Americas · Mexico
High-altitude, low-stakes, deeply alive.
CDMX is one of the great walking cities in the world. The neighborhoods are small, the food is loud, and the mornings are crisp. Drink the coffee, take the markets seriously, and rest in the afternoon.
Inés Robles
Born and raised in Roma Sur, market sourcing for restaurants since 2014.
Must Do · Mexico City
Live trio, esquites cart, no rush.
Walk down from the Frida house, eat at the market, sit in the plaza when the trios start. Stay an hour longer than you planned.
Editor's note: Skip the haunted-house tours. Trust the plaza.
A neighborhood market that doubles as a Sunday school for living.
Drift through the textile and ceramic stalls, eat a quesadilla from the corner cart, end at the bookshop in the plaza. Walking pace, no agenda.
Streets close to cars, locals come out on bikes.
From Plaza Río de Janeiro to Parque México and back. Three hours, two coffees, one helado. The city's best argument for itself.
Must See · Mexico City
Diego Rivera's pyramid of pre-Hispanic art, on the south side.
Architecture pretending to be ruin, ruin pretending to be architecture. Get there at opening, walk the rooftop, then take the long way back through the gardens.
Tour by appointment, twenty people max, two hours.
Book three weeks ahead. The light is the lecture. The pink wall is famous. The yellow back hallway is what you will think about for a year.
A guided rooftop tour, half an hour, very few tourists.
The roof of the Cathedral on the Zócalo runs guided ascents. The Aztec city is a foot under the floor. The colonial city is a hundred feet over your head. Both at once.
Must Try · Mexico City
First boat off the dock, no party, full thermos.
Get to the dock by six, hire a boat alone or with one friend, take a thermos, glide for two hours through the chinampas. The party version is later. The real version is now.
Curado de avena, plastic chairs, a band tuning up.
Pick a working pulqueria with a tile counter and a name older than your country. Order a curado, no cocktail. Stay forty minutes. Tip on the way out.
Hand-grind heirloom corn, eat what you press.
Two hours grinding nixtamalized corn, pressing tortillas on a wood comal, eating with a single salsa. You will never accept a flour tortilla again.
Must Eat · Mexico City
Look for the fire, not the line.
Order four. Pineapple. Salsa verde, not red. Eat standing. The trompo with no flame is a museum piece, not a taco.
Fresh masa, blue corn, mushroom-of-the-corn.
Find the stall where one woman is pressing and one is cooking. Order one quesadilla, one tlacoyo. Eat at the counter. The huitlacoche is the lesson.
Twenty-plus ingredients, two hours, one plate.
Family-style, late lunch, one mole rojo or negro, a glass of light beer or agua de jamaica. Skip the appetizer round. The mole is the only round.
Must Drink · Mexico City
Single distillery, espadín or tobalá, served neat in a clay cup.
No mezcal cocktails on this list. Sit at a counter, ask the bartender what the producer's harvest looked like, drink one ounce slowly with a slice of orange and sal de gusano.
Editor's note: If they pour to the rim, leave.
Spiced coffee in a clay cup, ten pesos, six in the morning.
The market opens long before the city does. Sit at the counter with the workers, order a café de olla and a tamal. You will feel two cities at once.
Fermented pineapple, ice, a few spices.
Sweet, sour, a little funky, served with a chili rim. A two-block walk in the heat and one cup will rebuild you.
Inés Robles reads every submission for Mexico City. Specific picks only.