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.
18 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.
Tuétano asado · Mexico City
Roasted beef marrow scooped onto a tortilla with salsa and a fistful of raw onion. Rich to the point of being a dare. Two is a portion. Three is a decision.
Where you'd actually eat it: Late-night taquerías in Narvarte and the mezcalerías off Álvaro Obregón in Roma. One order each, tortillas on the side, and the empty bones stacking up on the board.
From behind the bar: Ask for canoe-cut bones, split lengthwise. Round-cut bones drop the marrow into the pan and you eat it with a straw.
Machitos · Mexico City
Lamb offal bound in caul fat and roasted until the outside chars and the inside stays soft. Sunday morning food, sold beside the barbacoa pit, eaten by people who have not been to bed.
Where you'd actually eat it: The barbacoa stands out in Milpa Alta and along Calzada de Tlalpan on a Sunday, with a cup of consomé and pulque poured from the barrel behind the counter.
From behind the bar: Ask your butcher for caul fat a week out. Frozen works fine. Bacon is not a substitute and everyone will know.
Escamoles a la mantequilla · Mexico City
Ant larvae fried in butter with epazote. Pale, soft, tasting of corn and cultured butter. Absurdly expensive and gone by May. Order it once and then stop talking about it.
Where you'd actually eat it: Cantinas in Centro and the older places in Roma, March into April, ordered with mezcal. The waiter tells you the price before he takes the order. That is part of it.
From behind the bar: Do not stir them. They break, weep water, and you end up with gray scrambled nothing at four figures a kilo.
Jalapeños rellenos de atún · Mexico City
Pickled jalapeños split, seeded, packed with tinned tuna and onion. No stove, no skill, no shame. The botana that appears when the kitchen has closed and the drinking has not.
Where you'd actually eat it: House parties, corner cantinas, and every Friday in Lent, when meat is off the table and the beer very much is not.
From behind the bar: Buy whole pickled jalapeños, not sliced. Nacho slices exist to be a different food entirely.
Pancita · Mexico City
Tripe simmered for hours in guajillo until the broth turns orange and the honeycomb goes tender. Mint, onion, lime, more chile. Sunday medicine, taken at the wrong end of Saturday.
Where you'd actually eat it: Market fondas and the all-night places near Mercado de Jamaica, poured from 6am, mostly to people who never went home.
From behind the bar: Blanch twice and change the water both times. Everything about this dish is decided in the first twenty minutes.
Migas de espinazo · Mexico City
Pork neck bones and stale bolillo boiled down in guajillo until the bread dissolves into the broth. Thick, gray, cheap, and the best hangover cure in the city.
Where you'd actually eat it: Tepito, at dawn, from stands that open as the bars close. A bowl, a bolillo on the side, and no conversation from anyone.
From behind the bar: Use bread that is genuinely stale, two days minimum. Fresh bolillo turns to paste in ninety seconds and ruins the texture.
Caldo de camarón · Mexico City
The archetypal cantina botana. Red, salty, hot enough to hurt, served in a mug around drink three. It exists to keep you upright and ordering.
Where you'd actually eat it: Standard issue in old Centro cantinas like La Faena and Salón España, arriving unasked with the second or third round. Drunk alongside cold lager or a michelada.
From behind the bar: Leave the shrimp whole, heads and all. Eating around them is half the point and the heads carry the flavor.
Chicharrón en salsa verde · Mexico City
Crackling goes into hot green salsa and half-collapses. Sour, fatty, scooped with tortillas. The cantina kitchen makes it because it costs nothing and disappears fast.
Where you'd actually eat it: A guisado del día in every cantina kitchen in the Centro, ladled into a small dish with two tortillas. Beer, or a caballito of tequila with sangrita alongside.
From behind the bar: Buy thin, bubbly chicharrón, not the dense meaty kind. You want it to drink the salsa, not fight it.
Tostadas de tinga de pollo · Mexico City
Smoky shredded chicken on a fried tortilla with beans, crema and lettuce. It shows up in cantinas, at wakes, and at every party where drinking is the actual agenda.
Where you'd actually eat it: Cantina botana rounds and every Roma and Condesa apartment party. Beer, or agua de jamaica by the jarra for whoever is still pretending to pace themselves.
From behind the bar: Thighs only. Breast shreds into sawdust and the sauce cannot save it.
Tostadas de cueritos · Mexico City
Pork skin simmered soft, then pickled in vinegar until it squeaks. Cold, sour, faintly gelatinous. Divisive on purpose, and one of the best things to eat while drinking.
Where you'd actually eat it: Market stalls, pulquerías and cantina botana plates. Standard with pulque curado or a very cold beer, because the vinegar wants something to knock it down.
From behind the bar: A Mexican butcher will sell cueritos already cooked and pickled in a tub. Buying them is not cheating, it is what everyone in the city does.
Camarones a la diabla · Mexico City
Shrimp in a brick-red chile sauce built to be painful. Botanero food, ordered by the table that intends to stay several hours and regrets nothing yet.
Where you'd actually eat it: Botaneros and marisquerías off Avenida Cuauhtémoc, where the botana rounds keep coming as long as you keep drinking. Michelada, always.
From behind the bar: Yes, a lot of botaneros put ketchup in it. It rounds the chile off. Leave it out if that offends you, but the version you ate had it.
Cóctel de camarón · Mexico City
Shrimp in cold tomato broth with lime, onion and avocado, served in a soda-fountain glass with saltines. Half botana, half hangover insurance.
Where you'd actually eat it: Marisquerías and market counters like Mercado San Juan, busiest around 1 p.m. on a Sunday. Beer with lime and salt, or a michelada preparada.
From behind the bar: Add chopped octopus and oysters and it becomes vuelve a la vida, which is the version ordered by people who were drinking last night too.
Albóndigas al chipotle · Mexico City
Small meatballs with rice and mint inside, sitting in smoky broth. Cantina kitchens send them out in little bowls with toothpicks and a roll to mop with.
Where you'd actually eat it: A guisado del día in old Centro cantinas, arriving on the house somewhere around the fourth drink. Beer, or brandy and soda if you are sitting with the regulars.
From behind the bar: Raw rice, not cooked. It swells inside the meatball and keeps it loose instead of dense.
Tostadas de pata · Mexico City
Trotter simmered to jelly, picked apart and dressed with vinegar and oregano, piled cold on a tostada. Cheap, sharp, and better than it has any right to be.
Where you'd actually eat it: Market fondas and pulquería counters, and a standing cantina botana in the Centro. Pulque natural, or beer if the pulque has already done its work.
From behind the bar: Serve the pata cold on a warm bean base. The temperature contrast is the whole trick and every market stall does it that way.
Sopes de chorizo con papa · Mexico City
Thick masa discs with a pinched rim, griddled, then loaded with chorizo, potato, beans and crema. Cantina garnacha, sent out hot in fours.
Where you'd actually eat it: Cantina botana rounds and market fondas across the Centro and Doctores. Beer, or a tequila with sangrita chaser between plates.
From behind the bar: Pinch the rim while they are still too hot to hold comfortably. That is the actual instruction, and it is why cooks' fingers look like that.
Tlacoyos de frijol con nopales · Mexico City
Blue masa ovals stuffed with beans, cooked on a comal, topped with cactus and salsa. Griddle food from women working the sidewalk, eaten wherever you stand.
Where you'd actually eat it: Comal stands outside metro entrances and near pulquerías, busiest in the morning and again at dusk. With pulque, or a bag of agua de horchata from the next stall.
From behind the bar: Street tlacoyos usually get queso, and the beans are often cooked in lard. If you want it vegan you have to make it yourself or ask, plainly.
Esquites · Mexico City
Corn simmered with epazote, cupped hot, loaded with mayo, cheese, lime and chile powder. Sold from a steaming drum on the corner outside the bar.
Where you'd actually eat it: Drum carts on corners across the city from dusk onward, including directly outside cantinas and pulquerías. Eaten on the walk home, or by the door with a last beer.
From behind the bar: Swap the butter for oil and drop the mayonnaise and cheese and it is genuinely vegan, and still good. Just do not pretend that is the classic version.
Alambre · Mexico City
Beef, bacon, onion and green chile griddled together, then buried under melted cheese. What you order for the table when nobody wants to decide. Tortillas on the side, no apology.
Where you'd actually eat it: Taquerías all over Narvarte and Escandón, ordered for the table around the third beer, once everyone has stopped pretending they are about to leave.
From behind the bar: Chihuahua, Oaxaca or Jack. Cheddar splits into orange oil and turns the whole pan greasy.