We are really on countdown for Machu Picchu, perhaps even past count down. My flight heads out Thursday night. I feel very ill prepared. However, I have gotten some good walking in this week, all days were over 10,000 steps and the last 4 were all over 15,000. Hopefully I’m not just tired.
My hike for this weekend was canceled which I am really bummed about. It would’ve been exploring a new area of Iztaccihuatl.
On Mondays and Thursdays I walk to Condesa for Spanish class. It’s a pleasant 45 minute walk through Roma and most of Condesa. It’s also a great chance to check out new taco places. Fran lives over there and we’re developing a ritual around trying new taco places and while I’ve been to Condesa a bunch, even stayed in Condesa before, it’s really helping me develop a better lay of the land.
On the plus side up with food this weekend.
First stop is now gonna be a new staple in my Mexican life. Kacy & Mike, we are going here. Comal Oculto has some epic food. It’s a small, extremely narrow place with communal wooden tables seating 6 and warm pale terracotta walls. Fran and I ventured over for lunch Friday. It’s located in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood which is sandwiched between the park and the more lively neighborhood of Condesa. it’s a very pretty and quiet part of town, with 2 lane streets and big leafed trees overhead. I always think of it as family friendly, but I have no idea if this is true. The menu is highly traditional, but brilliantly executed and insanely affordable, nothing pictured below was more than $6. Well… except the wine, but I’ll get to that. There was definitely a wait. But we were seated much earlier than we’d expected and had just really a lovely waiter, Marta. When we asked about wine, which was not on the menu, but we saw another party having some, she brought over a co worker who spanglished his way through their not extensive, entirely Mexican, wine list with just wonderful descriptors. We settled on a rose of pinot noir from Jalisco. He explained that the climate there gets very hot during the days, but in the mornings they have a thick, fog that rolls through and cools the area (ok, that he did in Spanish and I was very proud of myself for understanding the majority). He also gave us the whatsapp contact info for a winery owner who I believe brings down a bunch of wines from the Jalisco area on a regular basis.
So we wound up with a rosé, and, as is common here, it totally blew the budgetary aspect of this meal. It is a very red rosé, as you can see, but distinctly rosé, out of a winery called Alma Alquimista (soul alchemist). I’m not really familiar with Jalisco’s wine scene, though apparently grapes are largely grown in one area near Lake Chapala, which is very close to Guadalajara. This wine was a deep, dark, bordering on red pink. I have now read their website and know that they allow 4 days of fermentation before separating out the skin and allowing the rest to ferment. Then it is bottle aged, no time in oak, or any barrel for that matter. It was a very nice wine, with good body, delicate in flavor though, and a floral nose that thankfully was not reflected much in taste.
Now the food part. So again, a very traditional menu featuring sopes, gorditas, tlacoyos, enchiladas, chilaquiles, etc, all the fan favorites were there. For each item you had an option of what you wanted with it, the gordita had a plain option, one with avocado, one I’ve forgotten and then our pick, stuffed with chamorro, tender shreddy pork shank. The enmolada was drowned in a mole de milpa which is classic of a town about an hour south of the city. This is a rich, complex sauce. There’s chocolate, there’s spices, there’s chiles, there’s toasted nuts, and it’s so smooth and just luxurious feeling (mom, dad, the one at Quintonil was definitely better, but this was $5). And then we had a flauta with salsa verde, while still excellent it was our least favorite of the bunch. At some point, I think while watching a Thomas Keller video, I heard a sieve referred to as a tool of refinement, all sauces present here reflect this ethos, just silky with such depth. This place may be the best price point vs quality I’ve had in the city.
In the late afternoon, my friend Sherry texted me to see if I could pick up her pup, Chapu, for her. Leo and Chapu go to the same school and Sherry’s helped me out before so of course I grabbed and he came over for a play date. Chapu is small, maybe like a Chihuahua/Jack Russel cross. Cats are bigger than him. Chapu is not so sure he’s small. They were a riot, sprinting in circles through the house and out on to the patio for a solid hour before exhausting themselves and collapsing inside.
Saturday I dropped Leo at day care and headed to Testal, another restaurant that does traditional Mexican food to check out chile en nogada. This is a seasonal specialty, available predominantly in August and September, featuring a roasted poblano chile stuffed with spiced beef and nuts- reminiscent of a Chilean pino- then sauce and pomegranate seeds. The nogada sauce is mixture of cheese, walnuts, dairy, cinnamon, and a touch of sugar. As demonstrated to the left, it is generously poured over the chile. This one, and many photos are also like this, was a little chunky from the walnut.
From there I started by walkabout. My end goal had been to check out Biblioteca Vasconcelos and in doing a little research I came across Kiosko Morisco about 15 minutes from the library. So I headed up north, through a part of town called Santa Maria de la Ribera, but Fran just calls it Rios cause every street is named Rio something. This is a very transitional part of town, on one end abutting Chapultepec Park, Roma and Juarez, but definitely as you get further in, you stop hearing English. The buildings aren’t as maintained and just the vibe shifts. Not in a scary way, just in a not remotely tourist center expensive neighborhood way.
It was a lovely not too warm day for a walk around town and people were out! That said, I quickly got past the crowds and was on the quieter streets in the northern part of the neighborhood. On the way, I saw an adorable, pikachu backpack sportin’ couple, a few tacos places I want to look up and the amazing public parking lot with the lucha painting as shown above.
Kiosko Morisco, meaning Moorish Kiosk, was constructed in 1884 to be Mexico’s pavilion at the World’s Fair in New Orleans. It then served a similar purpose at the St Louis expo 1902. It was then “permanently” installed in Alameda Central, the oldest park in the city, right next door to the Fine Arts Museum and pretty much in Centro, the historic district. During the Mexican Revolution, it was moved to make way for a statue of Benito Juarez and residents of the neighborhood advocated for it to be moved to their Parque Alameda, yes there’s a different one. This is a pretty amazing feat. This kiosk is not small and is made entirely of iron work and features a glass cupola on top that doesn’t appear like it would be conducive to relocation. It’s very hard to imagine in looking at it.
Then I trotted east for about 15 minutes toward Biblioteca Vasconcelos, and ran into El Chopo, a large punk tianguis market, selling records, weed, t-shirts, goth clothes, tacos, studded belts, posters and really just about anything punk/goth/metal you can think of with occassional spaces for bands or tacos. Turns out this market sets up around the library. It’s a bit hard to explain the chaos and slight claustrophobia of many tianguis, but suffice to say while I could see the library, I definitely wandered all the way through El Chopo and discovered a giant power plant where I was hoping to find the library entrance and then shoved back out all of El Chopo to finally locate said entrance, which I had most definitely passed. In fairness, it’s sorta a plaza with lots of plant blocking the actual doors.
Biblioteca Vasconcelos is enormous. Due to the market, and the fact that the library has a garden and is surrounded by a large wall, I couldn’t really get a good outside photo. It was built in the early 2000s and is a modern concrete building, that despite being huge and packing in over 600,000 books, feels low slung in a post modern kinda way. The architects envisioned an ark of human knowledge.
So it’s almost like a giant atrium extending 7 floors up with floating bookshelves with frosted glass floors jutting into the open space in a patterned, but non linear way. The ground floor has a couple art exhibitions, including a large piece by Santiago Savi, who I actually bought a piece from early in my stay here. Despite feeling industrial, the space is flooded with light through enormous windows on all sides. To the right of the entrance is an end of the library with a wall of windows and glass doors that open to a smallish amphitheater with concrete tiered seating.
To the left is the library. The ground floor doesn’t seem to actually hold any books. There are some work spaces, some exhibits, and a enormous hanging sculpture of a blue whale skeleton. Elevators are to the right, bathrooms to the left, or you go straight through up the sloping ramp to the next flloor.
I meandered through the library. On each floor, each side has large hallways that host work stations, lounging areas and the occassional balcony with seating in case you want to read there. People were working, people were napping. I continued ascending up the stairs. The final floor has a wall of windows at each end. While not a particularly impressive view, it’s definitely the best one I’ve ever seen from a library.
It’s a helluva view. And a decent walk home.
Saturday night I barely slept. I’m gonna get through this bottle of meds and then check in on where the insomnia is at cause this is not sustainable. Leo and I trekked down to Green Rhino, a newish bakery, on our way to Petco. Sherry had brought over a divine sourdough rye and I wanted to check out the goods. I had an excellent not too sweet little bit salty chocolate chip cookies and a truly fantastic nduja and cheese croissant. So flaky. So good. Also need to find wherever the hell they sourced nduja.
My friend Michelle leaves for a month tomorrow morning, so she came over to my place and we checked out the weekend pop up in Plaza Romita. So my neighborhood is a tiny mini neighborhood within Roma Norte and is really is like everything’s a bit miniature. But every weekend this family sets up a couple tents in the street and has a restaurant. This is actually done all over the city, but I had not yet checked out my local one. A neighbor told me they had good enmoladas, so I went for it. For those of you who may not know enmoladas are folded over tortillas stuffed, usually with chicken, with mole slathered over. There’s a whole group of brunch foods that follow this word pattern. Enchiladas are chile sauce, enfrijolada are in bean sauce, and entomatadas are in tomato sauce. This rendition was quite tasty, although not up to the standard, aesthetic or taste, of Friday’s adventure.
Tacos of the Week: Monterregios
What you think I didn’t find time for tacos this week?! This small storefront in Condesa is only a few blocks away from Los Caramelos and also features northern style. A man who I can only assume is the owner is from Monterrey and talked to us about sourcing meat for this project. Apparently, he actually gets the beef for his barbacoa from the US cause it’s hard to find beef cheeks in Mexico City. And the barbacoa was delicious. Tacos came with a lovely selection of 6 salsas, ranging from smoky chipotle like, one I would swear has at least some peanuts in it and a spicy, but brilliantly fresh verde. Additionally, you got cilantro n onion, veggies in escabeche, limones and some kind of aioli like squeeze bottle. So happy. At the top of the picture, you have a picadillo taco and a deshebrada (shredded pork) and at the bottom a partially eaten barbacoa and a chile lamprey con queso. I think I might have liked Caramelos a little better, although they also cheated by having a kinda expensive but really good mezcalita available. As they are only a few blocks away from one another, I may have to get myself really hungry and go back to back.
Year One Project 
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