City Guide: Mexico City!

Chef's favorite city in North America.

Centro Histórico

This is our fifth city guide post and I feel like I’ve been thinking about travel nonstop for the last five months. Probably the last 25 years, really, but this guide has had me in a reflective space. I’m sitting at a café in Asolo in northern Italy as I begin to write this…

It seems that we are living in hectic times. I’m not naive enough to think things have ever been calm or settled in the world, but I think about people and empathy and connection every moment I travel. I’m in the Veneto region of Italy, home of Venice; possibly the most abused tourist destination in the world. A shrinking native population, a sinking city, cruise boats, Fanny packs, shorts, mouth breathing, damaging padlocks left on crumbling bridges out of “love”, litter, impatient tourists trying to position the camera just right to avoid the ugly parts they want to edit off of the Instagram post. It’s a study in the human condition and it’s not going well. And despite, less than an hour away, you can sit next to a gorgeous canal and have a spritz in Treviso. You can taste Prosecco brut nature at an empty old enoteca in Valdobbiadene, walk the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Bassano Del Grappa, then tuck into a cafe for a panino or amaro. Walking the quiet and cozy cobblestone streets of Asolo, you can duck into a trattoria for a pasta aglio e olio with no lines, reasonable prices, and church bells ringing in the distance. I’m inspired to remind you that the Disney lens of travel is extremely blurry. We must remind ourselves that travel is a gift. And to be stewards of that gift we must practice empathy, care, respect, humility and patience. I love Venice and have been there a few times. Seeing the tourists pummel it into the ground is disheartening and terrifying. If you love to travel (like I do), try to find the destinations that can accommodate you. Go off the main path and leave no trace. After all, we are seeking escape, education, adventure, cuisine, romance. All things that are best consumed away from the masses and crowds.

A menu from Coyota, natural ciders, flowers at Parque México

Mexico City is North America’s largest city. It’s a couple thousand feet higher in elevation than Denver. It’s a sprawling, historic city built on top of ancient ruins. The importance of its role in agriculture, history, religion, cuisine, trade and civilization cannot be overstated and a visit to this city is very incomplete without a little bit of education. It’s a very easy city to fly in and out of, stay in Polanco or the St. Regis, scratch the surface, eat at Pujol and fly home. But that is a shallow submersion into tourism and I recommend diversifying your trip far beyond that. Be a traveler. A student.