From low-key taquerias to high-end restaurants, we were really impressed with the variety and quality of Mexico City’s food scene. Aside from traditional Mexican fare, there were restaurants covering just about every cuisine. We saw were Chinese and Korean joints (however, since we live in San Francisco, Asian food was not on top of my list to try in Mexico), quaint cafés, street vendors, fast food chains—the list goes on.
While we serendipitously came across some places, I cross-referenced Eater’s list against Condé Nast Traveler’s list to develop my starting point for restaurants/bars to consider, and then adjusted based on price and location. With so many restaurants to choose from, we ended up gravitating towards those in neighborhoods closest to us – Colonia Cuauhtémoc, Juárez, Roma Norte, La Condesa – and not more than a 15-30 minute walk away. Of course, we did make an exception one day, and took an Uber to the Polanco neighborhood for a late lunch/early dinner at fine-dining restaurant Pujol. Also, as a Marriott elite member, I had access to the lounge at our hotel, the Sheraton Mexico City Maria Isabel, which served a really nice breakfast spread so we ended up eating there most mornings. However, we made it a point to venture out for lunch and dinner.
In the end, we ate at the places below. This excludes taquerias, which you can be found here.
- Ciena (Italian)
- Bulla Condesa (Spanish)
- Lardo (Mediterranean)
- Trappist (Craft Beer)
- Maíz de Cacao (Traditional Mexican)
- Panadería Rosetta, Roma Norte and Puebla (Bakery)
- Tamales Madre (Mexican)
- Bella Aurora (Italian)
- Masala y Maíz (Mexican/Indian Fusion)
- Pujol (Fine Dining Mexican)
- Churrería El Moro (Churros)
La Condesa was perhaps the most charming neighborhood to walk around. It felt very European with its tree-lined pedestrian walkways running down the middle of wide streets. We ate dinner at three restaurants located here: Ciena, Bulla and Lardo.
At Ciena we ate Italian food: arancini, fennel salad, fried eggplant cutlet (instead of traditional veal) and a short-rib pasta. All the dishes were delicious except for the pasta – short on flavor and too watery. Our favorite was actually dessert, a Basque-style cheesecake that was perfectly creamy and not too sweet.
Returning to the hotel from Ciena, we walked past Bulla, a cozy Spanish tapas restaurant and decided to give it a try one night. We also spied Lardo across the street, a crowd of people standing outside, and made a mental note to get reservations.
Back for dinner at Bulla a few nights later, we selected a few dishes from its extensive menu that we had never tasted before, like a hot tapa called tartaleta hojaldrada de cangrejo (crab tartlet), a classic bean stew from Asturias called fabada and a creamy black rice dish called arroz meloso negro (not quite a paella, maybe more like a risotto) that got its black color from squid ink. All our dishes were well-executed.
The following week we were back in La Condesa for dinner at Lardo, a Mediterranean place across the street from Bulla. For a Tuesday night, the place was hopping and we enjoyed the lively atmosphere. We ordered chicken liver toast (it tasted a lot better than it looked), a salad (which was quite large) and a pizza (which was quite small). The standouts for us were the desserts. Normally we share one, but this time we got two because we couldn’t decide: mil hojas de pastel de zanahoria y helado de estragóna (carrot cake mille feuille with tarragon ice cream) which was the bomb, and fig leaf ice cream.
Before dinner we had stopped for drinks at a nearby craft beer bar called Trappist, a short 15 minute walk away in Roma Norte. It’s a tiny place but with a decent-sized selection of beers, mostly in cans. They even happened to have one Belgian-style tripel (from Cerveza Cardera) and it was pretty legit. Why do we mainly get Corona and Modelo in San Francisco when Mexico clearly has all this other good stuff?
Six of the places we ate in were located around Roma Norte and Juarez: Maíz de Cacao, Tamales Madre, Bella Aurora, Masala y Maiz and Panaderia Rosetta (2 locations).
I really wanted to try Mexico City’s version of tamales, which is typically eaten for breakfast. On the day we arrived in CDMX we went to Maíz de Cacao, a restaurant that serves traditional Mexican corn-based cuisine and beverages from the Huasteca region. It had a pretty extensive menu with items that I had never heard of. We ordered a savory (cueritos) and a sweet (banana) tamal, and then going for adventurous, matzo estrujadas, which is a masa dish with pieces of “matzo” corn tortillas served with strips of beef and fried cheese. We chased it all down with a champurrado, a chocolate-based atole or hot drink made with masa harina. It was a filling meal, packed with lots of carbs and proteins.
On our way to Maíz de Cacao we had walked past Panadería Rosetta. I had previously tried to get reservations at Rosetta, but there was no availability that fit in with our schedule so we settled on buying a few pastries from its eponymous bakery across the street instead.
The place was crowded, all its tables taken, and people filling the sidewalk, but the line to order moved quickly and after making our selections (it was not easy deciding which of the many scrumptious baked goods to pick), it was only a few minutes before they handed us our bag. Our favorite was the intensely flavored lemon ricotta roll.
A lucky find for us was the smaller second location of Panadería Rosetta on Puebla street, even closer to our hotel and less crowded. We had lunch there and ordered a turkey sandwich and quiche, both of which were really tasty.
Since trying one tamales place wasn’t enough we also went to Tamales Madre for breakfast on morning.
It’s a cozy place on a quiet stretch of Liverpool street that serves tamales handcrafted from heritage corn varieties and filled with flavorful combinations of savory and sweet ingredients. We sat outside in their parklet, under a canopy of flowers and greenery, and ordered a few different ones to try. Each tamal, a little package perfect for sharing while leaving room for more than one, was beautifully plated with its accompanying sauce.
All four were different enough that we didn’t feel like we were just eating one dish of masa harina after the other. Chris didn’t enjoy the chicken one as much, finding the green salsa a bit too tangy for his palate.
Dinner one evening was at Bella Aurora, a beautiful Italian restaurant located next to Panadería Rosetta on Puebla street. The upstairs dining room, lush with plants trailing from rafters and tucked into corners, made us feel like we were having an intimate garden dinner. We started with an arugula salad and a sampler of crostini (2 each of white beans with parmesan, n’duja with honey and olive tapenade) and then shared two pastas dishes, which were good but not great.
Perhaps our all-around best meal was at Masala y Maíz, a restaurant that explores the intersection of Indian and Mexican cultures. Both cuisines, on their own, are two of our favorites, so the combination of them, needless to say, produced some outstanding flavors. Out of our five dishes, two stood out in particular: the Ensalada de Melón and the Camarones Pa’Pelar. The sweet melon combined with cool cucumber, crunchy chickpeas and parsley produced a refreshing mix of textures and tastes , while the shrimp, prepared with fiery chiles and accompanied by ghee infused with vanilla dipping sauce, was mind-blowing. My face was on fire but I couldn’t stop eating it.
Eating in Mexico City would not be complete without a search for the best taqueria, especially al pastor, my favorite. We tried the four below, listed in order of preference, and Taquería Orinoco’s sueltos trompo (basically, an al pastor taco) was our favorite.
- Taquería Orinoco, Zona Rosa
- El Huequito, La Condesa
- La Chinampa, Cuauhtémoc
- Los Lalos, Cuauhtémoc
Tacquería Orinoco was the last place we tried. The one in Zona Rosa was a five minute walk from our hotel, and we had passed it a few times getting to other places; there was always a line out front. Their tacos came with the most generous portions of tender and flavorful meat. A bonus was the potato and caramelized onion pieces that came with each order. We enjoyed it so much we ended up going back twice.
We are fans of the Netflix series Somebody Feel Phil and had re-watched Season 1’s Mexico City episode in preparation for our trip.
As a result, El Huequito was on our list of places to try. We didn’t make it to the original Centro Histórico location, but instead, ate at the one found under the freeway in La Condesa. After some deliberation, we ordered Taco al Pastor Especial, a mountain of meat alongside 8 tortillas. We made our own tacos. It was delicious but I found the meat at Taquería Orinoco to be more tender with the right amount of char.
We stumbled upon the next two—La Chinampa and Los Lalos—walking around the streets behind our hotel.
La Chinampa wasn’t bad but its meat just didn’t have the same punch as the meat at Taquería Orinoco or El Huequito. Something about the seasoning just didn’t make it as memorable. I could see myself eating there if I needed a taco al pastor in that moment and happened to be close by.
As for Los Lalos, all I can say is that its al pastor was pretty uninspired. It even looked sad when the server brought it out. The meat didn’t have the right flavoring. Definitely not going back there again.
I’m sure there were plenty more taquerias to try, not to mention the street vendors, but we’ll have to save them for another trip.
Last but not least, we couldn’t leave the city with having churros con chocolate. The first time I had churros con chocolate was in the 10th grade when I visited Spain. I can’t recall the last time I had them since then. On our last day we went to El Moro, a churrería with multiple outposts, and luckily, one right behind our hotel, and each got a churro (mine with sugar, his plain) and shared a chocolate dipping sauce. It was the perfectly crispy and sweet finish to our time in Mexico City.
Coda
There are so many places to eat in Mexico City we barely scratched the surface. While it’s easy to eat cheaply we found that most restaurants, especially the places we went to for dinner, charged near San Francisco prices. Our dinner tabs usually came out close to, if not more than, USD 100 which is what we could easily spend back home.
What we didn’t get to try, and probably falls along the lines of eating cheaply in CDMX, was the street food, which was everywhere, particularly in the Roma Norte and Juarez neighborhoods that we walked around. We’ll do this next time but probably through a food tour.