Adventure with our Toronto neighbours in Mexico City!

In Toronto our neighbours, Greg and Adrienne, also happen to be old friends of ours. Greg and I attended high school together, and so we were all delighted to find out we were living in the same building, on the same floor.

To keep the coincidences coming, a week after we booked our trip to Mexico City we realized that Greg and Adrienne were also going and that our trips would overlap!

We didn’t plan it that way, but it worked out to be a lot of fun because went spent 2 nights partying together in Mexico City. Bonus: Greg & Adrienne both work in the Toronto restaurant industry and so we got to tag along to the trendy places that their colleagues had recommended.

Greg and Adrienne arrived a few days after us and we met up with them for a ‘taco and mezcal crawl’ that Greg had planned. It was a Sunday night so many places were closed. It was also the first time that we realized there was a major discrepancy between the posted business hours on Google Maps vs reality.

On the day before they left we had lunch in the same restaurant (Pujol, more on that later), though not together. Before leaving we made plans to meet up for dinner and more drinking. The evening ended in a local fast food joint at 4am, so I’d say it was a successful night on the town.

So, where did we go? I honestly couldn’t tell you from memory because Greg directed us to each place and I rarely knew what anything was called. But Google is a handy thing, so I’ve put together a list (and photos are included below):

Sunday night taco & mezcal crawl

El Huequito: the first stop on our taco crawl, this place showed what was really possible with under-highway space, as the restaurant was located on a large sidewalk under a highway underpass. Great tacos, great service, great mezcal.
Taqueria Los Parados: This was a quick little counter service taco place. Delicious tacos made on the grill in front of you.
Paramos: This place was très trendy and almost felt like being in Toronto, and wow the mezcal margaritas were great. When we arrived we headed upstairs to get a table but the wait was over an hour. So we drank margaritas while sitting on couches in their lobby and waited! Once seated at our table, the service was rather slow but again those margaritas balanced it all out. The food was good and the ambiance was cool. It’ worth noting that by this point in the night I was full and could no longer eat much anyways. The highlight was, again, the mezcal margaritas, which were the best I had all week.
The next 2 places on our list ended up closing early, so we called it a night and headed home to bed.

Wednesday night rager:

Comedor Jacinta: I’m not sure why we went for dinner because we were all so full from lunch anyways. But Comedor Jacinta had good service and good mezcal margaritas. Food was hit or miss. We ordered some kind of shrimp ceviche that wasn’t good, but some of the smaller guacamole & chips type dishes were great. The service was good though, and they kept the drinks coming. After a few rounds we’d gotten to some personal truths about each other and were ready to move to the next place.
Le Tachinomi Desu: This place was very trendy and cool, which normally means there’s a catch, but in this case there wasn’t. The wine and sake selections were unreal, and the service was great. It was the coolest place we went all week and we had a great time. It was the perfect spot for simply standing, drinking, and enjoying each other’s company. We were here until nearly 4 in the morning and we weren’t even the last people to leave. The place is run by a Japanese Mexican man and this place imports some really interesting sakes and wines. At one point they suggested we try a bottle so rare that there were less than 10 in the country. Sounds obnoxious, but it was worth the hype. Again, unreal. After being so full (from lunch still!) that I could hardly walk, it turns out that drinking sake until 4am was the cure. We also met some pretty interested characters to round out the night.
La Casa de Toño, Zona Rosa: This is a local chain that’s open late and basically serves whatever you could want to eat, but fried. This late at night they’d stopped serving beer, which was probably for the best or we’d have been there for hours. As it was, we ordered, ate, and went home to bed.

It’s always fun to see familiar faces in a foreign city, and this was no different. Our trip to Mexico City was incredible throughout, but spending a couple of nights with Greg and Adrienne made it even better.