On Mexico City
9/17/21
A lot of my meals in Mexico City consisted of me heaping extra helpings of very hot salsa onto all my dishes. Initially, it all went well. The heat wasn’t that hot for me at the time, so I continued pouring the salsa right up to the breaking point of my tortillas.
Unfortunately, I forgot that salsa has to also exit your body at some point. By the end of the trip, I learned that salsa has a funny way of being hotter on the way out than on the way in. For other non-salsa related Mexico learnings, read on!
Liveliness in Mexico City
Someone once told me that you should never get in the way of someone radiating joy. Don’t make fun of how someone laughs. Don’t interrupt a smiling storyteller in her element. And don’t break up the slick dancing of an intertwined couple.
On my first night in Mexico City, I was at a restaurant-bar in Polanco, enjoying Suadero tacos and mariachi music that was so lively that a couple at a nearby table stood up and began to dance. I don’t have to tell you they were good because of course they were. You only pull that kind of shit in a restaurant if you’re good.
Unfortunately, the couple was dancing pretty close to the bustling kitchen entrance on a Friday night, so I figured they would be asked to sit down. In the States, couples would be kicked out for that kind of thing. But not in Mexico City. With large dishes and cocktails in hand, the waiters simply skittered around the whirling couple.
The same sort of thing happened throughout my stay in Mexico City. Couples dancing like professionals in the middle of a busy restaurant and no one stopping them. I felt like I was in a wacky version of Footloose where I was the stiff-moving protagonist stuck in a city full of smooth-moving dancers.
Food surprises in Mexico City
We Americans scoff at fries in our burritos. Ya, we’ll enjoy a California burrito here and there, but we all know fries in a burrito is the Mexican equivalent of fortune cookies stuffed in our Panda Express order.
The weird thing though, is that Mexicans use fries a lot, particularly on their tacos. Every market I went to had a “fries on top of tacos” spot, which was really surprising to me.
Another food surprise for me was the “Gringo Taco”. There are multiple variations of the Gringo Taco in Mexico City, but these are the basics:
Deep fry a corn tortilla
Grill meat and cheddar cheese over a skillet
Put meat and cheese over the deep-fried tortilla
Mexicans basically saw how Americans were deep-frying and cheese-ifying some of their classic dishes and thought, “We can totally do this way better.” And they do. Essentially, the Mexicans beat us at our own game, which we kinda stole from them in the first place.
Greenery in Mexico City
Mexico City does an immaculate job of fusing greenery and concrete. Instead of lanes being separated by dotted lines, they’ll often be split by a verdant walkway like the ones I walked through below.
In other cities, you’ll usually have a place in mind after dinner: a bar or maybe someone’s house. But in Mexico City, I really didn’t care where I went after a meal. I just wanted to walk.