Struttin’ with some barbecue

When people ask me what I miss about the United States, I instantly say “my friends.” After that it often takes me a while to come up with anything else. The truth is that there are certain foods I crave that you cannot find in Mexico City. Among them is barbecue. I am talking about the kind you get south of the Mason Dixon line.

Luckily, the Dixie variety is not the only barbecue in the world. Here in Mexico City there is a significant Korean community, mostly made up of importers and exporters. Although they are not large in numbers, they are very visible, principally due to their restaurants and grocery stores on the fringes of the Zona Rosa.

Last week I had some kickass Korean barbecue at Nadefo, on Calle Liverpool #183, near the corner of Florencia. I have never been to Korea but it was as good as any I’ve had in Korean restaurants in New York. My dining companion, a Korean American, liked it so much that she wanted to return the following night.

There is a small menu, including an outstanding spicy vegetable and tofu soup, and a couple of noodle dishes. Mostly you go to Nadefo for meats that are grilled over burning charcoals. If you don’t know what you are getting into, the waiters — or Mr. Kim, one of the owners — will explain.

Labels: Mexico City, Mexico City food, barbecue

Bucket shop

For the past 28 years, each weekday afternoon, Julián Sánchez, a portly man in his late 40s with salt-and-pepper hair and a moustache, exhorts passersby to buy food from buckets he has set up at a little table on the corner of Calle Dakota and Calle Yosemite in the Colonia Nápoles. “Come on, boss, what are you having?” he’ll say as he doles out meals. “Aren’t you hungry?”

He hardly needs to shout. At lunch hour there is almost always a cluster of a dozen or more people either eating or lined up to buy the food, which has been prepared by Julián’s wife Rosita. With a stoic expression, she collects the money, her hand covered in a plastic glove. Her severe visage may be due to the fact that she awakens every day at 4 a.m. to prepare the victuals, while Julián refers to his role in the operation as “the orchestra conductor.” (Rosita was ill the day I took this picture. Their daughter Elizabeth assisted.)

There are various elegant restaurants in the Colonia Nápoles, but Rosita’s is hands down the best inexpensively-priced food in the neighborhood. Each day she and Julián offer variety as well as quality – they may have pipián de puerco (a pork stew in a mild chile sauce) with nopal cactus; chicken in green mole; meatballs in chipotle, and breaded chicken cutlets in green sauce. These dishes are sold as fillings for tacos, or on Styrofoam plates with rice and beans. “We don’t have a set menu for every day in the week,” says Julián. “We keep changing it up so the people don’t eat the same things every day.”

Labels: Mexico City, Mexico City food

Sweaty tacos

It is the dream of every unskilled Mexican with no connections to establish a business selling food. Particularly profitable are stands on the street, because they require minimal investment and their owners are duty-bound to pay few taxes. Some don’t pay any at all.

The least adorned points of sale are those which dispense tacos sudados – sweaty tacos, so-called because after being fried in the morning, they sit steaming in a basket during the day until their vendors sell out. (They are also known as tacos de canasta, or tacos in a basket.) Most commonly stuffed with potatoes, beans, fried pork rinds or green mole, they are delicious and extremely cheap – usually 3.5 pesos, or about 23 cents U.S. at the current exchange rate.

Juan Monsalvo, the fellow who from whom I most commonly buy tacos sudados, reeks of humility. Missing a couple of front teeth, he is impeccably well-mannered and always speaks to his customers using the polite form of address. I once asked him how many tacos he sells a day. He said that on a good day he will sell out his ration of 250. At 3.50 pesos each, that represents gross earnings of over $50 US.

But then he told me that he gets up at four o’clock each morning and makes 2000 tacos. A phalanx of salesmen buy the rest from him at a peso each and vend them on their own streetcorners. His workday lasts twelve hours. Math is not my strong point, but I believe he makes more money than I do.

Labels: Mexico City, Mexico City food

Amanda

She was by far my laziest student. She had long eyelashes; lank, dark hair, and a huge, slack and provocative mouth. These qualities, combined with the fact that she only stood about four feet tall, gave her the look of a sexually precocious, perverse baby.

She took workshops in creative writing with me at the Escuela Dinámica de Escritores. Yet when the day came to hand in assignments, most of the time, she wouldn’t bother to show up. Once, she gave me her homework, and it was all of one sentence. “This is fine, Amanda,” I said, trying to encourage her. “But it would be nice to see the sentence that comes after, and the one that comes after that.” Her response was nothing more than an insolent look, as if I were truly clueless.

A year or two after classes were over, she resurfaced as “Amandititita,” something of a novelty act in the Mexico City pop music firmament. She has cut a couple of CDs and been covered widely by the press. Not long ago I read an interview in which she complained about how many commitments she has – as a pop sensation, her time is no longer her own. Click here to see a video of her biggest hit, in which she sings about the travails of having a metrosexual boyfriend.

Labels: Mexico City food

Sweet potato

Some people in Mexico City – mostly European immigrants – from time to time twist their mouths into a Gallic moue and complain about how this place has become agringada – “gringofied,” or Americanized. Without a doubt, in well to do neighborhoods Starbucks has become ubiquitous, and Wal Mart Mexico is now the largest private employee in the country. There are also the predictable outposts of McDonald’s, Burger King, and most omnipresently, KFC. In ritzy areas, shopping malls, of the mega and strip variety, are becoming ever-present.

However, despite these perhaps inevitable indicators of “progress,” Mexico City remains an emphatically Mexican city. Each evening, an hour or two after sunset, I hear a shrill steam whistle that tips me off that a vendor of baked sweet potatoes is passing by. He will sell them plain (the way I like them), or dress them with condensed milk, sugar and/or honey. Another whistle lets me know that the knife sharpener is on the block. The gas man cries out when he passes by, as does the guy who repairs curtains and the other who buys old newspapers. This is the way business was transacted centuries ago, and has nothing to do with the contemporary U.S. I wonder where the Europeans are when all these guys appear.

Labels: Mexico City, Mexico City food