Eating, drinking, walking and museuming our way through Mexico City

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]W[/su_dropcap]e were in Mexico City recently. Ciudad de México, CDMX. On our return, a colleague asked me what we’d done. I said, “We drank mezcal and ate bugs.” Totally true. We also did other things.

With more than 21 million people in Mexico City and its surroundings, there is plenty to do—certainly more than one can do in six days. While a new and foreign place to us, it was comfortingly familiar: a big city. We immediately felt at home. There were walkable streets filled with shops, restaurants, people, life. Beautiful city parks and more museums than we could possibly get to.

One museum everyone told us we must see was the Blue House, the Museo Frida Kahlo. Everyone also said you must buy your tickets in advance, right away. Everyone was right on both counts. The museum, the home where Frida was born and where she died, is packed from opening to close, and spaces are often tight. Still, we were moved by the place, getting a sense of her life and her art. Some spaces, like the cocina, probably capture more of the spirit of the house than actually showing the working kitchen as it was.

Other spaces—her day bedroom and night bedroom, for instance, where she spent many hours toward the end of her life—feel chillingly real, as if she had just gotten up and left the room.

The Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico’s national anthropology museum, is vast—and needs to be. It covers the many ancient cultures that developed in Central Mexico before Spanish colonization. According to the museum’s website, it “contains the world’s largest collection of ancient Mexican art and also has ethnographic exhibits about Mexico’s present-day indigenous groups.” Much of the work itself is on a huge scale, such as the Aztec Sun Stone, or Aztec Calendar.

Here, you see a tour guide discussing the stone’s history and significance. Much of the time we were there, though, a steady stream of people posed for photos in front of it or took selfies before it. We were reminded of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, and people lining up to be photographed before the seated figure of Lincoln. We saw this again and again, throughout the Museo Nacional de Antropología—people quietly saying this is who I am, this is where I come from.

There is plenty of evidence of the European presence in Mexico City too. On the grandest scale is Castillo Chapultepec, Chapultepec Castle, a splendid, palatial compound built high on a hill, with sweeping views of the city. It was first a summer home for a Spanish viceroy, then served as the Imperial residence of Emperor Maximilian I of France, installed by Napoleon III during the brief Second Mexican Empire. Later still, it became the official residence of numerous Mexican presidents until 1939, when President Lázaro Cárdenas turned it into a museum.

Humbler, more delicious evidence of European colonization can be found in bakeries and restaurants throughout Mexico City. The French not only brought their soldiers—they brought their bakers. Which is why you’ll often find baguettes and other French baked goods in Mexican bakeries, both in Mexico and elsewhere.

We discovered the sign above in Ficelle Boulangerie Patisserie in Condesa, the neighborhood where we stayed. The small French-named bakery is filled with faithfully French pastries and treats, and the air smells of butter and sugar. The latter attracts dozens of bees, buzzing around inside the display cases. We asked the woman helping us if she ever got stung. She said yes, she did, but dismissed it as an occupational hazard. We got treats to enjoy back at our bed & breakfast on more than one occasion.

Which brings us back to mezcal and bugs. Our first night, we arrived at our B&B late and, after throwing our bags in our room, headed out into the neighborhood looking for the former as well as a little something to eat. We found Antolina Condesa, a restaurant that features an extensive mezcal list and a menu featuring regional dishes made with sustainably sourced ingredients. We sat at one of the handful of sidewalk tables on the busy corner and sampled a few sharable plates—including a taco al pastor topped with a few grilled mezcal beetles. They were not chopped or ground into a paste—they were whole. We were hungry and delighted to be in a new-to-us place, so we said what the heck (or words to that effect). They were crunchy and, as Marion said, tasted like slightly burnt toast.

On our final night in Mexico City, we didn’t just happen on bugs on a menu, we sought them out. We had reservations at Azul Condesa, a beautiful restaurant featuring Oaxacan cuisine. One of the starters, highly recommended by fellow guests at our B&B, was a small casserole of escamoles, “ant eggs sautéed with epazote herb and served with guacamole and corn tortillas,” as the menu describes the dish. It was quite good, not tasting at all like burnt toast.

Besides bugs, we ate many wonderful things on our trip. Tacos in lively corner joints; tostadas in a sprawling neighborhood mercado; duck confit in a French bistro; elevated, seasonal rustic fare in an elegantly modern space at Temporal (besides the perfectly prepared food, they made brilliant cocktails—we went back two other nights just to sit at the bar and drink). But perhaps the most memorable meal was a late lunch at tiny, eight-table restaurant with no name.

You find the nameless restaurant by looking for a mezcal bar called Bosforo in Mexico City’s Centro Historico. The restaurant, not affiliated with the bar, is next door. In it, chef Sofia Garcia Osorio and a small staff working in an open kitchen create an appropriately small menu of simple, experimental dishes using ingredients sourced directly from farmers (and fishermen—note the octopus) and cooking techniques from the Mexican countryside. Everything was outstanding and unlike anything else we’d ever eaten.

Mexico City itself is a feast for all the senses. Bustling and cosmopolitan, warm and welcoming, filled with creative energy. Much like New York City is an American city, but a place unto itself, Mexico City is in and of Mexico, but something altogether its own. We’re already looking forward to returning.