Eating in the DF

[Sneakeater]

I recently returned from Mexico City. I ate a lot. Since I didn't take any notes, this round-up will be more impressionistic and less detailed than would perhaps be optimal. I'll list places in the order I ate in them.

1. Hacienda de los Morales. This is the kind of place that always gets dissed by people like us. You walk onto their property, and there are signposts pointing your way to the various different banquet rooms. My seat in the dining room looked out a window at a huge wedding party in an outdoor area. The table next to me was occupied by a sweatsuited, obviously culinarily inexperienced, couple from some American suburb.

But I think it would be wrong to dismiss this place. When I saw the breadth of the tequila selection at the bar, and -- more important -- tasted the delicious and well-made sangrita that accompanied my shot of Riserva de la Familia (who knew that Cuervo made a good tequila, BTW?), I began to get the feeling that maybe someone at Hacienda de los Morales cared about quality. When I had my first taste of the cold walnut soup, I was convinced. This isn't earthshakingly innovative cuisine, but it is very well executed. It can't be easy to make something so light and yet simultaneously so hearty.

Similarly as to the barbacoa. It couldn't have been better prepared, and I've never had this dish with such good raw materials. It makes a big difference to use top grade meat. And it also makes a big difference to use mutton rather than lamb.

Searching for an analog, although it looks like it could be Tavern on the Green or One If By Land, Two If By Sea (all my analogies will come from New York City), maybe Hacienda de los Morales could more accurately be compared to the old Coach House. It's been there forever, it's almost offensive in the old school fanciness of its cuisine and presentation, and its menu probably hasn't changed in decades. On the other hand, it still seems serious about its food, and it's hard to imagine that anybody's making this kind of food much better.

2. Chon. I think I can state categorically that I will never visit Mexico City without eating at this well-known restaurant. An unprepossessing place in an unprepossessing neighborhood, it specializes in pre-Hispanic cuisine. It's one of those places where the whole menu is so interesting that you find it hard to choose. And everything I had was a winner.

Having already had fried grasshoppers and maguey worms in my life, I opted to start with the red ant eggs (escamoles). They were sauteed in butter with mushrooms and served with a green sauce and a bunch of tortillas in which to roll them. Fooled by a false analogy to fish eggs, I expected them to be salty. They weren't. If anything, the main flavor was the butter they were sauteed in, with a slight overtone that I can't describe because it wasn't like anything else I've had. The texture was soft but not gummy or mushy. Like any dish that tastes mainly of butter, it was absolutely delicious.

For my main course, I chose the venison in green pipian, mainly because I'd never had mexican venison before (a lack to be corrected in spades before this trip was over) and because I find it hard not to order venison during its season no matter where I am. This dish was very good, but mainly because of the tangy, ever-so-slightly-sour pipian that covered it. As for the venison itself, well, that's the problem with inexpensive restaurants like this one: the meat usually isn't very good. (I've often thought that if that if some investor would go in and make it possible for that Pueblan/Oaxacan restaurant on 10th Ave. near 46th St. in Manhattan -- the one whose name is "[Word beginning with a 'T'] del Valle" -- to serve quality meats to go with their fabulous moles, it would be one of the best restaurants in Manhattan, instead of just being one of the best values.) Of course, I suppose it's possible that these are poverty cuisines that developed all these great sauces to compensate for the low quality of the available meat.

Anyway, I can't wait to return to Chon.

(more restaurants later)

Edited December 6, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

3. Izote. Add me to the list of people who find this restaurant vaguely disappointing. I didn't notice if Patricia Quintana (maybe more an approximation than her actual name) was there or not the night I was there, but I'm of the school that holds that it shouldn't be determinative. Anyway, I think that part of my problem with this restaurant was a problem I have with Mexican Nueva Cocina -- and I'm not sure I'm being fair about that.

My appetizer was shredded venison (maybe tartare) with seville oranges and pickled onions. The menu didn't say as much, but it was clearly based on the Yucatecan pork dish pibil. It was good, although I (suffering at the time from altitude sickness and a large late lunch before this medium-late supper) I found it almost too strongly flavored.

My main was shrimp in hibiscus mole, along with a corncake stuffed with a different but similar mole -- obviously, a Oaxacan or Pueblen derivation. It was pretty good.

I think my problem with this food is that it seemed a bit deracinated to me. It was clear from a review of the menu that the cuisine borrowed from, and elaborated on, the cooking of regions all over Mexico. But the thing is, as I understand it, that there isn't really a "Mexican" cuisine any more than there's an "Italian" cuisine or a "Chinese" cuisine. There are the cuisines of a bunch of different regions, which happen to find themselves in the same nation. The kind of intra-national fusion practiced at Izote, it seems to me, risks taking the food away from its roots and miring it in pretension. (Note, for example, that Arzak's food is recognizably Basque, and not some kind of pan-Spanish fusion.)

To be more specific, contrast a place like Izote with El Naranjo in Oaxaca. El Naranjo is a development of a specific regional cuisine, cooked with great care and using better ingredients than one tends to find in purely local places. To me, El Naranjo, rooted in a specific cuisine, is more satisfying than the relatively untethered cooking at Izote.

Having said all that, though, I have to wonder how much of my response is a function of a sort of culinary tourism. As a traveler, I want to experience "real" "native" cuisine. But in a big cosmopolitan city like Mexico City, maybe this intra-national fusion stuff is "real" "native" cuisine. I mean, I never complained when Ann Rosensweig made a similar use of various kinds of vernacular American cooking at Arcadia in Manhattan. To the contrary, at the time, that was about my favorite restaurant.

(Or, to be fairer to myself, maybe it's that I can appreciate the creativity in a cuisine I know well, but resent it in a cuisine I want to learn about.)

I felt a bit better about some of the theoretical issues raised above when I ate at Aguila y Sol and found that I liked it better than Izote (although again not unreservedly). But that's a later post.

Edited December 6, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[theabroma]

These reviews are refreshing, thoughtful, and highly personal and for me they are wonderful.

Hacienda los Morales is a grande dame, but one whose tiara sparkles and who still enchants with her coquetry. It is not trendy, it is not wierd. It is true alta cocina Mexicana, at its best, and it is consistent. It is not a place to see and be seen, and it is not for the ADD palate: it is not a place for sport diners.

The shredded venison w/naranja agria and achiote is called dzik, and it is a very traditional Yucatecan dish ... made with the indigenous tiny deer of the region (now an endangered species, so good ole white tail is usually substituted. I remember it being one of the good things I had at Izote. It was the chewy, vulcanized tamales and the foie gras with a topping of shredded ancho chile in a sweet sour sauce that really put me into orbit: the topping was like one of Tina Turner's old Pvt Dancer wigs, sweetened, and cooked to a fare-thee-well.

Fonda Don Chon is just fabulous. Period. And escamoles sauteed and served with a special guacamole are one of my all time favorites. It's just that I've never been sufficiently tequilazo-ed when they've had jumiles or beetles to finally succumb.

And I feel much better to having had such an 'allergic' reaction to Izote; I also loved your comments about El Naranjo in Oaxaca. Iliana de la Vega, the chef, has taken a lot of heat for developing/evolving/creating from traditional flavors and mole mixes. She knows the traditional styles so very well; her journeys into new places are carefully based on that knowledge and balanced with curiosoty and whimsy. I admire her work enormously. If you ever get a chance to study with her, do so. She is, quite simply, amazing.

Thanks and hope to hear much, much more,

Theabroma

[Sneakeater]

Thanks. For better or worse, you will (when I'm more awake). Several restaurants to go.

[theabroma]

If you get to El Cardenal, I'd love to hear what you think ... it is more old style city private club atmosphere, but in a similar vein to Los Morales. And if you're toting about a third-trimester purse, Tezka.

I envy you,

Theabroma

[Sneakeater]

No El Cardenal, I'm afraid. (Next time: thanks.) But as for Tezka, there was NO WAY I was going to be in a North American city with a restaurant affiliated with Juan Mari Arzak and not eat there.

Edited December 7, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

4. Aguila y Sol. Aguila y Sol was in some ways a corrective to Izote. I liked it very much.

It may seem shallow to begin with this, but the first striking difference was in their respective physical plants. Izote looks like a storefront restaurant in a strip mall (which is what it is, although being on Av. Presidente Mazaryk in Polanca it's a very ritzy strip mall). Aguila y Sol looks like a place to dine, with a nice multi-leveled interior, a beautiful bar, and at least two attractive dining rooms. Maybe we shouldn't care about such things, but some of us do.

But the real difference is in the food concept. Izote's menu is essentially a bunch of gussied-up versions of regional specialties, along with a few trendy international-style dishes (such as theabroma's Tina Turner foie gras appetizer). What Aguila y Sol appears to be attempting to do, in contrast, is to take characteristic Mexican ingredients and see what can be done with them. To use foreign cooking methods on local ingredients. And to subject foreign ingredients to local cooking methods. The goal seemed to be to expand Mexican cuisine by creating good and interesting new dishes, rather than by tarting up old ones.

Well, there was another, probably more important difference. The level of excution at Aguila y Sol seemed miles ahead to me of the level of execution at Izote. I get the feeling from reading here that Izote is inconsistent. The night I was there, the food seemed indifferently attended to, almost like chain food. At Aguila y Sol, each dish seemed to be cooked and assembled with great care.

My appetizer was a vegetable tart featuring an unfamilar green vegetable whose name began with "h", with a chile sauce and a lot of gunky cheese (parmesan with some goat for that all-important gunk factor). (I love gunky cheese, and any cuisine that will give it to me.) Here, the primary interest was in the unfamiliar green vegetable -- but the point is how well it was set off.

My main was a fillet of beef. What's good about fillet of beef, of course, is that when properly prepared it's meltingly tender and has great mouth feel. And what's bad about it, of course, is that it doesn't have a whole heck of lot of flavor. No problem here. They topped the fillet (excellently prepared, as I'd come to expect by that point) with not one but two sauces: a chile sauce in which it apparently was cooked, and a cheese sauce ladelled on at the table. There was a real depth of flavor here. And on the side, more gunky cheese! This time a sort of gratin, although of what I can't tell you.

(I should note here that there were a lot of ingredients and things I'm leaving out, both because I've forgotten about them in the weeks since this meal and because I don't have enough Spanish, or sufficient familiarity with Mexican cooking, to have known what they were in the first place.)

I found desserts throughout Mexico City to be pretty unmemorable, so I was surprised here both at how hard it was to choose from the dessert menu at Aguila y Sol, and at how good my choice turned out to be. It was a mamey creme brulee accompanied by a carnation petal jelly (sometimes I was shocked at how far my halting Spanish took me). A total success.

One thing that this meal drove home is that Mexican Nueva Cucina DOES NOT GO WITH WINE. Or, to be more accurate, it doesn't go with red wine. It's too rich and spicy. A good sharp white can cut the cream and fat in a creamy fatty fish dish. But the meat dishes (unlike, say, some Indian meat dishes) aren't the type that you can drink a white with (even a heavy one), and reds just don't taste good with this kind of food. I note this here because, if there's any Mexican restaurant whose food seems to call out for wine, it's this one. But it just didn't work. I know there are interesting reds coming out of Baja California. But I'm going to give up trying to pair them with Mexican food.

Edited December 7, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[theabroma]

My appetizer was a vegetable tart featuring an unfamilar green vegetable whose name began with "h", with a chile sauce and a lot of gunky cheese (parmesan with some goat for that all-important gunk factor). (I love gunky cheese, and any cuisine that will give it to me.) Here, the primary interest was in the unfamiliar green vegetable -- but the point is how well it was set off

My guess that the so aptly monikered 'gunky green vegetable' was huauzontle, Chenopodium berlandieri, a kissing cousin of epazote. It has a 5-7 inch plumish head, covered with tiny seeds; and petite green leaves, which look like baby epazote. In the markets and the streets the plume is filled with slices of salty, crumbly-soft queso fresco, and trussed up with string, then plunged into a capa, or batter, made of beaten egg yolks folded into soft-peak whipped whites, then fried (this is the classic batter for chiles rellenos). They are served in bowls with a brothy salsa de tomate, usually spiked with chile serrano, and sometimes chile de arbol. It can be dusted with either more crumbled queso fresco, or with queso cotija, which is the Mexican 'equivalent' to Parm ... There is one woman in the Calle de los Sapos flea market in Puebla who makes huauzontle in this manner, and it is worth a side trip just for that.

One thing that this meal drove home is that Mexican Nueva Cucina DOES NOT GO WITH WINE. Or, to be more accurate, it doesn't go with red wine. It's too rich and spicy. A good sharp white can cut the cream and fat in a creamy fatty fish dish. But the meat dishes (unlike, say, some Indian meat dishes) aren't the type that you can drink a white with (even a heavy one), and reds just don't taste good with this kind of food. I note this here because, if there's any Mexican restaurant whose food seems to call out for wine, it's this one. But it just didn't work. I know there are interesting reds coming out of Baja California. But I'm going to give up trying to pair them with Mexican food.

I generally agree. I also don't believe - and here I am likely to be forever rusticated from eG - that to be a cuisine worthy of serious note, attention, study, and reckless devotion, that it has to pair readliy with wine.

And to dig my grave deeper, it does seem to me that wine really means 'wine from Western Europe and its offspring - UK, US, Chile, etc. There is, for example, a rather fine wine tradition in Hungary. And though I have never tried it, perhaps something like Egri Bikaver could be more successfully paired with more indigenous Mexican dishes? Certainly I can think of things I'd like to have in my mouth along with Tokay Azsu or Szamorodni.

Maybe we just need to cast our carafe to a wider selection of casks and amphorae?

Theabroma

Edited December 7, 2005 by theabroma (log)

[ludja]

Thank you for these wonderful reviews and descriptions of your dinners, sneakeater. It is posts and threads like these that are hastening my desire to visit Mexico as soon as I can.

The dessert you described as "mamey creme brulee with a carnation petal jelly" sounds incredible. I love the smell of aromatic carnations with their spicy notes of cloves. Sorry if this is a completely silly question, but what does the "mamey" descriptor for the creme brulee mean?

[Sneakeater]

Thank you so much for all the information you're providing. I wish you were there with me when I was eating all this stuff.

I generally agree.  I also don't believe - and here I am likely to be forever rusticated from eG - that to be a cuisine worthy of serious note, attention, study, and reckless devotion, that it has to pair readliy with wine.

I couldn't agree with you more. A wine requirement seems so arbitrary.

And to dig my grave deeper, it does seem to me that wine really means 'wine from Western Europe and its offspring - UK, US, Chile, etc.  There is, for example, a rather fine wine tradition in Hungary.  And though I have never tried it, perhaps something like Egri Bikaver could be more successfully paired with more indigenous Mexican dishes?  Certainly I can think of things I'd like to have in my mouth along with Tokay Azsu or Szamorodni.

Maybe we just need to cast our carafe to a wider selection of casks and amphorae?

I don't know about this. Trying to taste it mentally, I would think that Bull's Blood would be even worse with Mexican food than the Ribera del Duero I had with this particular meal, because it's even more assertively rich. (I know Ribera isn't in Mexico, BTW.) If a red were going to work with this food, I would think it would have to be a thin, sharp red: in other words, the kind you normally avoid. Maybe something slightly sweet? But really, if you have to work that hard to find a pairing, why bother?

Edited December 7, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[Sneakeater]

Sorry if this is a completely silly question, but what does the "mamey" descriptor for the creme brulee mean?

Did I misspell it? It's a fruit. Up here in New York, I'm used to having it in milkshakes.

[ludja]

Sorry if this is a completely silly question, but what does the "mamey" descriptor for the creme brulee mean?

Did I misspell it? It's a fruit. Up here in New York, I'm used to having it in milkshakes.

←

No, a bit of googling shows that it is the correct spelling. I just had never heard of it before and had no idea even that it was a fruit! Thank you.

clcik

The Mamey or mammee is a fruit native to the west Indies and is cultivated throughout the tropical and sub tropical regions of the Americas and some parts of South East Asia. The Mamey fruit is the size of an orange or sometimes even larger. It belongs to the mangosteen family. The fruit has a tough rind and is a yellow/russet colour. The pulp is firm and the flavour is akin to an apricot.

[theabroma]

But really, if you have to work that hard to find a pairing, why bother?

That, I think, is the most intelligent course of all. Hear, hear!!!

Theabroma

PS: A mamey looks like a small football, about that color on the outside. It's in the same botanical family as the sapotes. The skin is slightly papery, and looks like it has been lightly flocked. The inside is a rich burnt orange, with a texture like that of avocado. It has a pit a bit like an avocado, but more elongated. You can find them around in the US. Here in Texas, they are available at Fiesta Mart. Problem is, you almost always have to cut into them to see if they're ready to eat. The are heavenly, and like Sneakeater says, they are great in milkshakes. In Oaxaca the pits are toasted on a comal, along with spices, cacao seeds, and dried flowers called rositas de cacao. The whole is ground into a paste, mixed with corn masa, and whipped by hand into cold water. It makes a drink called 'tejate' which is older than the pyramids, and totally loaded with mythological powers.

T.

Edited December 7, 2005 by theabroma (log)

[Sneakeater]

5. Au Pied de Cochon. Is it stupid to go to a French bistro in Mexico City? Well, no, not if it's operated by a French bistro in Paris, France, and was convenient at the time, and is reputedly popular with actual people who actually live in Mexico City, and charges less than any similar place would in my home town. I mean, I go to Balthazaar and Pastis in New York all the time and nobody would say that that's stupid. (OK: they're brasseries.) Anyway, have you ever suffered "foreign cuisine burnout" on vacation?

So there I was at Au Pied de Cochon. This is a strictly traditional place, so the only question is: were the familiar dishes done well? Why, yes. The vegetable terrine was fine. As for the main course, well, when a restaurant is in fact named after one of your very favorite dishes, there isn't going to be much room for decision in ordering, will there? It was all I could do to avoid vocalizing what kept running through my head out loud: gimme a pig foot and a . . . well, a glass of Argentine cabernet-malbec blend, if you must know. Excellent rendition (of the pied de cochon by them, not of the Bessie Smith by me). Dessert: duo of cold and hot lemon souffles. Not like I'm ever gonna make that for myself at home.

As I said, there's nothing to say about a place like this, except whether or not it was good. Yes, it was.

6. Contramar. This hot spot on the cusp of Roma and La Condessa is reported to be everyone's favorite Mexico City seafood restaurant. It certainly was absolutely packed at lunch. Although it looks like a stupid trendoid watering hole, the food is actually quite good, in a middle-brow sort of way.

Appetizer: scrambled eggs with tuna cured to resemble bacon in taste and texture. While it could have been merely clever, it actually tasted good.

Main: shrimp in a tequila tomato sauce. No clever conceptualizing here. Just a delicious sauce on some OK shrimp. (Had the shrimp themselves been of better quality -- similar to the ones I had on the coast during the non-DF part of this trip -- my approval rating of this dish would have gone through the ceiling.)

Complaint: a seafood restaurant really ought to have more white wines available by the glass than two or three chardonnays. I was forced to order a half bottle of rioja blanca (yeah, they put a gun to my head; it was ugly).

Edited December 8, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[theabroma]

Sneako - have you swung by Flor de Lis in the Condesa for tamales? That is THE tamaleria that's not in a market or a cart on the street in Mexico. I have cookbooks, including the Maiz volume from CONACULTA's Recetario Indigena series that has a recipe for Chiles Rellenos 'Flor de Lis' wherein you roast and peel the ole poblano, and whip yourself up some batter and heat up the oil, and then you stuff that sucker with a tamal from Flor de Lis.

I think it's Mexico's answer to the battered and fried Snickers bar, but they started doing it loooong ago.

I will gladly go to Au Pied de Cochon next trip down. I'm glad to hear that it's good ... I usually go trotter trawling in bowls of menudo and pozole. Thanks to you, I now have some fresh options!

Theabroma

PS: You do know El Moro?

Edited December 7, 2005 by theabroma (log)

[Sneakeater]

1. I don't know El Moro. What is it?

2. I sadly walked by the Flor de Lis at one of those rare times of the day that WASN'T A MEAL TIME. It was very frustrating, because it looked great. Next time, for sure.

[Sneakeater]

BTW, this is off-topic, theabroma, but next time you're in New York, be sure to have the stuffed pig's trotters at DB Bistro Moderne. (They've only recently been given regular status on the menu; they used to be a coveted catch-as-catch-can special.) They are seriously good (although, I must worn you, served in a tiny portion).

[theabroma]

1.  I don't know El Moro.  What is it?

churreria el moro, one of the last chocolate and churro shops left in the DF. It's on Lazaro Cardenas, east side, just a block or so south of its intersection with Calle Uruguay. 24/7 French, Spanish, and Mexican style chocolate, and freshly made churros, cooked in an enormous vat covered with glazed blue tiles and set in the window. There is also a chocolateria in the Condesa, not to far from Flor de Lis, but at the mo' I cannot recall the name. El Moro is an institution, and being just around the corner from Panaderia La Ideal, (on Uruguay, where they have panes dulces shaped like caiman) its all a big nosh and a lot of fun.

THeabroma

[kalypso]

I had churros and chocolate at El Morro last month. Perhaps it was an off day because while the chocolate was wonderfully delicious the churros were, most decidedly, not wonderfully delicious. They were, unfortunately, rather leaden and tasted of old grease. We were, however, awfully amused by the abundance of security cameras on premises.

[caroline]

For a truly wild experience, try El Candelero, 1333 Insurgentes Sur. The food is actually quite good. But it is rather overwhelmed by the 15 foot fountain full of gardenias, the cave of the mulattos, the bamboo grove, the 12 foot tufted seat in the blacl-painted ladies's room, the crowns I am told hover over the johns in the men's room. It's what I have always imagined the House of the Rising Sun might have looked like if the proprietor had the money that the owners of this establishment obviouslyhave crossed with the interior decoration of someone who wanted to break every politically correct taboo they could think of.

Rachel

[theabroma]

OMG, I may have to take the next AA flight special to MxCity just for this experience ... the decor sounds like something someone would hallucinate.

Theabroma

[theabroma]

Re: El Moro:

abundance of security cameras on premises

That is decidedly sad, as is the news about the churros. The ones I had in September were crisp and crunchy on the outside, and the little bit of inside was tender, but done. I guess that neighborhood is slowly curdling up.

Well, I'll have to get the name again of the chocolateria in La Condesa.

Theabroma

[Sneakeater]

The cave of the mulattos? I'm SO there.

[Sneakeater]

Why do I always hear things like this two weeks after I return home?

Edited December 8, 2005 by Sneakeater (log)

[theabroma]

Why do I always hear things like this two weeks after I return home?

←

Could not have said it better! Makes you want to just recycle yourself immediately upon returning home (of course I now find myself speaking of home when in Mexico, and visiting when here). What exactly does one wear to dinner in the Cave? And let's see ... by Cave of the Mulattos, does that refer to chile mulato or .... ?

OMG, surely not!

Theabroma