Best Breakfast Ever: Mexico City

El Cardenal is legend. And with good reason. It serves the best breakfast I have ever had. There is always a line. Breakfast goes until 2 pm and then lunch until 7 pm.

Maybe it is the setting in a three story french mansion, or the location, one block off the Zocalo, or the white linen table cloths and waiters with bow ties that make this such a local treat. We have never seen tourists there, though it does show up in all the guide books.

This is the third time we've breakfasted at El Cardenal, and it never disappoints. There are three floors of restaurant space with a bakery on the ground floor with dumb waiters sending the fresh baked goods up.

They start you off with a selection of fresh baked pastries brought table-side that are amazingly delicious and unlimited. A house specialty is the bread stuffed with corn meal and cheese.

There are terrific fresh squeezed juices including cactus juice.








But my very favorite thing is the hot chocolate, whipped in a pitcher next to the table and then poured with style.

After the hot chocolate, stuffed bread and pastries, I am pretty much done. But, wait! Here come the entrees: traditional Mexican breakfast, an egg gratin, and a zucchini flower omelet.

 However, let me be perfectly clear. I am here for the hot chocolate. Poured with panache, rich and velvety, and quite simply the best hot chocolate I have ever had, anywhere.  My second cup runneth over...

Mexico City: Lunch

Irad always says I travel through my stomache. Well, duh, right?

Yuval had read up on the best street food in Mexico City, as is his wont to do before going anywhere.  In general, Yuval is the person to travel with if you want to find the best of everything wherever you are.

In Mexico City, Yuval's research lead us to a very non-descript little taqueria called Beatricita.

touted by the New York Times as serving some of the best tortillas in Mexico City.

The tortillas are freshly baked on site

And they come with a seemingly infinite variety of fillings

But they are even good just plain,

 Of course lunch would not have been complete without a really out-of-tune hoarse Mariachi player.

And the grand finale. Flan. Two varieties, one caramel and one coconut.

Mexico City Day 1

Mexico City has an incredible variety of museums. Our first time there, we saw many of the Diego Rivera murals, aa wonderful exhibit of Folk Art and the stunningly vast Museo Nacional de Antropología, which covers the enormous amount of history of the hundreds of unique language-group cultures that have existed in Mexico over the ages and can probably occupy a year of your time. We decided to smaller bites this time.

This trip was a short one. We selected the lovely Four Seasons hotel so that we would have a peaceful reprieve from the craziness of the traffic and crowds.

view into the courtyard from our room

 walking in the courtyard

Last time we were in Mexico City, we saw an extraordinary folk art at the Palaca de Cultural Banamex that we decided to go to the Museo de Arte Popular (Museum of Popular Art). Sometimes when one attempts to recapture a past experience it is a failure, but not so this time. The museum re-created for us the sense of exuberant, abundant color, joy and imagination that characterizes Mexican folk Art.
We were greeted by a fantastical collection of parade-float dragons in the courtyard of the museum:

We were very struck by the plethora of skeletons that are part of the folk art tradition—we theorized it is a way of defusing the fear of death but apparently it has its roots in pre-Hispanic culture and is reflected in the way that the pre-Columbian peoples indigenized Catholicism, replacing Satan with Demon imagery and incorporating the Day of the Dead into christian religious practice.

 Scenes from life inhabited by skeletons, in a wonderful variety of settings. Very macabre to our Anglo eyes

 Even children in school portrayed as skeletons.

Elegant Lady Skeleton.
















At another exhibit (back at the exhibit space in Palaca de Cultura Banmex) we happened on another small exhibition, this time on Mexican architecture, which included this picture of Diego Rivera's studio, which I think adds illustratively to my collection of skeletons, reinforcing what a singularly Mexican trope this is.

The imagination is not limited to the folk art or the museums. The broad avenue of Paseo de la Reforma Avenue, which we walked to and from the museum, alternated its original old stone benches with different contemporary interpretations of the "bench.

Original stonework benches seen throughout the Avenue

Here are some of the new interpretations of a bench:

 Iron sofas

 Curvileinears

Twist and shout

Gin rummy, anyone?

Every other block is back to the original stonework benches that dot the avenue.