CDMX Excess

From elite to street, my two days of dining decadence in Mexico’s capital city.

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This summer, Mexico City took over my Instagram. Or it seemed that way at least. My feed suddenly scrolled like a menu, filled with phenomenal food photographs snapped by real people eating out in Mexico City.

One evening, while swiping through a series of street taco snapshots so compelling that I could smell the spray of fresh lime being squeezed over the barbacoa centered just-so on a handmade tortilla, I decided I’d had enough. I had to go to Mexico City, too.

In general, I would never make travel plans based on social media — hello Fyre Festival — but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this ancient Aztec city built in the high plateaus of Mexico’s interior would blow me away. And it wasn’t just my Instagram sending these signals. Ciudad de México — CDMX for short — topped National Geographic’s list of the world’s most exciting destinations for 2019, and this summer, Forbes declared it a must-visit for “diehard food and drink fans” — a directive that seemed aimed directly at me. So, I pulled up the calendar and started planning an epic weekend for me and my husband. 

Mexico City is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking city and the largest metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere. Not surprisingly, it’s easy to reach from Fort Worth. Multiple carriers offer direct, inexpensive flights from DFW multiple times a day in just under three hours with no time zone change.

Finding a neighborhood, or colonia, to call home base was also a cinch. It had to be somewhere in the cluster of neighborhoods known as Roma – La Condesa. Located just west of the city’s historic center, the area developed at the turn of the 20th century as the preferred address for the city’s gilded set. Over time, the fancy folks moved on, and the area began a century-long decline. But, as often happens when low rents combine with vacant spaces and romantic decay, artists and musicians began to move in. Soon, the once-neglected neighborhood turned super cool.

Today, frayed rowhouse facades still line the leafy streets, but now they’re home to artisanal coffee shops, bodegas with resident DJs, record stores, and chef-owned restaurants. Not surprisingly, Roma and Condesa have been called the epicenter of the city’s hipster scene. (It’s also the setting for director Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” which just won three Academy Awards.)

From there, we simply followed our stomachs to Ignacia Guest House. Built in 1913, Ignacia Guest House was a private home until 2017, when its owners transformed the gracious manse into a five-bedroom bed-and-breakfast. (The name honors the property’s former housekeeper, who looked after the property and its families for 70 years.) 

Art infuses every inch of Ignacia, from artisan ceramics to modernist paintings to the deco influences infusing the décor. There’s even art in the kitchen, thanks to resident chef Leonardo Arvizu. Every morning, chef Leo creates traditional Mexican breakfasts complete with croissants and other artisan breads he learned to make during his time with a French catering company and marmalade made from the orange trees in Ignacia’s courtyard. I have never eaten better chilaquiles. In the evening, chef Leo turns mixologist, creating daily cocktails for guests along with a selection of savory crunchy munchies. 

For our first dinner in CDMX, we kept it local and walked around the corner to Meroma, a neighborhood bistro receiving international acclaim for its inspired spins on local ingredients. Its owners, Rodney Cusic and Mercedes Bernal, met at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and bring to Meroma the skills they honed while cooking at top spots like Del Posto in Manhattan and L’Atelier Joel Robuchon in London.

The next morning, we met up with Rocio Vazquez Landeta of Eat Like a Local Mexico City for a different take on neighborhood dining. Bursting with energy and passion for food, food history, and the craft of cooking, Landeta is evangelical about Mexico City’s street food scene, and she seemed to be having as much fun as we were zig-zagging between street taco stands, traditional bakeries, artisanal ice-cream shops, and bustling city markets.

We walked city streets, rode subway trains, and meandered through narrow market passageways, all in pursuit of the perfect bite of sweet, savory, fruit, vegetable, meat, and bug. That’s right — worms, crickets, and ants were on the menu at one of the stalls we visited at the Mercado La Merced, a sprawling public market built in the 1860s atop a monastery dating back to the 1500s. We ate taco after taco after taco, each one more delicious than the next. We sipped housemade micheladas (a beer-based specialty drink), sampled pastries and, my favorite, dipped jicama strips into red currant-flavored sugar for a taste that was equal parts sweet, tart, crunchy, and refreshing.

To help navigate her groups through the Merced, Landeta employs a handful of intrepid young people who grew up in the Merced alongside their vendor parents. In addition to employment, Landeta has partnered with a local nonprofit program to provide the kids with English lessons, athletic opportunities, enrichment activities, and more. 

Eat Like a Local offers a variety of different types of tours, including vegan adventures. Landeta and her team also can craft a custom experience with ease to accommodate any taste, allergy, or mobility concern. Another popular option is an in-home experience with Traveling Spoon. This community of food lovers connects hungry visitors with vetted hosts who open their homes to share culinary traditions and a meal.

We ate enough that one afternoon to last the rest of the weekend, but we somehow made room for even more. After all, when one is able to score a reservation at Omekase Taco, one goes to Omekase Taco. 

Nestled inside Pujol restaurant, an elegant restaurant widely considered to be the best in the city, the whole of Omekase Taco is a row of stools at the bar. Here, bartenders alternate between preparing drinks for Pujol diners and presenting our line of eager eaters with plate after plate of appetizer-sized delights inspired by the flavor profiles of traditional Mexican street food but elevated to Michelin star-worthy heights.

We did actually do something other than eat. Well, two things, at least. On our last day, we spent a few hours wandering through centuries of Mexican history at the National Museum of Anthropology, and we also visited the acclaimed Casa Gilardi, a private home designed in 1976 by legendary Mexican architect Luis Barragán. 

As Barragán’s last private home commission, the multi-story stucco structure is infused with the modern master’s aesthetic signatures, like walls of saturated color, intersecting angles, and an innovative interplay between perspective, light, and nature. There’s even a swimming pool in the dining room.

It took a while to walk back to Ignacia from the museum, but our path took us through beautiful public parks, past amazing murals, and through winding streets buzzing with the energy of everyday life. It was a circuitous route, but one that led straight to our final stop before heading to the airport: the famous El Moro churrería. This local chain has been making two things — hot chocolate and fresh churros — since 1935, and it was the perfect place to pause, reflect and, yes, post a few of my own food photos to Instagram.