Autumn mornings and CDMX flashbacks
My mornings begin with juxtaposition, a frenetic calm. The burning desire to conquer the world wrestles with the allure of evaporating into the void. The stillness of the shell and the burdens of the hatch. I wonder if that’s how Thom Yorke felt making “Morning Mr. Magpie”, one of the very few Radiohead songs I ever play. I operate best in this dynamic. Sadness with hope, adrenaline with clarity, dreams with action.
Some mornings if I look too hard at the fixtures of our surrounds - post office boxes, payphones, lamp posts, it goes one of two ways. I either appreciate the beauty in the everyday, and think about the lineage of human history that led to that lamp post. You know that thing that Robert Rauschenberg said about the glass Coke bottle… or alternatively, I can be tainted by the quotidian nature of it all. My mind resorts to a hazy highlight reel and I think of the privileged moments of joy I have encountered, like marinating in the last rays of Mexico’s dry season, eating tuna tostadas with crispy leek.
Roma-Norte in CDMX is a fickle beauty. You are hyperaware of its gentrification, as tourists and transplants soak up the cosmopolitan streets, myself included. Yet, it’s a gorgeous place that still shimmers with Mexican pride. I’m not sure how the locals feel about it, whether the economic gain of its transformation is a plus or a minus on its cultural fabric.
Mexicans appear to be unwavering in their nationalism, hard working and festive. All admirable traits. CDMX in itself is a melting pot of contrast. It’s not uncommon to see street salesman walking with baskets of Mexican snacks balanced on their head, walking right through hordes of high end tourists. It’s not uncommon to see contemporary commercial buildings amidst a pastel sea of semi-dilapidated urban housing and makeshift parking lots. I can taste the Mezcal haunting my throat just thinking about it.
In typical tourist fashion, my first port of call in CDMX was Avenida Alvaro Obregón in Roma Norte, a stones throw from our AirBNB. I read that the strip was once an open air “tianguis” (bazaar) full of antiques and art, but was levelled and reborn as an upscale dining strip in 2012. We queued for 45 minutes at Taqueria Orinoco. After 5 hours of oppressive plane seats from JFK, I was delighted to land on a Coca-Cola branded metal chair. They’re liberal with the condiments, 5 seperate jars of salsas and a lime. You’d be lucky to get a twist of pepper for free at some Western venues.
The humble taco is a delicate art. I had marinated and spit-roasted “trompo” pork shoulder, “res” (beef) and chicharron, all drenched with this salsa verde Cremosa that I fell in love with; tomatillo, Serrano chilli garlic, onion and cilantro, sour cream and lime juice, blended until creamy. Two nights later I had street tacos, which felt like a rite of passage. Maybe it’s the gringo effect, but the vendor does not talk to you. If you got a second of eye contact you should thank your lucky stars and buy a lotto ticket. That’s ok, we don’t need to talk. There are a few universal languages that we all speak, food and money being two of them.
I thought the relentless Coca-Cola branding everywhere was quirky at first, it felt like a metaphoric cocaine meme, but before long it seems totally depressing. Particularly when you discover that many people in rural towns, mainly in Southern Mexico, drink litres of Coke per day. It’s said there’s places in Mexico where it’s safer to drink Coca-Cola than running tap water. Vicente Fox, former Coca-Cola president, became the actual Mexican president at one stage in the 2000s. From 2000-207, Mexico’s diabetes rate doubled.
On a gentle evening, we breezed into La Docena Oyster Bar and Grill. 12 oysters from off San Quintin on the half shell to commence proceedings. I discovered that “the smaller the oyster the creamier” isn’t a steadfast rule that night. Several raw plates followed but what won my heart by this stage was an aguachile of raw prawn, its spicy kick absolved by a noteworthy glass of Chenin Blanc from Guadalupe. By now my senses are in full flight, the persistent bustle of nearby glasses clinking and the subtle roar of mingling crowds engulfs us but we are alive. Next an octopus and sea urchin tostada, bountifully stacked and adorned with cilantro; probably the best thing I’ve eaten this year. Just enough char from the octopus, creaminess from the avocado, the briny lash of sea urchin. Not all poetry is written with words.
What ensued was a creamy tuna tartare on brioche, local wine, lamb sweetbreads with mole negro, more local wine, grilled octopus and more local wine. I kept slipping the waiter $20 USD notes. I admired his honest navigation of the menu and language barriers. He could barely speak English but he understood the universal language of food. The restaurant manager was working in an Aphex Twin t-shirt which I also admired.
The next morning on Colima 179 I ate a guava croissant and a slice of cheesecake at Panaderia Rosetta and had two double espressos within a short window. If I could do that every morning without dying prematurely of gout, I would. As per any gentrified city, there’s a good spread of pastries. I stumbled across another mezzanine hole-in-the-wall with two Mexican locals serving top-tier croissants while watching the English Premier League the following day. It was the morning fix I didn’t know I needed. I don’t normally eat breakfast but when in Rome (Roma-Norte).
Another not-so-successful stumble was that evening at the Michelin-starred Campobaja, a big seafood-forward spot inside a converted warehouse. Beautiful seafood, which was fast becoming a Mexican staple, but not much else to write home about. I’m not sure how we ended up with loaded fries with mayonnaise, sesame seeds and fish roe on the table but I blame myself for that and strive to do better next time. I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.
Like most of my holidays, days in CDMX were spent traipsing around galleries and city streets in between lunch and dinner, the load-bearing pillars of any holiday. Listening to James Messiah and Jawinino strolling through Kurimanzutto, I saw a brilliant piece by Haegue Yang tucked in the foyer, divorced from her larger exhibition.
After a quick pit stop at Galeria RGR where I discovered some cool work by Magali Lara, I found myself at Gathering; a converted residential house. The show was raw and largely monochromatic work by Stefan Brüggemann, sporadically hung throughout the house, one-to-two per room. One of the best shows I’ve seen in a while, although I don’t frequent galleries like I used to, but I’m a fan of the tension between the geometric and the sporadic. Chaos and order. Much of the work was done with silver leaf and spray paint, a medium I’m naturally suspicious of in commercial art seeing as I grew up with graffiti culture. Nine times out of ten, I’d rather look at a Vosko tag or a Hugh Dunit piece than suffer through microwave high-end “street art”, but this show was somewhat visceral. Is that not what we are all searching for, to feel something?
Stefan Brüggemann
Subsequently, I lost myself again in the Anthropology Museum akin to the Metropolitan Museum of Art experience in NYC. The weight of Mexican history told through thousands of ornaments, friezes and a giant water feature was interesting yet overwhelming, to a point of numbness. After a while, I was pleasantly relieved to see a giant concrete statue of a cock from the state of Hidalgo. Museo Tamayo and a few authentic churros afterwards was a good chaser. It’s evident there’s plentiful contemporary Mexican art
Lunch at Contramar was the crescendo of my CDMX long weekend. I pot-shotted a bottle of Argentinian semillon by Mara De Uco on the waiter’s recommendation to start which didn’t excite, but the food quickly did. Tuna tostadas, one garnished with crispy leek and one with sea urchin and seaweed were a hit. It’s amazing the quality of the seafood in CDMX. This tuna was glossy and radiant, it’s deep-red myoglobin-heavy flesh basking in the rays of Roma Norte.
There was a white fish ceviche, I believe Groper, marinated gently and served with apple pepper and chopped celery. Of course, we had to have the viral jewel of Contramar, the butterflied and grilled snapper (Pescado a la Talla), served with two sauces to resemble the colour combination of the Mexican flag. To be honest, in theory I thought this dish sounded like pomp and wank but it’s a delicately executed meme food.
Thick and flakey, the tender white flesh of the snapper is decorated with an adobo-like Oaxacan red sauce and a green parsley sauce. It is served with a bouquet of condiments, from salsas to pickled onions and a black bean puree. It is cut table-side by the wait staff along the butterflied joint and then self-served by the diner, an interactive dish. The underlying power of the dish is the open flame grill taste. As my Chinese friends would say, “wok hei”.
By this stage I’m totally airborne. I love to detach and self-soothe through the proxy of food. It’s nice to eject from the outward sensory cues of planet Earth and seep into the sensory touchpoint of my own flesh prison. So naturally, I voted that we order 4 desserts. After all, beyond the flag fish, Contramar is famous for their desserts. I'm a sucker for a lemon tart, I love a flan and I’m eager for a fig tart. All delivered. The strawberry meringue cake was there for theatrical reasons but it was also quite delectable in its own right.
Maybe I didn’t quite love the Baja wines and the Coca-Cola addiction, but I fucking loved Mexico. I’m glad I don’t do cocaine anymore and actually got to experience the food, albeit in my little gentrified bubble. For the record, wherever I travel in the world, I always go to the ghetto. I even went to Dobutsuenmae in Osaka, the only known ghetto of Japan. Unfortunately this time I was travelling with a girl and had to be responsible for her safety, so I couldn’t join a cartel or go deer hunting drunk with my shirt off. Maybe next time.
Alas, for now there is lamp posts. There is payphone and post boxes. There is coffee, there is Guinness. There is wind and there is the quest to tame a hurricane. There is magic.
Haegue Yang
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