Mexico City may not be as international as London or New York, but it gets more multi-culti all the time. I recently went to a Korean bar and restaurant called A Cu Yung, on Calle Río Panuco, almost at the corner of Río Ebro, in the Colonia Cuauhtémoc. I had brought a friend along for her birthday dinner. We were the only non-Koreans in attendance.

The waitress handed us menus in Korean, and apologized for not having any in Spanish. So we asked her what they served, and in a quite halting version of her second language, she more or less explained some of the highlights on the menu (seafood soup, fried chicken, the Korean seafood pancake known as haemool pajeon). The dishes are quite large, so if you want to try more than one thing it is best to go with three or four people.

I realize how much I have adapted to Mexico City – even though I am a gringo, I no longer think of myself as a “foreigner” around here. Yet at A Cu Yung anyone who isn’t Korean is the “gringo.” Being there felt inordinately cosmopolitan, even like a cheap trip to a foreign country. Many Koreans are heavy smokers, but recently a law was passed banning smoking in bars and restaurants in Mexico City. Above is the restaurant's shrine to smoke, complete with Mr. Marley in the act and various brands of imported cigarettes, real and chocolate.