Maque Av. Ozuluama 4, Col. Condesa, 06100 México, D.F. 4 Forks
One of the great things about Mexican food is that you can even have it for breakfast and it's still tasty! While we had been in Mexico, we had only really had 1 real breakfast and even there, I ended up having a chicken enchilada instead. So we were determined to get real breakfast with eggs. I found Maque which is on this cute street in the Condesa area right near the park and it was completely mobbed on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. We were about to walk away but the hostess told us it would only be a 15 mins wait, so we stayed. Turns out that she was right, so even if you see a huge crowd, try to wait it out.
The inside is super cute - it's almost got this European pastry/cafe feel inside. The menu has everything variation of Mexican breakfast you can imagine. I ended up getting a traditional huevos rancheros since I hadn't really had that yet on our trip and a few people who we passed on our way to our seat at it at their table it it looked tasty. When you sit down, you are offered a bread basket and initially I was going to say no because I didn't want to eat too many carb but do yourself a favor and get the corn bread cake. Jesus, it was on the best pieces of bread I've ever had. It's not like the dry mealy corn bread you get at home (don't get me wrong, a good piece of corn bread at a BBQ place can be quite tasty) but this is almost like a cake. It was super moist and had bits of corn it in. Definitely don't miss out on it.
In terms of the huevos rancheros, it was s perfectly tasty dish. No complaints with it at all and I don't remember what Jen or Kevin had but they also seemed perfectly content with their meal. I would also recommend a cappuccino here as well - it was the right balance of sweet and bitter.
You can also grab breads and pastries to go here and sit outside the park, but I would recommend waiting in line and eating inside. It was a fantastic way to start off the day and I'd also spend some time in the surrounding neighborhood of Condesa as well - lots of cute shops to pop into along the way. Total bill: $40 USD for 3 people with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
La Capital Av. Nuevo León 137, 06140 México, D.F. 4 Forks
Jen had an old friend who lived in Mexico City, so we met up with her for dinner on Saturday night. I was excited to try a restaurant recommended by someone who actually lives in the city and this place didn't disappoint. It was also in the Condesa neighborhood and you could tell that it was frequented by a lot of locals. It seemed like a fun, hip place that would exist in the East Village area - it's a pretty large space with a nice outdoor terrace in the back which is where we sat.
The menu is contemporary Mexican and very extensive - lots of ceviches, tostadas, tortas, salads, grilled meats and main entrees. I should also note a lot of fantastic cocktails too - there's a mezcal drink in a clay pot with grapefruit, orange and lime slices with a spicy salty rim that's delicious. Unfortunately, I don't remember everything that we ate there (the night was a bit hazy from the drinks and running around all day) but I do remember ordering the cochinita pibil to start and I got the tuna steaks for my main. Cochinita pibil is slow roasted pork with spices and marinate and served in a banana leaf - it was moist and delicious although a bit heavy to start off a meal. But I love anything wrapped in a banana leaf! As for my main, the tuna was nicely seared and it was kind of your traditional tuna dish but with a chili rub on the outside. It was served with mashed potatoes and sautéed
veggie - so except for the chili rub, it was the kind of dish you would find at any other upscale restaurant. It was actually a huge portion and combined with all the other food and drinks I had had, I don't remember finishing my plate which is very unusual for me.
Overall, it was a super fun place and glad that we got to check out a place that probably wouldn't have been on our list if we were left on our own for dinner. Even with it being a nicer sit down restaurant, the total bill was still completely reasonable considering that we each got multiple drinks. Total bill: $43/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
El Hidalguense Campeche 155, Col. Roma Sur, 06760 Ciudad de México 5 Forks
You know you are with the right group of friends when you are all willing to possibly miss your flight just to squeeze in one more epic meal on the trip. While everything we ate so far was amazing, this place was my favorite and I felt like I had to give at least one place on our trip 5 forks. It's only open on the weekends and even then only until 6pm, so we were very lucky to have been able to squeeze this in our trip. For some reason, I thought it was going to be a quick food stall stop, so we didn't really leave ourselves a lot of time for our meal. Instead, it's a casual sit down restaurant that was jammed packed when we got there. But we were determined and really sweated this meal out. It was about a 10-15 min wait - the place is a very well oiled machine so don't worry if you're on a tight timeline.
This is THE place for lamb barbacoa - the menu is all in Spanish so we had to piecemeal our order and because we were under the gun, we kind of ordered hastily. I would definitely recommend taking your time to order because when looking around, it looks like most people ordered barbacoa by weight and made their own meals. We got what we thought was a zucchini quesadilla (I'll explain in a bit) and barbacoa tacos with hard shells and soft shells.
Despite it being a casual, sit down place, they run this place like a factory - servers are very efficient and milling around everywhere. The table comes with lots of salsa, chopped up onions and limes - be very careful with the salsas. We all did taste tests and even with my newly found tolerance for spicy food, they were a bit too much for me. So when I had said we ordered what we thought was a quesadilla - we assumed there would be cheese in it because what kind of quesadilla doesn't??? Well this is where if we had more time to read the menu and/or ask questions we might have found out what we did wrong. But the zucchini blossoms came in blue corn tortillas with no cheese in it - just chopped up zucchini blossoms. Oh well. It was tasty none the less but obviously missing a big component. But honestly that's not why you're here. You're here for the meat and it absolutely does NOT disappoint.
The tacos also came with fresh delicious blue corn tortillas and they were stuffed to the gills with barbacoa in them. It was plentiful, fragrant, tender and seriously everything you would want in a taco despite it not having any sour cream, guacamole or other things that you typically pile on in the US. I added a squeeze of lime, onions and a hint of the medium salsa to spice it up a bit but it was still very clean tasting - every bite was fantastic. The hard taco might have been a better choice just because it held in the juices more but honestly they were both yummy.
We pretty much only had 35 mins to shove all this food in our mouth and throw down the bill, which we did but I would definitely recommend spending more time than we did. The only downside is that they do not take credit cards but other than that, there really is no downside here for me. Total bill: $33 USD for 3 people with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
