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Search results for "J. Alejandro"
Mexico City
La Gaspacheria: Souper Fruit Salad
On sunny afternoons in the sleepy neighborhood of Narvarte, crowds of adults huddle around the glass counter at La Gaspacheria, eyes aglow as they consider possible toppings. While the scene evokes children at an ice cream parlor, the ingredients before them strike the uninitiated as a strange mix. Jicama. Hot sauce. Onion. Cheese. Orange juice. Even among chilangos, who famously love to cram their favorite ingredients together in ever stranger combinations (tortas de chilaquiles and tortas de tamales, for example), the idea of mixing orange juice, mango and raw onion gives pause.
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El Moro: Churros Oasis
Nowhere in Mexico City does one feel the collective weight of the largest population in North America more than on Avenida Lazaro Cardenas, the traffic artery that gushes a surfeit of humans and cars up the heart of the city’s downtown. The gutters stink of rotting fruit. Dirt and littered garbage encrust the sidewalks. And, at rush hour, walking a block means suffering a gauntlet of elbows and hands pushing at you and past you. For the most part, the businesses that line this street offer little comfort. Goods lie in heaps on carpets or hang two feet deep upon the walls of stores seemingly designed to be fire hazards, cramming too many people onto too little floor space.
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Legión Americana: From the Grills of Montezuma
For the most part, hamburgers in Mexico City disappoint. The accepted bread-to-beef ratio is shameful, with slender slices of overcooked meat hiding somewhere within the pillowy fluff of too much bread. The stringy, flavorless beef underwhelms. Even worse are the fancy sandwiches one finds at upscale burger joints, where blue cheese and spinach and a dozen other inappropriate ingredients only momentarily distract from the aforementioned defects of bad meat and a surfeit of bread. Against this dim backdrop of underachievement, the hamburgers at the Legión Americana shine like stars. This is something of a surprise considering the no-frills, dive bar atmosphere here.
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La Secina: Beef & Blues
One feels cooler simply for patronizing La Secina. The architecture of the restaurant seems to evoke a perpetual party vibe. At dinner, individual lights dangle on long lines amid a mesh of vines that gives the cavernous space a homey, DIY feel. The teal and orange on the wall are bright and clean. The stenciled restaurant logo and exhortations of “bienvenidos” feel as organic as they do well designed. Downstairs, picnic tables radiate outwards from a long, inviting bar. Upstairs a dedicated booze closet services a patio that looks out upon a beautiful church across the street. And on weekends, live blues bands play everything from Albert Collins to Muddy Waters to Robert Johnson.
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Tacos Manolo: Singular Sensation
Like many of Mexico’s best taquerías, Tacos Manolo greets its patrons from a block away with its alluring smell. But it isn’t the well-known odor of fired achiote on a swirling spit of al pastor or the equally recognizable heavy scent of bistek searing on a griddle. No, the aroma wafting down this particular block of Calle Luz Saviñon is a mystery to the uninitiated – a unique, unplaceable perfume that allures as much as it confuses. It is the smell of onions and unknown meats and mystery sauces bubbling together, fusing into something greater and more delicious than the sum of its parts. It is the smell of the eponymous Taco Manolo, a one-of-a-kind dish that has brought the restaurant fame and accolades.
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Tacos Beto: Deep Dive
Tacos Beto is not a pretty place. Stacks of soda bottles, enough for weeks to come, serve as a wall that shields customers from the wind blowing down Avenida Dr. José María Vertiz. The plastic tables and plastic stools that surround the bottles seem older than the invention of plastic. A long, dusty awning hanging above the sidewalk seating advertises a brand of soda that Tacos Beto no longer carries, maybe never carried. The only visible beauty encountered at the restaurant sits on the arched wall above the steel fryer, or comal bola – orange and blue paint spell out the words “Tacos Beto – los de cochinada” (“Tacos Beto – the garbage ones”).
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Restaurante Lety: Fungus on the Mountain
For the most part, Mexico City pampers its citizens with year-round warm, sunny weather, give or take the occasional downpour in the rainy season. And like any spoiled child, chilangos have grown so accustomed to living in such a temperate clime that any slight deviation registers as almost unbearable. At 19 degrees C, pedestrians cloak themselves in winter coats and hurry down the sidewalk, worrying that they will freeze to death on the two-block walk from their parked car to their front door. It’s rumored that chilangos are so unused to seeing their own breath in the cold that they mistake it for their souls escaping their bodies, augmenting their hatred of frigid weather.
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