Good Food in Mexico City 
By Nicholas Gilman
October 31, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

The women of Mexican cuisine

Since pre-conquest times, women have prepared the food in Mexico; they ground the corn, patted out the tortillas and prepared the guisos, or cooked dishes. They were the ones who incorporated the new ingredients and techniques brought by the Spaniards.

Few Spanish women came to the new world in the early years, so indigenous women, and sometimes African slaves, were employed in the conquistadors’ kitchens. They ruled the larders of the large haciendas and worked to develop a true mestizo cuisine. 

Knowledge of their recipes and techniques was passed down from generation to generation until our era. Not until the last decades of the 20th century did young women have options other than to be housekeepers and cooks. Even in recent years a woman’s occupation was often written on official forms as “labores propias de su sexo” or “work appropriate to her sex.” As women’s lives changed, the store of culinary knowledge began to be lost. Information long kept private and not shared outside of the family was no longer valued by those destined to inherit it. It seems that all the best recipes come from somebody’s grandmother, but getting someone to part with these carefully guarded secrets is another matter. Often only after years of friendship will a cook “spill the beans,” so to speak. Diana Kennedy, who traveled the countryside in search of material for her books, reports that getting people to divulge their secrets was her hardest job.

Today few culinary institutes in Mexico teach techniques of classic Mexican cooking. Since the 1980s, however, many women chefs, notably Alicia Gironella de Angeli, Patricia Quintana, Monica Patiño, Martha Ortiz Chapa and Carmen Tititia, have opened their own restaurants to international acclaim, with the aim of promoting both traditional and innovative Mexican cuisine. Before them came women who promoted the culture of Mexican cooking, including cookbook authors Lula Bertrán, María Orsini, María Dolores Yzabal, and researchers Janet Long and Lila Lomelí. Most of their work sought to improve restaurant standards, promote Mexican food outside the country, organize food festivals, write books, and collect regional recipes. They in turn followed earlier generations of women, among them Josefina Velázquez de León and Adela Hernández, who at the beginning of the 20th century gathered recipes and wrote cookbooks; even artists and arbiters of culture such as Frida Kahlo, Olga Costa and Lupe Mariín, who celebrated al
l things Mexican, included the culture of food in their work.

Outside Mexico, it was also principally women who spread the word: Diana Kennedy, Josefina Howard, and Zarela Martinez are some of the most notable. Recently, collected knowledge from home and abroad has begun to be taught in a few culinary institutes in Mexico, notably at the Centro Culinario Ambrosia. While we must recognize the accomplishments of male chefs and scholars, such as Rick Bayless, Ricardo Muñoz, Salvador Novo and Jose Iturriaga, in no other world cuisine have women been so recognized and celebrated for their important contributions.



Where women rule the roost in Mexico City

Taberna del León 
Altamirano 46, Plaza Loreto, Colonia Tizapan de San Ángel
Tel: 5616-3951 
Open Mon–Sat, 2–10pm, Sun, 2–6pm

Located in an old paper factory remade as a shopping mall, this lovely old house with a sunroom serves Franco-Mexican food under the watchful eye of chef Monica Patiño.



El Tajín
Miguel Angel de Quevedo 687 (inside the Centro Cultural Veracruzano), Coyoacán 
Tel: 5659-4447 or 5659-5759 
Open daily 1–6pm

Owner Alicia Gironella d’Angeli is one of Mexico’s foremost chefs and authors (she wrote the new Larousse de la Cocina Mexicana, among other books) and an original and tireless promoter of Mexican cuisine. Her mole xico is to die for.



El Bajío 
Avenida Cuitláhuac 2709, Colonia Obrera Popular Tel. 5234-3763 
Open Mon–Fri 10 am–6:30 pm, Sat & Sun 9am–6:30pm
Three branches: Parque Delta Mall, Av. Cuauhtémoc 462, Colonia Narvarte; Alejandro Dumas 7, Colonia Polanco, Tel. 5281-8245; Plaza Parque Reforma 222 Tel. 5511-9124, 5511-9117.

Chef Carmen Titita, author of several cookbooks, is another big name in the Mexico City culinary scene. Carnitas is the specialty, although there are many other tempting dishes on the menu. Her original restaurant is the most charming, although the Polanco and Reforma locations are open at night.




Doña Manuela 
Stall no. 283 (across from La Catalana), Mercado San Juan, calle Ernesto Pugibet, Centro

This unsung hero runs her own impeccable stand in the middle of the city’s finest market. She makes the best pozole in town, but only on Saturdays—otherwise you’ll have to settle for her perfect milanesa (accompanied by her running philosophic commentary).

Nicholas Gilman is author of Good Food in Mexico City: A Guide to Food Stalls, Fondas, and Fine Dining, available at all online booksellers and in San Miguel at Libros El Tecolote.

House & Garden Tour
Rancho Jaguar, sculptural concrete & Kuhn fountains
By Jennifer Hamilton

House & Garden Tour
Sun, Nov 2, noon
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
US$15 or 150 pesos
Breakfast at Café Santa Ana starting at 9am

1. Rancho Jaguar on the outskirts of Atotonilco was purchased in 1991. The owners first built a gate house for a caretaker and then a small weekend place for themselves near the Rio Laja. The landscape evolved over the years. An overgrazed field was planted with cactus, cypress, pine, fruit trees and alamos.

Since the temperature there is about 10 degrees cooler in the winter than in San Miguel, citrus and bugambilia didn’t survive.

Having lived in San Miguel since 1966, one of the owners has collected Mexican and Latin American folk art over the years. A local architect designed a building to house the growing collection, which includes furniture, pottery, textiles, photography and paintings.

The museum has been open by appointment since 2001, and has proved very popular with San Miguel residents and visitors.

One of the owners is a photographer and the other a founding member of Amigos del Parque and El Charco del Ingenio. He also serves as president of the Audubon Society of Mexico. Their beautiful home in Centro is also a House & Garden Tour favorite.

2. On first approach, this sculptural concrete home brings a smile to any visitor’s eyes. Cascabel means both “serpent” and “merry,” which would be equally applicable.

A Spanish-tiled serpentine-shaped roof tops one of the buildings, while others are shaped and colored like a cabbage, octopus and mushroom. 

Stained glass windows are placed whimsically. An archway leads out to a garden and the land reaches as far as the Rio Laja. The property is completely solar regulated and uses gray water; two buildings are specifically for compost.

Timoteo Wachter, one of San Miguel’s most esteemed landscape artists, filled flat areas to blend in with curvaceous building shapes. This is the most enchanting, colorful and outrageously fun residence we’ve shown on the House & Garden Tour in decades!

You can learn more about concrete sculptures at www.flyingconcrete.com. 

3. Built from the existing ruins of San Miguel’s original orphanage, the owners turned a dirt-floored property with no water or electricity in 2006, into what we see today. Enchanting surprises in the atrium are “The Brothers” fountains by Mathieu Kuhn.

The original castle-like walls give that special colonial touch. The kitchen is a gourmet’s dream, and the dining almost al fresco with glass doors opening to patios beyond. The master bedroom contains the original stone in the bathroom, with an added polished cement tub and oversized rain shower.

Broken cornices are ingeniously placed over the master bed. Another bedroom reached via an outside bridge contains a whimsical swinging bed.

Special delights are the living room with its mirrors, antiques, religious objects and artwork; the view from two roof terraces; the bathroom’s pebbled floor (instant foot massage!); the retractable glass roof; stone passageways; and arched staircases.