The Kitchen
Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.
10 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks
Cantinas run on the botana system: you order a drink and food arrives that you did not order. First round is peanuts. By the third the kitchen is sending caldo de camarón, tostadas, something stewed, and the plates improve the longer you sit. Pulquerías work the same way, cheaper and louder. Nobody sits down to a meal here. You drink, things land, you keep drinking, and the street outside handles the 2 a.m. course.
Tacos de tripa dorada · Mexico City
Small intestine, boiled soft then fried in lard until it snaps. Order it dorada. Suave is for people who are still deciding.
Where you'd actually eat it: Every cabeza cart in Centro and Doctores after midnight. Green salsa, raw onion, half a lime, and a caguama split three ways on the curb.
From behind the bar: Fry in small batches. Crowded tripe steams itself and you get chewy tubes instead of shards.
Charales fritos · Mexico City
Whole dried lake fish, fried until they rattle, dressed with lime and chile powder. Heads, eyes, everything. The oldest pulque snack there is.
Where you'd actually eat it: The pulquerías off Eje Central and out in Iztapalapa, where a liter of curado costs less than a beer and nobody is in a hurry to leave.
From behind the bar: They are already salty. Salt at the end, after you taste, or not at all.
Moronga frita · Mexico City
Blood sausage crumbled and fried hard with onion and serrano until the edges go crisp. Iron, fat, smoke. It looks like nothing on the plate and tastes like everything.
Where you'd actually eat it: Pulquería counters and market fondas in Tepito. Eaten standing up with a curado de avena, more often before noon than after.
From behind the bar: Wet moronga is a sad taco. Stop stirring and let it sit on the hot pan long enough to build a crust.
Cacahuates japoneses · Mexico City
Peanuts in a hard soy and wheat shell. Made in Mexico City in the 1940s by a Japanese immigrant, which is the whole of the Japanese part. Now on every cantina bar in the country.
Where you'd actually eat it: Yoshigei Nakatani sold them from a stall in La Merced from the mid-1940s. Now a bowl of them lands in front of you the second the first beer does.
From behind the bar: Roast low and long. High heat browns the shell before it dries, and you end up with a chewy coat and a soft nut.
Chiles toreados · Mexico City
Serranos blistered in hot oil, then drowned in soy, lime and Maggi. Free at every table. Painful by design. You will keep eating them anyway.
Where you'd actually eat it: Standard issue in every cantina from Coyoacán to Neza, sitting beside the limes and the salt on the table you did not ask for.
From behind the bar: Cut one open before you commit. Serrano heat swings by a factor of five and the bowl is only as hot as its worst chile.
Riñones al ajillo · Mexico City
Beef kidney sliced thin and thrown into garlic and chile de árbol for two minutes. Ammonia if you rush the soak, superb if you do not. Cantina food with a temper.
Where you'd actually eat it: The old Spanish-founded cantinas in Centro, where the botana list still runs to tripe and kidneys. Ordered around the second beer, at a marble table, with no music on.
From behind the bar: Dry the kidney properly before it hits the pan. Damp offal steams, goes gray and weeps, and no amount of garlic saves it.
Chicharrones preparados · Mexico City
A dinner-plate sheet of puffed wheat, loaded with cream, cabbage, cueritos and hot sauce. Sold outside the bar to people leaving it. Eaten standing up, badly.
Where you'd actually eat it: Street carts around the Zócalo and outside cantinas at closing time. Eaten in the street with a beer someone smuggled out, or on the way to the metro.
From behind the bar: Skip the crema and cueritos, check the sheet was fried in vegetable oil, and it is vegan. At that point it is a cracker with salsa. Own the choice.
Habas enchiladas · Mexico City
Dried favas fried until they shatter, tossed with chile and lime. The bowl that lands with the first round, before the kitchen decides whether it likes you.
Where you'd actually eat it: The default free bowl in pulquerías and older cantinas, alongside peanuts and pepitas. Pulque, beer, or whatever the house is pouring by the jarra.
From behind the bar: Lime in advance turns them soggy within the hour. Squeeze it on the plate, not in the pan.
Cacahuates enchilados con ajo · Mexico City
Skin-on peanuts cooked slowly in oil with sliced garlic and whole chiles. The first thing a cantina gives you, and the reason you order a second drink.
Where you'd actually eat it: Every cantina in the Centro, in a small dish that reappears without asking. Also the pulquería standard. Beer, pulque, or a caballito of whatever is cheapest.
From behind the bar: Eat the garlic and the fried chiles too. That is the whole reason to make these rather than buy a bag.
Chicharrón de queso · Mexico City
Cheese cooked on a hot plancha until its fat renders out and what is left is a lacquered brown sheet. Rolled with salsa and eaten before it stops crackling.
Where you'd actually eat it: Mezcalerías and taquerías with a plancha, ordered as a botana while the trompo works. Mezcal, sipped, or a beer to cut the fat.
From behind the bar: Traditional Oaxaca cheese and cotija use animal rennet, and plenty of salsa macha carries dried shrimp. Read the labels or ask at the counter.