La Faena

From the point in 2002 when multibillionaire Carlos Slim inked a deal with Mexico City to revitalize its historic center until now, there have been layers of change. Streets were made pedestrian-only after months of work by bulldozers and jackhammers. Broken windows and abandoned buildings have been replaced with countless new shop fronts offering shiny opportunities. Despite the strictures of tough legal bulwarks against eviction, a Giuliani-esque wave of economic empowerment has swept the city’s center, spray-brushing away signs of endemic poverty in ironic lockstep with scheduled protests by social-justice movements ranked by those who casually grab a bite after the march. Crowds are swelling along the planned corridors.

Don Lázaro El Viajero

In the tale of Don Lázaro El Viajero, a Spanish Jew named Lázaro L. Torra, escaping the fascist advance in that nation’s civil war, fled in 1939 to Mexico City – one of tens of thousands that then-President Lázaro Cárdenas invited to find refuge in Mexico amid the black conflict of that war. By 1944 Torra had become something of a restaurateur/maestro, teaching kids in a kinda-working-class, kinda-middle-class neighborhood to speak in English and improve their Spanish and feeding them some decent grub in the same go. (The name of the restaurant, Mr. Lazarus the Traveler, has to do with its proximity to a road heading out of town before the city went all crazy huge and viral.) That was the deal. You got food, but you had to learn something in the process.

Sanadoras La Caldería

We grew up in a household where drinking soup directly from the bowl was frowned upon, done only surreptitiously when Mom was looking away or as an act of impish rebellion, a bold unshackling from the spoon and its torment. Yet it took little prodding from Isis Iturriaga, founder and proprietor of Sanadoras La Caldería, to lift our earthenware bowl with both hands to eager lips and down the last of our impeccable caldo de hongos (mushroom soup) in three great gulps. “You are in your home,” she reiterated as the chipotle-infused liquid began to spark our insides. This is her mantra for the place, a plinth at the core of her being.

Kolobok

Located in the picturesque neighborhood of Santa Maria la Ribera, Kolobok – the little Russian restaurant that could – bustles in the Mexico City dusk one recent Sunday afternoon. Patrons cluster around the warm light of the to-go window, shouting out empanada orders over the sound of a band playing nearby in the neighborhood’s Plaza Morisko. Ducking inside, we grab a seat at one of the few, tightly clustered tables, feeling cozy and warm after the chill outside. Russian cuisine remains something of a mystery to most Mexicans as immigration from that country has been a mere trickle in comparison to the various waves of Chinese, Lebanese, Spanish, Argentinean and Korean migrants over the last 200 years, and their resulting culinary contributions.

Antojitos Mexicanos Raquel

The little stall run by Raquel Ángeles and her sister Evi on Balderas Avenue in Mexico City looks like any other of the tens of thousands of stands across the capital that serve millions of people every day. And yet, having eaten at hundreds of these places over the last two decades, we can safely say that the unassuming Antojitos Mexicanos Raquel sits right at the top of our list of go-to spots for a shot of “Vitamina T.” Most Mexicans have to count every peso, and a single hearty meal often has to serve in place of three squares a day, so, borne of necessity, you get “Vitamina T,” a catchall phrase stemming from the preponderance of “T”-named foods.

Jing Teng

Before we got down to the business of food, there was the business of tea. As soon as we were seated at one of the large round tables at Jing Teng in Mexico City’s Viaducto Piedad neighborhood, our server, Montse, placed a pot of piping hot red tea on the lazy Susan in front of us. As we took our first sip, we noticed the steam billowing out of the kitchen and the chatter of Sunday morning patrons casually conversing in Cantonese in between long stares at a mounted television blasting a cable Chinese news program. An unassuming diner, Jing Teng caters to the community of (somewhat) recently arrived immigrants from China who have settled in the neighborhood.

Taquería Los Parados

Our trip to Taquería Los Parados in Roma Sur last month began like any other: we gathered up four friends and began the trek to this beloved taco spot. But the dark, moody sky threatened rain, and in anticipation of a gushing downpour, we piled into a cab minutes before the first giant, icy cold rain drops began to pelt down. As was so often the case on July and August evenings in Mexico City, we were at the mercy of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc. Our destination, Los Parados, is one on a short list of taco joints usually shouted at full volume to rally the hungry boozers after a Roma-Condesa bar crawl. On this night, however, it was the taxi itself getting sloshed.