Eating in Mexico City

Mexico City as a Place to Eat

Mexico City is green, very much so, as I reported in the last post, though it is not often noted. I now want to point to another distinction that doesn’t get much publicity either. The city is really a  good place for eating.
  I don’t mean that it sports an unusual number of multi-star restaurants, though, for all I know (and I don’t), it does.  What I do mean is that wherever you turn there is a restaurant where you can eat a decent meal at a price you can afford.
   And the variety is great—from sausage-based to French. I’m no foodie, so I won’t try to evaluate this cornucopia, if that’s what it is, but I can make a few comments.

   I am talking about real restaurants, a great many of them, not just places where they dish out food. The establishments I have in mind present their customers with menus that vary a lot in size and types of dishes. A Japanese restaurant within easy walking distance ( it does not seem to employ a Japanese person) but it has a veritable book listing Japanese dishes with their Spanish translations; I’ve concentrated on their many imaginative salads, each a meal in itself. I have no ideal whether they resenble Japanese fare.

    Besides the restaurants I can walk to—especially Gipsy Fish, where I am a “regular,” in part because they have learned to produce a proper martini—we usually go out for one week end meal, with Miguel driving us there. I’ve never not liked any place we have gone to.

   None of them is “above” middle class, but what they all have is service, competent service. The people who wait on you are not bored students making a buck, but are (mostly) “professionals,” doing their thing for which, obviously, they have received training.

   While I have typically American reservations about the status of servants in a class society, I have to acknowledge that being taking care of competently and politely—and not ostentatiously—is most pleasing.

   I can’t be the only one whose ideology conflicts with his day-to-day preferences. I suppose that’s hypocrisy.