For weeks my good friend here has been promising (threatening?) to take me to the Barracuda Diner right near my apartment. Last night seemed like the perfect night to make good as we were both exhausted & it's not only close but very laid back. She claims Barracuda is the only diner in the D.F., and I haven't seen anything to prove otherwise. It's a very surreal Mexican take on a modern remake of a classic 1950s diner / ice cream parlor. The folks behind the bar dress like old-time soda jerks while the waiters dress in bowling shirts. The music was mostly Mexican remakes of classic 1950s US hits, but sadly drifted into 1980s pop by the time we left.
And the menu was really odd. The appetizers were split between classic Mexican dishes & Mexicanized diner standards. The bulk of the main courses were hamburgers & hot dogs, most of which were also Mexicanized. For example, I started with "fideo seco" which is a classic home-style Mexican dish made up of small, spiky vermicelli-esque noodles cooked in a chipotle sauce until the liquid is totally absorbed & it can live up to it's name ("seco" means dry). Then the noodles get topped with the ubiquitous crema, cotija crumbles & sliced avocado. Very tasty but I'm willing to bet everything I have that no diner in the 1950s in the US ever served it.
The burger choices all had toppings that were either distinctly Mexican or what a Mexican who hadn't eaten many burgers in the US would think was authentically American. Take the "Cholita" topped with Oaxacan cheese, guacamole, chipotle sauce & "cebollas crunchy" or fried onion crisps. The burger itself reminded me of the ones I tried as a child in London before the realization set in that the English have no clue how to make a hamburger, but combined with the toppings the overall result was pleasant if almost completely unlike a US hamburger.
They strangely only offered Heineken or Paulaner Hefe-Weiss for beer options so I tried a Chaparrito which is an uncarbonated pineapple flavored soda that was popular here in the 1950s but is quite rare now. I much preferred the tequila & fresh-made lemonade I had to banish the taste of the Chaparrito, but I'm always happy to have the chance taste something new. Despite their "legendary" shakes & malteds, I had eaten my fill & departed sans-dessert to crawl into bed.
Today my plan was to walk back to the Centro Historico district to check out the Palacio de Bellas Artes. It didn't hurt that the Palacio is right on Lopez, the street where I ate so well only 2 weekends ago. A day of sightseeing & feasting was in the works so I woke up very excited.
The Palacio de Bellas Artes is one of the most famous buildings here & is also the nation's premiere performance arts theater, hosting an impressive array of opera, classical music & dance. On top of the murals by legendary Mexican artists on the walls in the main chamber, it houses 2 museums & one of them currently has a terrific show of El Greco paintings on display. The chance to combine seeing an architectural masterpiece and an exhibit of one of my favorite artists at the same time is too good to pass up.
The building itself lived up to the hype, gorgeous both inside & out (as the photos here poorly display). The exhibit had spectacular examples of El Greco's finest borrowed from several museums in Spain & the personal collection of Carlos Slim, the cellular tycoon who is México's richest man & one of the 3 richest in the world. My only complaint is that the paintings were lit terribly & everyone there was complaining about the glare that made it tough to see an entire painting. We had to look at parts of most paintings while moving around to shift the glare to places we've already seen. My favorite room had portraits on 3 walls of Jesus & the 12 apostles arranged in the same order as in "The Last Supper" & they were the only ones lit perfectly.
Right outside the Palacio is a beautiful park where I dallied for a while & watched a parade of demonic floats go by on one of the main streets in the area while munching on a small "leche quermada" ice (which sounds much better in Spanish than the "burnt goat's milk" translation). At roughly the half-way mark in my walk home, I passed another park in which an excellent mambo band was performing & I stayed for several songs to listen & watch the massive flock of dancing people crowding the central gallery of the park.
I saved the bulk of the food talk for the end because I decided to make today a day of tacos. I vowed to stop & sample one at every stand I saw with a good crowd as I wandered to the Palacio & back. My first stop (& the only stop pre-Palacio) was Taquería Gonzalez where I loved the ones I had last time around. I had a suadero taco (brisket-like beef) with diced potatoes as the chorizo & nopales were arriving at the same time I was & wouldn't be ready for a while. It was every bit as excellent as I remembered.
After the parade passed, I wandered back to Lopez where I spotted a large group huddled around a taquería similar to Gonzalez so I got on line. I was intrigued when I saw the sign touting chorizo verde for the first time since I left Toluca but I was too late & the woman ahead of me got the last green sausage taco. I settled for carne de res en enchilada. "En enchilada" means coated in spices- not rolled into enchiladas- & is a popular treatment for both thin cuts of meat & for dried fruits. This little taquería gives Gonzalez a run for it's money both figuratively & literally.
A little further up I saw 5 women eating tacos al pastor at a tiny counter & was drawn in. I devoured my 1 small taco in 3 bites & enjoyed it very much, although it wasn't quite as good as El Huequito a few blocks away. At 5 pesos it cost me roughly 40¢ at the current 13 - 1 rate & blows away anything I could get at home for that price.
On my walks to & from Centro Historico I had noticed a few stands selling tacos de birria which is a specialty from Jalisco so I knew I had to stop for my first taste of this treat on my way home. I couldn't tell you what the spices are, but huge pieces of pork are simmered until tender in a rich broth then hacked into small pieces & made in to tacos as small as tacos al pastor. You can also opt to have your diced birria tossed into a bowl filled with the cooking liquid instead of taco-ized but that looked like it would be too filling for my needs today. The sweet older woman running the stand was so concerned that a man my size only intended to eat one taco that she offered me one for free. I didn't have the heart to turn her down, but I insisted of paying for both as the entire tab was only 8 pesos.
Then I was off to the park where I witnessed the mambo invasion. Ringing the park are stands selling all kinds of trinkets, oddities &, of course, foods. A man coating the delicious local pink pine nuts in sugar using a large copper pan offered me a still-warm sample & I had to buy a small bag although I don't know when I'll get around to eating them. Then I saw I sight I had never seen before & had to make my final taco stop.
There was a packed stand selling many of the typical tacos I love, but at one end they had a stack of what appeared to be green tempura patties. When I finally got through the throng, I was told they are "tortas de brocoli". Basically they are patties made of well-seasoned broccoli with a little bit of cheese & egg as a binder, then fried in a fluffy batter & quickly thrown on a griddle to reheat them when one is ordered. The tortilla was woefully overwhelmed by the torta which was roughly the same diameter, but as I managed to grab a stool I decided to just rip apart the torta & eat it without bothering with the taco shell. I did have to use the tortilla to eat the "torta de califlor" I noticed at the last minute & ordered to keep me company while walking away, although it was more like a wax paper wrapper for my purposes than part of the dish. Excellent stuff & unlike anything I've had here yet.
A few blocks later after fighting off the urge to bite a chunk out of the roasted baby goat in the photo above, I couldn't resist a pastry stand in the doorway of a small market with it's sign advertising "Pastel Imposible". Even though "Impossible Cake" sounds like something a comic book superhero would eat, it's really a traditional Mexican dessert consisting of a layer of flan balancing on a layer of rich chocolate cake. The impossible part is having the 2 layers keep separate while cooking at the same time, but still have the ability to keep their shape when cut into slices. I grabbed a slice to entertain me while writing this post & I have to give myself credit for an excellent decision. ¡Besos!
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