WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NOMBRE

The indiscreet charms of Mexico City cantinas

By David Lida

The clock behind the bar at El Nivel, the oldest cantina in Mexico City, runs backwards, an apt metaphor for the spiritual condition of two of its clients on a recent Friday afternoon. Fiftyish, rumpled, crooked smiles on their faces, they sat with their arms around each other’s shoulders, not only as a gesture of solidarity but to keep from falling to the floor. There were more than a dozen empty glasses on the table. One said to the other, in a voice loud enough to be heard through most of the cantina:

Seas Domínguez

O no me chingues,

Estás pedo.

This is specific, vulgar Mexico City slang. A literal translation would make no sense, but the gist of the remark was that his friend was staggeringly drunk.

The friend removed his arm from the first man’s shoulder, dismissed him with a wave, and rose to go to the bathroom. As he stood, most of the cantina’s patrons – art students and pony-tailed post-hippies, middle-aged boulevardiers in antique suits, bureaucrats who would not bother to return to work that afternoon, neighborhood layabouts – scrutinized him with morbid curiosity, to see if he would actually arrive at his destination.

Miraculously he made his way in a more or less straight line. Yet just before he got to the w.c., he tottered and dropped to the floor like an elevator cut from its cables. A long-suffering white-jacketed waiter pulled him to a standing position and escorted him back to his seat, where he would continue to serve him drinks.

Although they are mostly no-frills establishments, lit by flourescent bulbs, with mounds of cigarette butts on the floors, Mexico City cantinas have as much personality as London pubs, Paris cafes or New York bars. And not only due to the performance art of its most intoxicated clients. Cantinas have history – El Nivel opened its doors in 1855. They have tradition – Mexicans are used to drinking in them, while European or American style bars are fewer, and often located off hotel lobbies.

There is also entertainment, in the form of itinerant musicians, whose talent varies wildly. At Tío Pepe, decrepit troubadours play guitars and sing for the customers, who are mostly middle-aged men in suits and ties getting progressively smashed. Most of these performers, however, are more interested in cadging drinks than playing. One afternoon I saw a dwarf at Tio Pepe, with a straw hat and a sparse beard, who sat on a high stool and sang incantations of passionate love in the nasal tremolo of a Munchkin. He turned out to be Margarito, a down-on-his-luck film comedian whose career would soon be resuscitated on TV.

*

In a far from egalitarian city, cantinas are the most democratic institutions. Anyone who can afford the price of a drink is welcome. The best attract a heterogeneous crowd: bureaucrats in polyester suits, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by extravagantly made-up women who are clearly not their wives. Guys with thick moustaches and muddy boots, who appear to have just got off a turnip truck from Sonora. Smooching couples. College kids, wearing nose rings and huaraches and sporting elaborate tattoos. Men with crewcuts who could be drug dealers, undercover police or both. An evident minority of foreigners, teachers, journalists. On Saturday afternoons, some cantinas even attract entire families, including toddlers and grandparents.

Perhaps what best distinguishes cantinas from bars in other cities is that they are great places to eat – free with the price of drinks. Indeed, no city I know is as generous to its drinkers as the D.F. During the traditional lunchtime (say, between 2 and 5 p.m.), as long as one keeps ordering booze, one is rewarded with botanas, the Mexican equivalent of tapas. While each portion is not huge, there are frequently five or more different items available. Sometimes the abundance, variety and quality of the offerings are stupefying. For example, at La Mascota (where an annoying waiter insistently tries to raffle off bottles of cheap rum and domino sets). the other day there were seven different dishes available. I tried the pancita (a spicy tripe soup), stewed pork shank, chicken in green sauce, and meatballs in chipotle chile. They would have kept it coming but I cried uncle.

La Valenciana, which according to photos on the wall has existed in various different locations since 1911, serves a daily buffet of soup, rice and three or four main dishes. Last time I was there, I had mole de olla (a soup with meat, potatoes and vegetables), tinga de pollo (chicken in a tomato-based sauce), fried perch and grilled beef. Miguel, an sad-eyed elderly waiter with a trim moustache, must have the genes of a Jewish mother: He kept egging me on to eat more, as if worried I was suffering from malnutrition.

Waiters sometimes display indignation if they believe one hasn’t shown sufficient attention or respect. During two-and-a-half hours at a cantina called La Auténtica, a companion and I consumed – apart from an avalanche of tequila and beer – cream of chile, beef broth, steak Tartare, chiles stuffed with cheese, and an enormous pork shank that, once picked clean of its meat, appeared to be a lost dinosaur bone. After coffee, I asked for the check. The waiter, a wounded expression on his face, asked, “So soon?”

Roberto Santibañez, culinary director of the Rosa Mexicano restaurant chain, says that in cantinas one can find Mexico’s “real food.” In fancy restaurants, he explains, chefs try to make Mexican food “sophisticated” – when in fact it already is. “The real, deep flavors of Mexico – in cantinas, taco stands and markets – work as my inspiration,” he says. “There you find cooking with passion and tradition, without the fear of strong flavors that many upper-class, snobbish Mexicans suffer from.”

*

When I first visited Mexico City, before I lived here and made friends, what I most liked about cantinas was that I was never alone in them. All I had to do was belly up to the bar, order a drink in halting Spanish, and in a few minutes comrades would emerge.

Even when I only understood half of what my hosts were saying, we always reached some kind of concord. Frequently they would give me souvenirs: an old coin, a keychain, an amulet. Once, a stupendously drunken man offered me his wife. She demonstrated her eagerness to consummate the proposition with a squeeze of my thigh and a smile, the seductiveness of which was undercut by the absence of several crucial teeth. I refused with as much courtesy as possible, after which the man removed from his neck a string that held an emblem of Mexico’s patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe. I felt safer accepting this gift.

On the last night of one of my first trips here, I was approached by a man who looked like Groucho Marx in his waning years. He invited me to join him for a drink. His name was Carlos and he had a companion: Samuel, a man in his forties with a ruminative air. Samuel immedi­ately began to talk about jai alai, a sport popular at the time. He told me that as a young man he had played professionally, but an accident had cut his career short. I asked him what he did for a living.

“I’m a psychologist,” he said.

“Do many people go to psychologists in Mexico City?” I asked, explaining that in New York it was practically as common as brushing your teeth.

“I have many clients,” said Samuel. “Mexico City is a good place for a psychologist because it’s a factory for crazy people.”

Carlos then asked me if I would bring him back to New York. “I’m an old man,” he said. “Let me spend my last days there with you.”

I tried to discourage him. New York, I explained, was hardly as glamorous as it appeared in the movies.

This didn’t deter the old man. “Hear me out,” he said.

I explained that I lived in a one-room apartment. He again went into his song-and-dance about wanting to spend his last days in New York. “Hear me out,” he repeated.

I told him that Mexico City seemed more relaxed than New York, but this provoked a string of curses. “Hear me out…” Finally, my compulsion to tell the truth was eclipsed by a urgent desire to shut him up. So I told him I’d take him to New York.

His face illuminated as if from an inner current. “He­cho?” he asked. Really? “Hecho.”

“Por Dios?” Swear to God?

“Por Dios.”

He took my hand and placed his forehead on it, as if I were the village priest (if not the pope). Immediately the old man began to crow obnoxiously about his impending trip. He removed his necktie – an object Samuel dated from the Stone Age – and gave it to me.

At this point a sinewy man with a moustache staggered to our table and asked if we would let him buy us a round of drinks. We accepted and invited him to sit down. He drank a shot of tequi­la in one gulp.

This man, who called himself Héctor, stole Carlos’s eyeglasses, which prompted the old man to threat­en to kick him in the balls. After finally returning the eyewear, Héctor gave me a seething look.

“He likes to fight,” whispered Samuel. “But don’t worry. I like to fight, too. I will protect you.” He took my hand and demon­strated the firm grip he’d developed as a jai alai player.

Héctor continued to stare at me frigidly. I won­dered if a conflict would indeed emerge. To my surprise, he re­moved his wristwatch and gave it to me.

Even by the generous standard of cantinas, this seemed like an extravagant gift. I began to make a speech about how beauti­ful an object it was, but that I couldn’t possibly accept it.

“Take it,” Samuel said.

“Muchísimas gracias,” I said.

I felt better when, a moment later, Héctor produced another watch from his pocket and unemphatically dropped it into a glass of soda water. This gesture seemed so defiant, impertinent and baroquely inexplicable that I took off my own watch and gave it to him. Soon after, it undoubtedly found itself marinated.

Before I left, Samuel gave me a note which, to my surprise, was written in English. It said:

When you remember this night

you will think about this life.

Its night or is the life.

Do you understand?

David Lida is the author of Travel Advisory, a book of short stories. He is currently completing a panoramic street-level portrait of Mexico City, where he lives, for Riverhead Books.

CANTINAS MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE:

El Nivel. Calle Moneda 2, Centro Histórico. 5522 9755. Open from Monday to Saturday from noon to midnight.

Tio Pepe. Corner of Independencia and Dolores, Centro Histórico. 5512 7844. Open Monday to Saturday from 9:30 am to 10 p.m.

La Mascota. Corner of Mesones and Bolívar, Centro Histórico. 5709 7852. Open 7 days, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

La Valenciana. Calle Universidad 48, Colonia Narvarte. 3330 7507. Open Monday to Saturday from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.

La Auténtica. Corner of Álvaro Obregón and Avenida Cuauhtémoc, Colonia Roma. 5564 7588. Open 7 days, from 9 in the morning “until the last customer leaves,” usually around 10 pm during the week and 12 on weekends.