Holy mole! Modern art and epicurean excursions in Mexico City
Watch out Manhattan. Art, books, drink, food, jazz – and a whole lot of mole: the Mexican capital is possibly the best city in North America, says longtime visitor Chris Moss
Before I could do Mexico City again, I decided I’d better see it. The whole thing. It was a thought that occurred to me each time I landed and looked through the plane window. It had happened this time, as the plane banked, and I caught sight of an anonymous, sprawling urban immensity – a flank of mountain slopes, ribbons of highways – all crouching beneath a fiery dusk.
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The first thing I did on rising the following day was catch the express lift to the top of the Torre Latinoamericana. At almost 600 feet, and 44 stories, it was, when thrust up in 1956, one of the tallest skyscrapers in the Americas. A masterpiece of modernist architecture as well as anti-seismic engineering, the lofty, much-lauded tower barely budged in the 1957 and 1985 earthquakes.
Zócalo, the huge plaza that’s both civic centre and spiritual heart of the city
From the top, I could see the magnitude of Mexico City under a crisp, blue winter sky. One of the most densely built spaces on the planet, raw statistics – 23 million people and 3,690 square miles if you include its conurbation – don’t capture the inhuman scale. High up, the crowds, cars and buses were silenced and the buildings small and neat, as in a maquette.
‘I gawped and gazed till my eyes hurt. Then, tracing a line of boulevards and desire lines through the megacity, I readied myself: it was time to dive in’
I could see the Zócalo, the huge plaza that’s both civic centre and spiritual heart. The beautiful golden dome of the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The Aztec’s Templo Mayor. The skyscrapers of Santa Fe. The steeples of the Guadalupe Basilica. The mountain peaks and volcanoes that mark the physical limit of “Greater Mexico”. A ridge, beyond which lies Teotihuacan – once the largest city in pre-Hispanic America, now a ghost-ridden ruin.
I gawped and gazed till my eyes hurt. Then, tracing a line of boulevards and desire lines through the megacity, I readied myself: it was time to dive in.
Global art capital
Polanco is a district that retains, beneath the tall towers, a villagey feel thanks to leafy boulevards, small parks and well-kempt plazas. The cultured, cosmopolitan air extends to street names. I ambled along calles Horace, Edgar Allen Poe and Tennyson. I stopped for coffee, browsed the local retail, bought some books at stylish bookshops.
A typical stylish, tree-lined street in Roma Norte
Amid the bucolic splendour is a powerhouse in Mexico’s art scene: the Museo Jumex, opened in 2013, in a stunning sawtooth-shaped building designed by Christopher Chipperfield Architects. It’s the showroom for the largest private art collection in Latin America, which belongs to fruit juice heir Eugenio López, and contains works by Koons, Warhol, Twombly and Hirst, as well as Mexican superstar Gabriel Orozco.
I enjoyed a fast-track education in early conceptual art via a retrospective dedicated to the maverick Canadian trio known collectively as “General Idea”, and then a massive blast of the current state of experimental installation in the work of Lebanese media artist Walid Raad.
‘A stunning sawtooth-shaped building is the showroom for the largest private art collection in Latin America, belonging to fruit juice heir Eugenio López’
Next door to the Jumex is the asymmetrical, anvil-shaped, aluminium-clad Museo Soumaya, designed by Fernando Romero and paid for by Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim; it’s named after Slim’s late wife, Soumaya Domit, who died in 1999.
Opened in 2011, it houses the telecoms billionaire’s gargantuan collection of old and modern European masters, sculpture – including 380 casts, and pieces by Rodin, religious paintings, watches and clocks, and assorted decorative arts. The gallery is a temple to humanism, enthusiastically educating its many visitors about impressionism, Venice, numismatics and the art business.
Museo Jumex (and top) is home to works by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol and more
I targeted Mexican art and liked the way the floors – linked to one another by Guggenheim-style circular ramps – placed Mexican paintings opposite European works, or focused on European visions of Mexico, as in Chagall’s “Mexican Motherhood”.
A ride out of town took me to the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), opened in 2008 in another eye-catching new building that combines a shimmering green-tinted wall of glass with a smooth white concrete wedge. The huge Anish Kapoor installations on show were awe-inspiring, but MUAC also opened up a thrilling and – for me – hitherto undiscovered area of the city: the UNAM national university campus. Built between 1949-52, it’s a constellation of modernist edifices, landscaped gardens and volcanic rockscapes, with al fresco murals and reliefs by Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros.
‘A beautiful patio is filled with tropical blooms and sculptures – including a breathtaking bronze bird-man’
There’s always been fine art and good living in Roma Norte. On a morning stroll, I dropped into the Casa Lamm, built in the early 1900s – in the vaguely French style popular in Mexico City – as part of a ranch, and now a cultural centre and restaurant. A beautiful patio is filled with tropical blooms and sculptures – including a breathtaking bronze bird-man by Jorge Marín – off of which two floors were dedicated to a temporary exhibition of the ethereal abstract paintings of Virginia Chevez.
Street mural. Photograph: Renato Granieri
As artist Pedro Reyes puts it: “Happily, we were an art capital throughout the last century, performing in Latin America a role equivalent to what Paris was within Europe. We have a rich history of modern art and architecture, as strong as any other country in the world. This is a city where artists can afford to live and produce; where there’s at least 25 non-profit institutions, and a broad contemporary art scene and cultural offering not found elsewhere in the Americas except for New York.
“But when we go there, we see a lot of art that would feel dull if removed from Chelsea, which for us, Mexicans, makes New York often feel paradoxically provincial.”
Epicurean epicentre
Mexico is larger than Indonesia, more topographically diverse than Canada – and it has an odd shape. To go overland from Cabo San Lucas in Baja California to Cancun, without catching a boat, would involve a drive of 3,730 miles. It’s unsurprising then, that regionality remains a powerful force. Food is one of the most obvious ways this is expressed – and the finest way to experience it.
‘Food is one of the most obvious ways regionality in Mexico is expressed – and the finest way to experience it’
Oaxaca does its own variety of mozzarella. The chile poblano – a mild green pepper used in chile en nogada, the de facto national dish – takes its name from the city of Puebla. From Yucatan comes the pit-oven technique known in Mayan as p’ib – and responsible for the outdoor fiesta classic that is cochinita pibil (slow-roasted pig seasoned with annatto seeds). Michoacán and Jalisco specialise in barbecuing.
The thrum of human traffic in the downtown district
As the epicentre of culinary experimentation is Mexico City – the nation’s inland food hub – you don’t have to drive all those miles to try a nation’s worth of flavours.
“Mexican is the most misunderstood cuisine in the world,” says Edgar Núñez, chef at Sud 777, a regular fixture in the annnual top 50 list of Latin American restaurants. “It’s extremely complicated and sophisticated, with avocado, vanilla and chocolate, and dozens of other flavours at least as important as hot spices, which we may or may not provide as a side dish at the end.
‘I indulge in cactus, heritage corn and escamoles or ant larvae – also known as Mexican caviar’
“Mexican chefs rely on a lot of products only available here – one of the reasons why great Mexican cuisine is not always available globally. We have more than sixty distinct cultures in the country, many with their own language – and all influence our cuisine.”
At his restaurant in the upscale El Pedregal district, I eat smoked watermelon, guajolote (turkey) with mole negro, and beef tongue with local beans. At Quintonil in Polanco – another acclaimed auteur eatery – I indulge in cactus, heritage corn and escamoles (ant larvae – also known as Mexican caviar).
Mexican pork rind, nopales and guacamole
Classic mole poblano
At Enrique Olvera’s Pujol, I splurge on octopus with habanero ink, salt made from toasted maguey worms and a juiced white corn that goes by the evocative Nahuatl name of “cacahuazintle”. Olvera’s big showpiece is his mole. In some respects, “mole” – which simply means “sauce” – is the essence of Mexican cooking, in the way that the baguette is of French, or rice of Chinese. Olvera’s “mole madre” – mother mole – evolved from the standard seven-day process of reheating fruit, nuts, bitter chocolate, tomato and peppers and other ingredients, in a comal, a heavy cast-iron griddle – into an ongoing experiment.
“We continued heating it indefinitely,” he says. “We found that the mole never stopped evolving.
‘Mole is the essence of Mexican cooking, in the way that the baguette is of French, or rice of Chinese’
“Mole is a universe in itself, so we present it only with tortillas,” says Olvera. In this he’s emulating the Mexican capital’s superb streetfood vendors; when a busy office worker needs a fast fix of good food, simplicity and flavour rule over image or presentation.
His mole tastes like a dream, a whole world of cuisines.
Getting messy on mezcal (and all that jazz)
You cannot, of course, have a great meal without a proper drink. Baja’s wines have long been held in high esteem, not least in the “other” California, which seems to import more bottles of Valle de Guadalupe vintages than does the rest of Mexico.
But the real revolution right now is taking place in the realm of stronger, more spirited beverages.
Margaritas with tajin and limes
Tequila and mezcal are distillates made with agaves; the key difference is that tequila is made exclusively from the agave tequilana (blue agave), and can only be produced in the state of Jalisco and in small areas of four other states. On the other hand, more than thirty different species of agaves can be used to make mezcal. Once a farmers’ drink, new artisanal varieties of mezcal have started to appear on bar menus around the world. Smoky notes, deep bodies and complex aftertastes characterise the experience of slowly sipping a premium mescal – with neither a worm nor a long moustache in sight.
Mariachi performing a song at the Tenampa bar
I drown myself in high-end mezcals at cool venues like Hotel Condesa DF’s Miami South Beach-vibe rooftop bar and the smoothly lit Café de Nadie. But my favourite dehydrating dens are actually the cantinas – the Mexican equivalent of UK inns or US saloons.
Cantinas offer a laidback and generally authentic drinking experience
Operating since 1876, Cantina La Opera has wood-panelled walls, tiled floors, filigreed ceilings and red velvet booths. Famous because the revolutionary Pancho Villa fired a bullet hole in the ceiling – still visible – it draws after-work locals with bespoke cocktails and straight tequila (served with sangrita, a tomato-based shooter) and cold beers. I never drink Sol or Corona at home in the UK, but I enjoy cold beers at cantinas. They go with the laidback spirit, you can drink all afternoon, and they help wash down the bar tapas of chilli-laced snacks and fat-arsed ants.
Straight tequilas and chaser beers: if you want to eat, roaming vendors hawk peanuts and fava beans
Cantina El Tío Pepe is one of the most unreconstructed of the old joints. Here since the 1870s, it’s a fixture on all downtown cantina crawls. Formerly a men-only space, the lovely dark woodwork, stained glass and long, glossy red bar evoke a Mexico long gone elsewhere. Clients include old timers, couples and weary office workers. The bar menu is hipster-averse and I enjoyed straight tequilas and chaser beers. No food, but roaming vendors hawk peanuts and fava beans. It’s said William Burroughs alludes to this “cheap cantina” in his heroine-laced novel-cum-memoir Junky.
‘A musician on a train once told me that a jazz bar is always the place to go in a strange city. It has the coolest people, is always safe, and you are guaranteed a good drink’
There are nameless cantinas, or perhaps there aren’t and I lost the name because I overdosed on agave juice. But at a cantina-kind-of-dive near the Zocalo, while rinsing my soul on more beers, a man in a cowboy hat came up to me carrying a squiggly piece of metal and a spoon-shaped device, with a hole in the spoon bit, at the end of a cable. He said I had to try to pass the hole along the squiggly lines or else buy him a drink. I played the game and, of course, got an electric shock as a reward. He got his drink.
A musician on a train once told me that a jazz bar is always the place to go in a strange city. It has the coolest people, is always safe, and you are guaranteed a good drink. I hit Zinco, in the vault of a former bank, at around ten, just as a local trio began to work through a playlist of bebop, trad and some experimental stuff.
There were tables but I bagged a stool at the bar – fifteen feet from the trombone’s end – and had a cocktail every five songs: Manhattans, Sazeracs and other classics were mixed speedily but unskimpingly. A small glass of Milpa Blanco introduced me to a new sensation: Mexican corn-based whisky, crafted in the highlands of Oaxaca. I caught notes of vanilla, caramel, cocoa, coffee and maybe the faintest idea of chilli. It was a discovery, and sent me on to one final hangout.
Old school drinking dens abound
Wallace Bar is a classic post-work venue, with pub-style décor and atmosphere, good bands, decent pizzas – and it has the best selection of whiskies in Mexico. The menu is epic, with sections on Islay, Speyside, Highland, Lowland and twenty-odd quality blends, plus Irish and a heap of bourbons, Canadians, Japanese and a Mexican brand called Abasolo – which I had to try.
‘Mexico City is at its most beautiful below, in its bars and basements, in its cantinas when you’re in your cups, on mezcal or single malt, with jazz or ranchero’
Another corn-based whisky, this one had a bit of saddle-leather and tortilla on first taste, and then deepened into tropical fruit and mild pepper. Was it as good as Lagavulin or Templeton 6 or Hibiki Harmony? Probably not, but the measures were double and the price half. In my beginnings are my ends, as non-Beat poet T.S. Eliot put it. I finished the night on another high.
Mexico City is awe-inspiring from above, but it is most beautiful below, in its bars and basements, in its cantinas when you’re in your cups, on mezcal or single malt, with jazz or ranchero, alone or in a party. Sometimes a city is only “great” because it’s big or populous or old or powerful; Mexico City is all that, but a lot more besides.
