The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Scouring Mexico City’s food stalls with Penny de los Santos

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Penny de los Santos was in Mexico City this week on assignment. I’ve written about her before — she gives photography workshops and works often for Saveur, and is generally always doing a million cool things at once.

We’re friends, so I sent her a little note suggesting we get together if she had time. She responded with a better offer: Would I mind being her assistant? The payment would be street food.

Dude. Would’ve done it for palomitas.

I didn’t really know what being a photo assistant meant, but it turned out to be a lot of hanging out (looking for “moments,” as Penny says), and holding the light reflector and flash bulb. The flash duties ended up being a lot of fun — I squeezed with Penny into a cantina booth and aimed the light at a serenading musician’s face, and then later captured a churro-maker in the Centro Histórico. I’m a timid photographer generally, but this flash stuff was liberating. I suddenly didn’t care if anyone yelled at me.

Really, the best part of the gig was watching Penny. She has this unbridled enthusiasm for her job. If she liked a certain fonda or a certain scene, she’d just stand there dumbfounded for a second and then exclaim, “This place is freaking awesome!” with a smile like she couldn’t believe this place existed, that the world could even come up with a place like this. And then she’d squeeze her way in, walking behind the kitchen counter to snap photos of pots bubbling on the stove, or standing on a chair, or walking up to a group of people eating to stick her lens between their shoulders.

It’s funny, because people seemed to forget about her after a few seconds. That seems like the real gift — how do you arrive on the scene as a photographer and then disappear?

I brought my own camera with me on these trips, but it stayed in my purse most of the time. Finally, on the third day, I got a little bolder. I even asked Penny how to adjust my white balance. She gave me a sort of pained look, like, “You really don’t know how to do that?”

Penny’s giving a workshop in Mexico City in July, if you’re interested in catching her next time she’s in town. I’ll be helping her out as a guide.

Here are a few shots I took when I finally dragged my camera out of its hiding spot.

Verdolagas con puerco at Fonda Margarita

The famous refried beans, creamy with lard, at Fonda Margarita

A plate of warm conchas from El Cardenal

Pork heads at the Xochimilco Market

Squash flowers at the Xochimilco Market, almost too pretty to be real


Fava bean salad at the Xochimilco Market

Mango pico de gallo

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Mango season in Mexico is one of my favorite times of the year. It comes in the early spring, after tangerine season, when there’s nothing enticing on the market shelves except for hit-and-miss mameys and round, nubby guavas that looked better in the winter.

It’s like everyone’s waiting, and then boom, there they are — mango wedges sold in plastic cups on the street corners, mangos piled up at the tianguis, an army advancing on the rest of the produce. There’s nothing like that first slice from a vendor’s knife. It’s wet and sweet in a way that almost seems unreal.

A few months ago, I had dinner at Azul Condesa, Ricard Muñoz Zurita’s new restaurant. A special menu had ben devoted to mangoes, with all sorts of plates containing the fruit. My favorite was the mango pico de gallo, served in a large glass. It was sweet and spicy and tart, and Crayton and I annihilated it in minutes.

Lucky for me, I ended up finding a mango pico de gallo recipe inside Zurita’s cookbook, Salsas Mexicanas. (If you read Spanish, this is a great book to have.) The recipe, interestingly, calls for fish sauce, which creates a delightful Thai-type of flavor. Zurita says in the book that he got the recipe from a Filipina chef studying in Mexico.

If you don’t have any fish sauce, the pico is still quite good on its own. I imagine it’d be great with a spritz of lime. Just make sure you have fresh mangoes. Or you could probably even try it with other sweet fruits, like pineapple.

Mango Pico de Gallo
from Salsas Mexicanas by Ricardo Muñoz Zurita
Serves 4 as an appetizer

Note: The original recipe calls for manila mangoes, which are prized in Mexico for their sweetness. Other types of mangoes would probably work as well, as long as they’re mature. On the fish sauce, I’d add a little bit at a time and taste as you go along. The two tablespoons adds a recognizable fishy flavor, but it mellowed out a bit as the pico sat at room temperature.

Ingredients

1 very ripe beefsteak tomato, diced, with the skin and seeds
2 tablespoons of minced onion
1/4 cup of finely chopped cilantro, including stems
1 tablespoon of minced chile serrano (this is about one chile)
2 manila mangoes, about 250 grams each, peeled and cut into roughly two-centimeter cubes
2 tablespoons fish sauce* (see note)

Directions

Mix the first five ingredients together in a bowl, and add the fish sauce. Taste for either more fish sauce or perhaps a little salt. (I didn’t use any.) Serve with tostadas.

Lessons in pineapple atole

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I haven’t written about my cooking class in awhile, mostly because I was starting to feel really comfortable there.

I’d figured out the answers to the nagging doubts that used to send me running to Yuri or another classmate. Chile water thins out a thick salsa. The mole is done when little pools of fat form on top. When in doubt, blend a sauce extra-fine, especially if it’s going to be served with meat. Overall, I had finally learned to relax. Mexican cooking doesn’t leave that much room for error. If I made a mistake, I could fix it.

Then last week, that familiar, scared-of-messing-up-because-I’m-a-gringa side came back. I’d been gone for awhile — I had to take another trip to the States, which meant I’d missed several classes. My Spanish had gotten rustier. The theme of the class was tamales, but I didn’t feel like doing any metate-grinding (for once) so I signed up to make pineapple atole. It was a traditional atole made with masa and sugar.

Yuri had told us to dilute the masa first in water, so I put a big pot to boil on the stove and tossed in the lump of dough. Stirred it around a bit so it would dissolve.

Patty, one of my classmates, looked up from cleaning verdolagas (did you know there are sweet tamales made with verdolagas?) and she peered into my pot. “What did you put in there?”

“Masa and water.”

She shook her head. “No…”

Ana, another classmate, looked up. “Did you put the masa in there?”

What was the big deal? Yuri had said to dilute it.

Ana looked pained. She said we had we had to take the masa out right now, and she sped to the other side of the kitchen for a bowl and a strainer. While she was gone, Patty told me that I can’t just put the masa in the atole pot like that. I’d end up with hard bits of masa in my drink, or worse, a layer of hard masa stuck to the underside of the pot.

“You have to dissolve the masa like this,” she said, fishing out a lump of dough. She placed it in a bowl, added water and mushed the masa together with the tips of her fingers, until she had a think paste. “See? This is what I always do when I make my atole.”

Of course she does. And if I’d made atole before, I would’ve known that too. But I haven’t made atole before!

Feeling like a lame gringa, I strained the masa out of the pot and poured the yellowish, cloudy water back on the stove. I was still worried that I’d ruined the drink. The lump of masa and the water had already touched. Did that mean something? I asked Ana and she shook her head. (I thought I detected a “that was a dumb question” look in her eyes, but perhaps I was projecting. Ana is really nice.)

Patty told me to strain the paste to make sure there weren’t any hard bits hiding inside. Just as I was doing that, Yuri walked up. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Straining wasn’t part of our instructions.

“I know you didn’t say to do this,” I started, “but it’s that, I was wrong, I added the masa at the beginning, it was too early, I had to take it out…”

He stared at me. His eyes said, Foreign girl, what the hell are you talking about?

“You don’t have to strain the masa, if you diluted it well,” he finally said. He mentioned something about the pineapple pieces that I didn’t quite catch, and then he walked away.

Once my cloudy water had boiled, I poured in my masa paste, stirring vigorously so any hard bits could break down. Eventually the water looked smooth. I added the pineapple that Ana had blended and strained, and then the pineapple cubes. I added a little sugar and tasted as I went along, not wanting it too sweet. I stirred and stirred, trying to make sure the atole wouldn’t stick to the bottom.

Yuri wandered by again. “It’s better to use a wooden spoon. You can really scrape the bottom.”

Finally, about 40 minutes later, the masa had bubbled and thickened, and it was done. I tasted a bit — it was sweet but not too much, and faintly pineappley. The masa added this hearty, rich flavor, much more complex than the cornstarch atoles you usually get on the streets here.

A few students came up to me while we were eating our tamales. “Did you make the atole?”

“I helped,” I said. I couldn’t take credit — I’d almost ruined the drink.

“Está rico.”

I allowed myself to feel just a little proud. I was the one who added the sugar and scraped the pot, after all.

I’m sorry I don’t have a photo to show you, but I was too busy slurping it up. Recipe to come soon, once I make it at home.

Tomatillo salsa with chile pasilla oaxaqueña

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If there is one chile you need to try in your life, it’s the chile pasilla oaxaqueña.

The dried, wrinkly, pointy chile is almost cartoonishly smoky. It smells like a campfire, or like a match right after you’ve blown it out. And the taste! It’s woodsy and kind of fruity, and perfumed with smoke. Make a salsa with this baby and you’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted: acid. Heat. Fire. And just a little nudging of raisins and berries.

This chile is hard to find outside of Oaxaca. I didn’t realize that until I came back from Oaxaca thinking, “I’ll go to Mercado Medellín and pick up some pasilla oaxaqueñas!” and my guy didn’t have any. Ending up finding them at Mercado San Juan, for eight pesos each. I paid — that’s almost $1 per chile — because the pasilla is worth it.

This chile is also known as the mixe (pronounced MEE-hay) because it’s grown in the Sierra Mixe, which is a region east of Oaxaca City. In From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients, Diana Kennedy says the chiles are grown in such small batches that they’ll probably never be imported on a large scale. Interestingly, my sister- and brother-in-law in New York recently found a “pasilla de Oaxaca” salsa at their local grocery store, made by Rosa Mexicano.

If you haven’t tasted this chile before, I’d highly recommend making a table salsa. You can really do it any way you want, but the basic ingredients are the chiles and garlic. I don’t toast my chiles or add any onion, but you can. Really at the end you want to taste the pasilla as much as possible.

If you can’t find the pasilla oaxaqueña, this salsa also works with chile de árbol. Just make sure you use a good, hefty handful. Don’t be afraid about making the salsa too hot — the point of this dish is that the chile is the star.

Tomatillo salsa with chile pasilla oaxaqueña
Recipe first learned in Reyna Mendoza’s cooking class
Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups

Note: This tastes best at room temperature, so make sure you give it time to cool down before serving. Also, store your dried chiles in an air tight container, in a cool, dark place. Humidity enables mold growth.

Ingredients

1 pound tomatillos, husked and washed
1 or 2 unpeeled cloves garlic, depending on your preference
2 chile pasilla oaxaqueñas or 8 chile de árbol
salt

Directions

Place the chiles in a shallow dish and cover with very hot water. In the meantime, dry-roast the tomatillos on a comal until they’re soft and blackened in spots, and have turned a dull green color. Toast the garlic as well, ideally on the outer edges of the comal so it doesn’t burn. You want it softened too.

Once the chiles have softened — perhaps 10 to 15 minutes; if you need more time or to replenish the hot water, that’s fine — carefully cut open the chiles and remove the seeds. Place the chiles in a blender jar with the garlic and just a little water, perhaps two or three tablespoons. Blend until smooth. Then add tomatillos and blend until you reach your desired consistency. (For me it’s about 5 to 10 seconds.) Add salt to taste. Serve the salsa at room temperature.

Swiss chard pesto, with pumpkin seeds and queso añejo

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One of the funny things about living in Mexico City is that it’s tough to find basil here. The big bunches of fresh Genovese basil don’t really exist — I’ve seen them once in two years, at the Mercado El 100.

We also don’t get a large variety of year-round greens. We’ve got spinach and chard, and quintoniles and quelites in the rainy season. But I feel a pang in my heart whenever I hear Americans talking about kale, broccoli rabe and collards. Oh well. We’ve got mamey and drippy, juicy manila mangoes, and they don’t.

The point is: I’m always looking for new ways to prepare my old chard-and-spinach standbys. A few weeks ago, I saw a recipe for swiss chard pesto in Sunset magazine. How perfect! Why hadn’t I ever thought of that before?

(You may be asking what the heck I’m doing thumbing through Sunset magazine when I live in Mexico City. My mom, who lives in Washington, occasionally buys it for me. She subscribed when I was a kid, and the magazine still reminds me of all the things I love about California — the sunshine, the fresh produce, the constant promise of eating dinners outside. Mexico feels like that at times.)

I ended up making Sunset’s pesto recipe a half-dozen times, Mexicanizing the ingredients where possible. I swapped out the walnuts for pine nuts and then pumpkin seeds, and the parmesan for queso añejo. I also added more garlic, because there’s never enough for me. Although I will definitively tell you that five cloves is too much. Aack.

All of the pestos were pretty great: the pine-nut version was creamier and nuttier than other pestos I’ve tried, while the pumpkin seed-añejo was slightly more crumbly, salty and sharp. (I didn’t make it with walnuts, because those are in season only once a year here.) Drizzling the pesto over steamed chayote was just about perfect, even though the entire thing was green. I also bought some beet pasta from a little shop near Mercado San Juan, which made for a colorful purple-and-green dinner. Crayton said it looked like Mardi Gras.

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re looking for something quick to make for dinner. I may even try it with epazote, which is growing like a weed outside my window.

Swiss Chard Pesto
Adapted slightly from Sunset Magazine
Serves 4 with sauce left over

Note: Don’t feel hemmed in by the amount of chard you use. The original recipe called for two cups, but I didn’t want to be bothered with measuring the leaves, so I just started using the entire bunch. You could also save the stems for a soup or to chop and stew into a taco filling later, with some tomatoes and spinach.

Ingredients

1 bunch swiss chard (around 7 ounces), leaves removed, stems discarded or saved for another use
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 cup grated queso añejo, or grated parmesan
1/2 cup pine nuts or pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup olive oil — possibly a little more if you’re using the pumpkin seeds
Salt
Pepper

Directions

In a food processor, add the garlic and pulse to chop. Then add the chard, cheese and nuts or seeds. Pulse until smooth — feel free to scrape down the sides of the bowl to add in any errant cheese or chard bits. Add olive oil and blend until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with pasta, vegetables, or (as I did with my sister-in-law recently) spread on crusty bread.

Concha Taste Test #16: Nicos

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A few weeks ago I was eating breakfast at Nicos, one of my favorite restaurants in the city. It’s been owned by the same family for more than 50 years, and the chef, Gerardo Vázquez Lugo, cares deeply about using fresh ingredients and promoting traditional Mexican recipes.

I had only ever eaten lunch there, but breakfast turned out to be top-notch. A friend’s cecina was about as tender as I’d ever tasted. My eggs with chile pasilla Oaxaqueña left me scraping the bowl with my fork to eat the last crumbly, smoky chile bits.

The concha couldn’t have been better unless we’d plucked them ourselves straight from the oven. The roll was airy, lightly sweet, butter humming a little tune in the background. The Nicos concha made Bondy’s version seem like a hippopotamus. (I’ve never blasphemed Bondy before, so you know this is a big deal.)

Chef Vázquez happened to be there that morning, so I struck up a conversation with him. Actually, I exclaimed, “Cuéntame de la concha!” Tell me about the concha!

He explained that his concha derived from a French-style dough, made with butter. He talked about how Mexican conchas were originally made with lard and how there were now numerous types of conchas in the city, some heavy with butter, some fluffy, some with a crispy crust, some not. I could’ve sat there all day, listening to him and wiping sugary crumbs from my lips.

Then he said something interesting: “The variety of the conchas is what makes the experience so rich.”

I pondered that for awhile. Later, I asked him: Are you saying there is no such thing as one specific, authentic Mexican concha? He nodded.

That’s when I realized — what if my concha search has been flawed all along? What if there is no best concha in Mexico City, no authentic concha recipe that I’d been struggling to find? What if the beauty here is in the search?

I’ve been in a bit of a funk recently, as you might have noticed from my less-than-regular blogging. I don’t want to go into specifics, but suffice to say that some intricately laid plans I had didn’t work out. I told myself that God/the universe has a plan for me and perhaps that plan isn’t exactly on my desired timetable. But when Chef Vázquez started talking about the conchas, I realized I had been looking at this experience the wrong way.

The end result was crappy, but what if that wasn’t the point? The beauty could’ve been in the búsqueda. I was so busy thinking about the bigger picture that I missed the little moments of beauty along the way.

The concha taste test will continue, but it’s no longer a contest, so to speak. More of an exploration of all the different types of conchas. Think my next one will be from Damiana in Condesa — I heard it’s stuffed with refried beans.

I plan to write about Nicos again, but here’s the address, in case you’d like to stop by: Av. Cuitlahuac 3102, Esq. Claveria, Col. Clavería, Azcapotzalco. They’re open for breakfast until about 12:30 p.m., and for lunch until about 6 p.m. They’re closed for dinner and on Sundays.

An afternoon with Diana Kennedy at Mexico City’s UNAM

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It seems like everything I’ve dreamed of doing in Mexico, Diana Kennedy has already done — which makes sense, considering she arrived here in 1957.

Kennedy has worked in a Mexican panadería. She has toured the country befriending fabulous cocineras, and coaxed out the secrets of their prized recipes. She’s passionate about preserving traditional Mexican cuisine just as it is. And she hasn’t wavered in that mission, even into her 80’s.

Last Friday she gave a book presentation at UNAM’s Jardín Botánico, hosted by the university’s Instituto de Biología. The event honored her new cookbook, Oaxaca al Gusto, and Kennedy was scheduled to give some remarks and sign copies. Afterward the crowd could partake in a Mexican food degustación.

The event was open to the public, but the simple flyer belied how star-studded the afternoon actually was. Preparing the tasting were some of the best-known women in Mexico City cooking: Carmen “Titita” Ramirez of El Bajío; Gabriela Cámara of Contramar, and Marcela Briz of El Cardenal. Kennedy herself had brought beans she’d prepared at home in Zitácuaro.
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On coming home to Mexico, again

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Mexico City, as seen from the top of the Torre Latinoamericana

I was recently in the States for an extended stay — that’s part of the reason why I wasn’t blogging so much. When I was on the plane coming home, for the first time I thought about Mexico City with the teensiest bit of dread. The thought scared me. Did this mean I didn’t want to live here anymore?

I pictured myself in the cab heading home from the Mexico City airport, bumping over the potholes, all the crumbling, graffiti-sprayed buildings lined up on the side of the highway. There would be trash in the medians, and the air would be thick and warm and slightly sewer-smelling. The U.S. didn’t smell like a sewer. Cities there were clean and had zoning laws.

When I eventually found myself in a cab headed back from the airport, at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Mexico City looked much cleaner than I’d remembered. In fact, it reminded me a lot of California. (I’ve been thinking about California a lot lately — I don’t know why.) There were street lights that worked, and palm trees, and twinkling lights in the hills, and windows that glowed on apartment buildings. People lived here. I lived here. The polite cab driver steered us down the Viaducto, through a few tunnels and past the Liverpool department store. Everything felt comfortable and right.

The next day, it was a stack of corn tortillas that made me feel like I was officially, truly happy to be home. They were from Superama (not my first pick, when it comes to tortillas), but they were warm and damp inside their paper wrapping. I dug into the stack like a girl who’d been shipwrecked for the past three weeks. One taquito de sal. Two. Three.

For lunch — yep, I had lunch after my corn-tortilla snack — I went a little crazy ordering tacos from El Faraón. Two al pastor, one rib eye, and an order of aguacate and nopales con queso. The sight of two voluptuous avocado halves sitting in their styrofoam container made my heart leap. I scraped some out with my knife and spread it inside my rib-eye taco, with a drizzle of red salsa.

It’s funny, because whenever I come home from an extended stay in the U.S. I find myself examining my thoughts, searching for some sort of sign that would tell me how much longer I want to stay in Mexico. My mind says at least two more years. But whenever I’m eating Mexican food after a long trip away, I don’t ever want to leave this place.

What are the foods you find yourself eating, and missing, when you come home after a long trip? What tastes like home to you?

Where to eat in Mexico City: Con Sabor a Tixtla

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Con Sabor a Tixtla, a fonda in the Col. Roma. Photo by Martin de la Torre.

I stumbled on Con Sabor a Tixtla by chance.

I’d been wandering around the Roma neighborhood, looking for a few new places to add to Eat Mexico’s Taco Tour, when I saw a chalkboard menu propped up on the sidewalk. Colorful tables and umbrellas had been spread out in a neat row, and baskets of paper flowers dangled underneath the awning.

The cheeriness of it all made me stop. And so did the menu. This place offered “tacos guerrerenses.” What were those?

As soon as I sat down, the waiter dropped off a little bowl of toasted pumpkin seeds. They didn’t taste like any pumpkin seeds I’d had before. Sheathed in their papery armor, they were crunchy and warm and tasted like the sun.

Then came a little bowl of beans, another botanita provided by the house. And then, on the waiter’s recommendation, I ordered a mole verde taco.

Like the pumpkin seeds, this mole was unique — herbal, assertive, not subtle as green moles normally are. (Marilau would call these pipianes.) The waiter explained that the mole contained a mix of hoja santa, avocado leaf, pumpkin seeds and something called hoja de mole. Most of the ingredients were brought directly from Tixtla, a small town in Guerrero state.

Then this man, whom I’d later find out was Alfredo, one of the owners, volunteered another nugget: his mother cooked all of the food.

At that moment, I felt really, really lucky to be living in Mexico.

I ended up adding Con Sabor a Tixtla to my Taco Tour, and I’ve since gone back several times. It’s right around the corner from my cooking school and Mercado Medellín, so when I’m in the neighborhood, I like to stop and say hi to Alfredo, who runs the place with his brother Juan Patricio. Once I even saw Yuri and Edmundo there — they’re big fans of the place, too.

The food, prepared by Alfredo and Juan Patricio’s mother Enedina Bello, consistently tastes like it’s been cooked with love and care. The menu focuses on typical items from Tixtla, so they’re items you rarely see anywhere else. Besides the herbal mole, there’s fiambre, a mix of marinated meats and crunchy bits of chorizo served with white bread; Tixtla-style tostadas with sweet-and-sour dressing, and pollo enchipotlado, or chicken stewed with tomatoes, raisins and chipotle peppers.

And the salsas — the salsas! The ensaladita de rábano, made from hoja santa stems, lime, onion and radish, waps you over the head with its simplicity. A smoky, creamy salsa de jalapeño con aceite tastes like it contains avocado, but it’s actually just jalapeños fried with onion and garlic, and blended with olive oil. I wanted to gulp it down like milk in a cereal bowl.

Con Sabor a Tixtla recently added a list of platos fuertes to the menu, and they do a special pozole guerrerense once a week. But if you go, you must get the fiambre. The meat is falling-apart tender, and seasoned simply but dazzlingly — the kind of seasoning I wish I could emulate as a home cook. It’s served on a bed of lettuce that’s dressed the same salsa agridulce that comes with the tostadas. The dressing tastes like something you’d get at an Asian restaurant, which makes sense, considering Acapulco (Guerrero state’s biggest city) was Mexico’s major port to Asia and the Philippines for 250 years.

On my last visit to Con Sabor a Tixtla, my friend Martin and I found ourselves sopping up the fiambre sauce with hunks of bread, even though we were stuffed. Here’s the plate before we tore into it.

Here are a few more photos of the place. If you’re in the mood for a visit, it’s located at Manzanillo 45b, in between Coahuila and Campeche. They don’t have a website, but they do have a Facebook page.

UPDATE: Con Sabor a Tixtla has moved! You can find them now at Chiapas 173, near the corner of Medellín. They’re right next door to the pastes shop. The fonda also now has a website.

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Cuban ice cream, Mexican charm at Mercado Medellín

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Photo by Martin de la Torre

I met the Cuban ice cream guy the same way he meets all his ladies: he called out to me when I was passing by.

“Would you like to try some Cuban ice cream, without the promise to buy?”

He was a smiling man in an apron, standing behind a row of coffee machines and freezers. Without the promise to buy? I guess I had a few minutes.

He opened a freezer and emerged with a pale yellow dollop on a plastic spoon. “Helado de nata,” he announced. “People who try it don’t let it go.”

He was right. The ice cream was creamy, mild. Fresh-tasting. Like homemade whipped cream.

Since then I’ve continued to stop by his stand whenever I’m at Mercado Medellín — it’s located along the northern wall, near the hallway entrance to the fondas. His flavors are consistently good. And they aren’t what everyone else carries: date and cranberry are on his long list, in addition to caramel, almond, raspberry and orange.

It’s fun to sit at the counter on a plastic stool and take in the scene. He likes to call out to couples strolling through the market. “Helados para los enamorados?” (Ice cream for the lovers?) Or to women walking alone, in a hurry: “Quiere probar los helados Cubanos, sin compromiso?” (Do you want to try Cuban ice cream, without promise to buy?) He talks to men, too. A lot of people stop.

Finally, after months of knowing him only as the Cuban ice cream guy and recommending his stand that way to my friends, I stopped by last week for a malted milkshake and asked him his real name. My friend Martin came with me.

Turns out his name is Eugenio Palmeiro Ríos. He’s a cousin to Rafael. And guess what else? He used to be a chemical engineer in Cuba.

Now it all makes sense. Only a chemical engineer could make ice cream this good.

Palmeiro’s ice creams are made with real cream, fresh fruit and sugar. He doesn’t use artificial flavors or chemicals. He also sells Cuban-style coffees, milkshakes, malts, homemade yogurt, brownies, muffins and flan.

He got into ice cream as a hobby about five years ago, while he was working days in a molecular biology lab. He still keeps is original counter-top ice cream makers in back, although his current production dwarfs their size. The two machines he uses today make 60 liters per hour.

I asked him whether ice cream vendors in Cuba tended to be talkative, and he said no. He learned the art of customer persuasion in Mexico.

If you’re ever in the neighborhood, his stand is worth a visit. Mercado Medellín is located in the Colonia Roma, at Campeche and Medellín streets.

”Photo

Photo by Martin de la Torre

My malted milkshake, flavored with Colombian fruit I think called caruba

The Cuban ice cream guy himself