Mexico City – Day 1 -Tacos, Mescal, Tacos, and Churros
Our friend moved to New York at the beginning of this year, and since we weren’t sure when we would be able to reconnect, we all decided to plan a trip for New Years Eve. After some discussion, we settled on Mexico City for the big holiday. A city with rich history and culture, Mexico City is becoming extremely well known in the food community.
So we booked our flights, found an Airbnb in Roma Notre, made reservations for one of the top 20 restaurants in the world, and took off for a New Year’s adventure!
We landed before our friend, so we headed over to the apartment for check-in. Our Airbnb host had given us the wrong address. So, with a giant suitcase shared between us, we found ourselves walking up and down the street trying to figure out where the apartment would be. Eventually the host responded to our frantic messages with the correct address. In the process of walking back and forth, we noticed this taco lady on the corner with a big crowd surrounding her booth. Knowing that we would be waiting a while for our friend to arrive, we dropped our bags in the room and headed off for a snack and quick drink.
You can find these ladies on the corner of Colima and Merida in the Roma Norte district of Mexico City. Each of those colored bucket looking containers is filled with a different taco option. For our first day, we went with squash blossoms (or zucchini flowers) in one and chicken with green mole in the other. Both with cheese of course (and they are not conservative with the cheese).
The fresh tortillas are rolled by hand then spread flat on a metal pan. The filling is set on top once the tortilla has cooked, and filling with or without cheese is flipped onto the grill for reheating. We aren’t sure if these will be the best tacos we have in Mexico City, but it’s fair to say these are among the best tacos either of us has ever eaten.
Cat sure does love her monstera plants, and in CDMX they’re EVERYWHERE!
We went for the full Mexico experience immediately upon arrival. First tacos, now for Mexican beer and mescal!
While roaming we found a cute little bar with a nice patio to sit and people watch. Cat ordered a mixed drink that did a scary good job of hiding the flavor of the mescal. I went straight to the source and had a 2 oz glass of mescal served with orange slices covered in a smoky salt.
After a drink, we headed back to the Airbnb to meet our friend and get settled in. This is the view from our bedroom in the apartment.
Since our friend missed out earlier we decided to take another exploratory trip through the neighborhood. Cat and I had only snacked earlier, and our friend had just arrived, so everyone was ready for some dinner. We found a small food court area that looked clean, so we went and ate some fish tacos.
Lessons learned from this experience:
1. Clean doesn’t mean good
2. Stick to recommendations provided by people who came before you.
The tacos were bland, the fish wasn’t very crispy, the ceviche had too much lime, and the only redeeming factor was the hot sauce that was sitting on each table. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t a place worth linking to.
Having learned our lesson, we decided tonight was a good night to grab some dessert. We checked our many lists of recommendations and found El Moro appearing on more than one.
The churros were some of the crispiest, most delicious churros we’ve ever had. Not as good as Disneyland of course, but pretty excellent all the same. They have 2 different types of coating for the pastry; one is white sugar based and the other cinnamon based. Both were good, but we all agreed the cinnamon was better.
Overall, pretty successful first evening in Mexico City (CDMX). Can’t wait to get the trip started tomorrow morning!