of women bathing in a green river…

— Excerpted from “1930: Scenic Views” by Octavio Paz, originally printed in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz: 1957-1987, translated by Eliot Weinberger.

A new contender for best concha roll: El Cardenal

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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.

Three spots you must visit in Mexico City

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An empty canoe in Xochimilco, waiting for a mariachi band

An empty canoe in Xochimilco, waiting for a mariachi band

My super cool sis- and brother-in-law came to visit us last week from New York. We squeezed in dozens of activities in six days, including street food burritos, conchas at Bondy and dancing (with bottle service!) at a Mexican club until 3 a.m.

Three places, however, emerged as favorites. Here they are:
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A lazy, noisy Sunday around the Centro Histórico

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Sometimes I forget that Mexico City is an assault on the senses. Everything is loud — the cars honking, the parking attendants whistling, the branches of homemade brooms scraping the sidewalk, the peseros roaring down the street (they are the only thing that moves with urgency in this country), the vendors yelling about their latest deals.

In the air, odors layer upon odors: Grease, sizzling meat, car exhaust, dirt, garbage. Maybe urine, depending on if you’re walking through an empty section of a park. Sometimes you get stuck in a truly foul-smelling pocket of air, and all you can do is walk faster and hope that it goes away.

On Sunday, bleary-eyed after a late-night dominoes game with friends, Crayton and I went to breakfast at Sanborns at the Casa de los Azulejos in the Centro. The food there is average, but the inside looks like it hasn’t changed in 60 years, so it’s worth it. If you eat at the counter, they’ll serve you coffee in a little stainless steal creamer. It’s adorable.

Sanborns at the Casa de los Azulejos

Anyway, we couldn’t easily find a sitio cab afterward because of all the craziness of the Sunday cicloton, so we decided to walk back. This is what we heard while walking along this spot at Calle Hidalgo (it takes a second to load):

Calle Hidalgo in the Centro Historico