Where to eat, stay, and have fun in CDMX

We went to Mexico City on a whim. Desirous of a new adventure but lacking the planning bandwidth or enough stored-up vacation time to take an anniversary + birthday trip to France, I mentioned one night that we should head down to the city where all the coolest people I know seem to have been jaunting off to for the last few years: Mexico City (or CDMX: Cuidad de México).

Friends, it knocked my socks off.

Other than returning to the States with e. Coli and a parasite (more on that later), our trip was a dream. Sure, I’d heard murmurs of a great food scene, but I wasn’t prepared for quite how good. And I knew that my university’s design program offered the architecture students a chance to do a semester in Mexico City, but I didn’t realize how inspiring the urban palette would be: rich with a mix of gorgeous colonial architecture, beautiful adaptive reuse, and well-executed modernism. And no one told me that Mexico City has perfect weather! (Almost always under 80°F with almost no humidity? Are you kidding me?!)

It was a week of delight and surprise (and sure, yeah, some stomach pain). I have to tell you all about it.

Where to Stay in Mexico City

The neighborhoods of Condesa, Hipódromo, and Roma Norte are full of character and good restaurants and are delightfully walkable. They were on the quieter side, which suited us just fine. Anything we wanted to do was a $5 Uber ride away, and we enjoyed the neighborhood feel without resorting to an Airbnb, which in Mexico City has been blamed for rising rents and forcing locals out. (But if you love Airbnb, I started my search there and made a nice wishlist.)

We stayed at Casa Cleo, which was somehow lovelier than the website photos suggested it would be. If you stay there, the hotel group has another very cool property called Xoma in the Roma neighborhood, and for a nominal food/beverage charge, you can use their gorgeous rooftop pool.

A few other places we considered:

• Ignacia Guest House, where each room has its own color and we certainly would have stayed if it hadn’t been booked up. It is gorgeously detailed.

• Octavia Casa, where the tonal textures look like a perfect exhale. Bonus points for a cool rooftop space!

• Stella Bed and Breakfast, a very sweet budget-friendly boho haven with great reviews

• Casa Decu, a more polished budget-conscious option with great reviews

• Nima House, a splurgey boutique B&B in a refurbished house with gorgeous boho vibes and just four rooms, known for impeccable service and great couples massages

Where to Eat in Mexico City

There are more wonderful restaurants than we could make it to in a week, but here are the ones we visited:

• Antolina: elevated Mexican food with an emphasis on regional ingredients like crickets, though there are plenty of less adventurous options on the menu. They have a great outdoor seating area and lots of Mezcal on the menu

• Alelí: creative food and scrummy cocktails on a very cool rooftop in Roma. Worth it for the atmosphere alone (you’ll have to climb some stairs), but this was one of my favorite meals!

• Cariñito: A casual small-menu taco spot with a Southeast Asian fusion approach to their tacos. Lots of pork belly, and some of the best I’ve had! They don’t have a lot of seating, but the tacos are just as delicious eaten standing, I promise!

• Churrería El Moro: after you finish stuffing your face with tacos at Cariñito, head around the corner for some of the most famous churros in Mexico City. Stop by even if you think you’re not that into churros; I can’t imagine not enjoying one of theirs. They also have great milkshakes and just a generally nice vibe!

• Filigrana: we spent our anniversary at this lovely jewel box of a restaurant where a tree grows straight through the dining room. The food is elevated Mexican (tortas, mole) and the cocktails were some of my favorite of the week.

• Lardo: we had a nice lunch at this lively and plant-covered restaurant serving Mediterranean food. Creative pizzas, great pasta, interesting salads. You’ll have to wait with the locals for a table, but it’s worth it.

• Rosetta: get a reservation for dinner - this renovated mansion doesn’t have a lot of tables. They’re serving up seasonal Mexican-European fusion - think French and Italian dishes made with Mexican flavors and techniques. You’ll probably want a little bit of everything

• Chiquito Café: this sweet little spot in Hipódromo was right around the corner from our hotel, and my notes say that we showed up there for breakfast 3 times. It’s a great spot to sit and people watch, and they have a small but comprehensive breakfast menu alongside their coffee and tea.

• Gin Gin: this cocktail spot seemed to be on every list, and if you’re into a more American-feeling cocktail scene, go for it. Personally, I found it to be a bit over-priced and over-hyped. I’d skip in favor of drinks at a nice restaurant, but if you need to see the skull wall, I understand!

• Cafe Toscano: it’s not that I’m advising hitting up an Italian-inspired breakfast joint while you’re in Mexico city, but we had an hour to kill before our flights after we took our Covid tests (hello, it’s 2022 in this itinerary), and this place was solid! Great outdoor seating, good chilaquiles, a nice chai latte, and some more American-ish items like french toast.

Here are the restaurants that made it onto my list but we didn’t have time to try:

• Pujol: couldn’t snag a reservation at this spot, but I’ve heard such great things

• Contramar: The seafood here is allegedly phenomenal. I was not able to confirm, but I’d like to try! Open for lunch, too.

• Masala y Maiz: this Indian-Mexican fusion was high on my list and apparently also everyone else’s based on the wait for lunch on a Monday afternoon. We ended up at a place so mediocre that it’s not even listed above. Should have waited! Make a reservation and let me know how it is!

• Quintonil: this fixed-course fine dining experience has landed this spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list

• Taquería Orinoco: my notes just say “get the al pastor”

• Most places on the Eater 38 Essential Mexico City Restaurants List.

I feel as though I must pause here to note that at some point in our journey, we ended up with both e. Coli and a parasite (cyclospora cayetanensis, in case you’re curious).

Was this due to the fact that my darling husband said we could brush our teeth with tap water as long as we didn’t swallow any? That’s my bet! Was it my insistence on eating several rounds of street cart mango? Possibly! Was it the ice in our cocktails? We’ll never know for sure!

Our symptoms started quickly and initially weren’t horrible, but they escalated into misery by the time we were back in the States and after a few weeks of no improvement led to a cocktail of antibiotics.

Someone asked me if, after all that, I regretted our trip, and my answer is not at all! The only thing I regret is not going to the doctor sooner (and perhaps living in a country where part of the reason for that is I was worried about what it would cost).

Eat the food. Don’t drink the water. Pack some Pepto.

What to Do in Mexico City

We always go for a mix of museums, unique experiences, and relaxation. There are so many fantastic-sounding things that we didn’t get to, but here’s what we did on this trip:

• A bike tour of Coyoacan, Frida Kahlo’s neighborhood and one of the oldest colonial areas in Mexico City. Delightful! Other than being bummed to realize that (of course, duh) I wouldn’t be able to take photos while actively biking, this was such a fun day. Great guide, fun insights into the neighborhood and history, a stop for food at the market as well as snacks along the way, and the tour ends at Kahlo’s home, which is now a museum. Tickets to the museum can be hard to get, so this skip-the-line experience is like going in the side door.

• Chapultepec Park: it’s like Central Park in NYC meets Forest Park in St. Louis. It’s a big swath of green with more museums than you’ll have time for. If you wanted, you could easily spend several days museum-hopping and grabbing snacks from the carts that line many of the paths through the park. The famous and well-regarded Museum of Anthropology is here, which you’ll find on most to-do lists for the city. But it also holds a pretty good Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Natural History and Culture, a zoo, and my favorite…

• Castillo de Chapultepec: for the best experience, go on a weekday morning. We originally swung by on a Saturday afternoon, which is how we ended up at the Museum of Modern Art that day. But on a weekday, it was much calmer, enabling us to take our time exploring without heavy crowds. The castle has a very interesting history, including as a temporary home to the Austrian dude who decided he was emperor of Mexico until he was executed. But anyway! This has gorgeous views from the terraces, Mexico’s museum of national history (which is very well done), and it was one of my favorite things we did in the city. I actually made a whole Instagram reel about the castle part:

• Go to a Lucha Libre match! As a certified No Sports Person, I didn’t expect to enjoy Lucha; but every single person I talked to recommended it, so we went, and we loved it. Lucha tickets are pretty inexpensive, but the experience we did included dinner (at Cariñito, above), Mezcal tasting, and time spent learning about the sport-slash-spectacle with our group. That context made the experience even more enjoyable for me, though I found the energy of the match absolutely irresistible all on its own.

• Go shopping. I’m normally not a big shopper, but the Condesa and Roma Norte neighborhoods are full of unique boutiques where you will definitely find some things to take back with you. A few we loved: Someone Somewhere for ethically made clothes and accessories (those prices are pesos); Kati for eco home and beauty items, including a great little scent bar; and Casa Salt for funky art and jewelry.

• Take an architecture tour: Mexico City is old and full of history - the Aztec Empire, Spanish colonialism, and to some extent America’s Manifest Destiny all tangle here. That makes for some really interesting architectural history. Obviously I am very interested in this as a designer, but my husband loved it, too. From cathedrals to a gorgeous post office to some of the first skyscrapers built in earthquake zones, it was a great way to see the city center where we hadn’t spent much time yet.

• Take a day Trip to Tolantongo: While not technically in Mexico City, this day trip is maybe my favorite thing we’ve ever done. It’s a long day — early start, long drive, full day of exploring, long drive back — but utterly unforgettable. We were able to experience the hot springs, river, waterfalls, and caves of the shockingly beautiful and remote Grutas Tolantongo. I’d recommend bringing a few snacks and your own toilet paper, but everything else about this day was a total dream. [Note: I would not try to do this trip solo, unless you’re familiar with the area and speak Spanish fluently. It’s a long journey by car from Mexico City into the rural, mountainous state of Hidalgo, and then getting into the park looked like a fussy ordeal for our guide. I’ve now done a fair bit of excursioning, and this is the one I was most glad we had an expert to figure it all out and manage our supplies.]

Frequently Asked Questions

I wanted to share my answers to the questions I’ve gotten most since our return. Caveat here that I’ve spent just one week of my life in Mexico City. But here’s how I’ve been answering.

Is Mexico City Safe? It felt safe to me, or at least as safe as any other city I’ve visited. The government has clearly expended a fair amount of effort improving the core of the city in order to attract tourists. We walked over 2 miles back to our hotel from the Lucha Libre match in the dark and found our entire path clean, well-lit, and regularly punctuated by late-night food vendors. After every tour and experience, our guide would tell us to come back to the States and “tell [our] friends that Mexico City is clean, safe, and fun!”

Should I rent a car? You should not. Ubers are cheap and fast, and the parts of the city you’ll likely want to explore are walkable.

Will I get sick? I mean, I did (see above). But the higher-end restaurants are using filtered water to cook, make drinks, and even wash their vegetables. You can get sick anywhere; don’t let it stop you from having magical experiences. And should you get a stomach bug, there are pharmacies everywhere (I ate my weight in Pepto tablets)

Do I need to be able to speak Spanish? Nope, but it’s always nice to know a few words. Most signage was in both English and Spanish, almost everyone in hospitality speaks English, and a lot of restaurants have either English versions of their menu or “subtitles.” Several museums didn’t have signage in English, but we got by with the remnants of my high school Spanish and a translator app. If you want to practice your Spanish, I found that Mexico City was a very friendly place to do so; just make sure you’re not holding up a line for the sake of it.

What is the weather like in Mexico City? To me, perfect. November through May is the dry season, and June through October is the rainy season. But year-round, the city is pretty temperate, which was a surprise to me! At the tail end of May, temperatures were in the high 50s in the mornings and the mid-70s in the afternoons, which is perfect walking-around weather.

My personal method of travel planning is to make a custom Google map and put everything I’m thinking of doing onto it, coded by color and icon! For the first time ever, I’m sharing one of these publicly. Let me know if this is helpful!