There are few feelings as universally heartwarming as sitting down at the family table – that space where everyone is welcome and the food always tastes incredible. That was the feeling owner Cristina Cialona was looking for when she opened the doors to María Ciento38 in 2016. Serving classic Sicilian cuisine, something no other Italian restaurant does in Mexico City, this charming eatery in the Santa María La Ribera neighborhood upholds tradition and authenticity, one dish at a time.
A meal at María Ciento38 means exploring an extensive menu that features familiar items for any fan of Italian food: burrata, spaghetti alla carbonara, pizza Margherita. But take a closer look, and you’ll spot dishes you don’t see that often. There’s spaghetti with pistachio pesto, rich and slightly sweet; Sicilian sausage, made with orange and spices; and pizzetta sfincione, a fluffy slice of sourdough topped with anchovies, artichokes, provola affumicatta, mushrooms, and pomodoro sauce. These timeless recipes are a living legacy, brought to diners by Antonietta Di Pasquale, Cristina’s Sicilian-born mother, who’s in charge of sharing the knowledge that she has carried since childhood.
Like many Italian women from her generation, Antonietta has been in the kitchen for decades. “My mom has been cooking since she was nine years old,” says Cristina. As one of the younger of nine siblings, Antonietta wasn’t old enough to go out to work when her mother got sick and the family needed extra money, but she was old enough to work at home. “She was able to wash tomatoes, wash lentils, and follow instructions,” explains Cristina. While Antonietta’s mother was in bed, basically every woman around the family – aunts, friends, neighbors – came by the house and shared some kitchen wisdom. “She learned how to cook in the old, traditional way: from scratch,” explains Cristina.
Growing up in the post-war era, Antonietta learned how to make the most of every single ingredient, thinking of what had to be eaten on that specific day. “She was trained that way because of her context. They had refrigerators, but sometimes they wouldn’t work for three days,” says Cristina, who mirrors her mom’s upbringing to what chefs value today: efficiency and organization as much as creativity and skill. Eventually, Antonietta would follow her husband, an architect, to Mexico City to pursue a job opportunity, bringing three-year-old Cristina with them.
Antonietta’s background, blended with a deep love and respect for traditional Sicilian cuisine and culture, informs every part of the menu at María Ciento38. Here, no frozen foods ever make it to the kitchen, nor do canned goods or other shortcuts. While ingredients like oil, cheese, and charcuterie mostly come from Italy, others, like gelato and ricotta, are supplied by Italian producers in Mexico. As for the produce, most comes from regional suppliers: farmers from Morelos provide basil, potatoes, and of course, lots of tomatoes. The pasta is homemade. As a result, María Ciento38 has earned the Ospitalità Italiana certificate, granted by the Italian government to Italian restaurants around the world that offer a genuine hospitality experience thanks to their authentic ingredients, music, and atmosphere.
It wasn’t really in Antonietta’s plans, however, to head a restaurant. For years, she had had contact with fellow cooks, giving courses and workshops. It was Cristina who dreamed of giving her mother her own restaurant. An architect herself, she also wanted to work on a restaurant, even though some of her colleagues had discouraged her from the idea. As María Ciento38 began to take shape, it became clear that Antonietta should be the chef. “My partner at the time wanted to do something grill-related, but I knew nothing about that kind of cuisine,” remembers Cristina. A few months before opening, a friend of hers asked if she knew about a venue for her birthday party. “I told her I was about to open a restaurant, and that she could have it here. And two weeks before opening, I told my mom: ‘I’m opening a restaurant for you, and you can’t say no!’”
What Cristina first imagined would be an intimate, 32-seat, four-days-a-week restaurant quickly became a neighborhood sensation. As a Santa María pioneer, María Ciento38 quickly generated a fair amount of buzz. “The whole neighborhood came on the day of our soft opening,” says Cristina, who quickly had to adapt the space to welcome more diners. Over the past eight years, expansion has been constant; today, the restaurant can welcome 210 guests. Growth has been gradual and, of course, there was a pause during the pandemic, but as much as she credits the restaurant’s success to its cuisine, Cristina believes the location and the house itself, intervened and reimagined by her and her team, have played a key role.
“We were the first restaurant of its kind here,” she explains, pointing out that the area has always had plenty of culinary draws. “There was street food like barbacoa and birria, which is still there and is still amazing, but people were looking for something different.” Since María Ciento38 opened, other restaurants and bars have followed suit, breathing new life into the area yet respecting its old-school charm. “It’s still a ‘centro de barrio.’ You have recreational areas, plazas, businesses, and people of different generations interacting,” explains Cristina. The restaurant itself is a reflection of the neighborhood’s personality: local families, groups of friends, and people who work in the area populate its tables during the weekdays, while weekends bring guests from all over the city. Members of the Italian community, of course, are big fans (according to the 2020 census, there are around 20,000 people of Italian citizenship living in Mexico).
“I always wanted this to be a place for everyone, and I think we’ve achieved that,” says Cristina. Looking around the house and its iconic courtyard, it’s easy to understand what she means. Not only is the crowd as eclectic as she says, but the space feels warm and unpretentious. When she was developing the project, Cristina left the exterior untouched, respecting the original architecture. She restored the interiors and added vintage elements to give it a welcoming feel. “The idea is that you’re eating at your grandma’s house, and maybe you bring a couple of friends, so you pull up extra chairs from another room, you bring out another china set… It just feels like home.”
Most of all, Cristina wants diners to experience the essence of Italian food. Aware of how popular this cuisine is, she feels responsibility and great pride in sharing authentic flavors and recipes. “I’m serving high-quality ingredients, but I don’t want to have a super expensive place that stops people from wanting to come. I want this to be a high-quality restaurant for everyone,” she says. She finds great joy when customers who used to say they didn’t like eggplant come back over and over to eat the caponata, or those who questioned the idea of a ricotta tart for dessert have now made it one of the most popular items on the menu. “I always say that Italian food doesn’t create divisions: it brings people together.”
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