On May 14, Michelin, the French tire company whose stars, Bib Gourmands, and recommendations are regarded as the highest international culinary honors, announced its guides for Baja California, Baja California Sur, Mexico City, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, and Quintana Roo. It was the first time the Michelin Guide—the 124-year-old establishment that started out evaluating restaurants in Europe—had visited Mexico, and I was eager to see how the distinctions affected the anointed restaurants and taquerias there.
My interest was especially piqued after Michelin’s July 16 announcement that a team was already on the ground in Texas, visiting restaurants in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. (My colleague Patricia Sharpe collected predictions.)
As I traveled Mexico City in July with my sixteen-year-old son, trying these lauded spots, I was surprised at which ones had caught Michelin’s attention and the effort necessary to visit some of them.
The lone taco shop to garner a star (the most prestigious award of the three), Taqueria El Califa de León, seems like a confusing choice. The 56-year-old taqueria, founded by Juan Hernández González, is located near the borders of the San Rafael and Santa María la Ribera neighborhoods. The restaurant is named after Mexican bullfighter Rodolfo “La Califa de León” Gaona y Jiménez, and its love for the matador doesn’t stop there. Its specialty taco has the same namesake. The taco de gaonera, a paper-thin, wide-cut piece of steak served in an open-faced tortilla, is what people have lined up for for decades.
Its popularity means there’s an hours-long wait, a doorman, and seating on sidewalks and in adjacent shops (shop owners and employees act as runners and servers and are tipped separately). My two friends and I, one of whom is the great-nephew of Gaona, ended up seated at a clothing store, surrounded by Speedos on mannequins.
Although owner Mario Hernández Alonso and his family are working hard to keep the shop’s legacy alive, the tacos didn’t live up to the Michelin hype. The corn tortillas were too chewy and the meat too tough. At times I had to yank at the steak with a firm grip of my teeth to separate a chunk to eat. My friends didn’t have the same trouble, so perhaps I got a bad piece. Still, I wouldn’t necessarily wait in line for those tacos again.
Siembra Tortillería, Tacos Los Alexis, and Taqueria El Jarocho—the last two in the central, popular (especially with U.S. and European tourists) neighborhoods of La Condesa and Roma—received Bib Gourmands, the second-highest designation. On my visit, Siembra Tortillería was packed with customers. I asked a manager if the volume of clients was a result of Michelin, and he answered in the affirmative before rushing off to deliver more tacos, which were some of the better ones I consumed during this trip.
Tacos Los Alexis, about as big as a walk-in closet with a handful of seats, was empty, with the exception of a waiter in a tuxedo shirt and cummerbund and the owner-taquero, Alexis Ayala, in a chef’s jacket. Both looked at my teenage son and I as if we were out of place—maybe our T-shirts were too pedestrian. Ayala told me business had picked up since the Michelin Guide was released, and he went into more detail during a follow-up phone conversation, revealing that business had increased by 30 to 40 percent. The clientele, he said, has always been a mix of Mexican and international customers, but he’s seen an uptick in older diners traveling just to eat at his taqueria. “Tacos are personal,” Ayala says. “You grow up going to the same neighborhood taqueria, and that’s the one for you. Now, though, we’re getting older customers interested in destination tacos. That’s wonderful!” I enjoyed the the vegetarian taco—costra-wrapped huitlacoche on a corn tortilla garnished with an avocado wedge and pickled onions, chiles, and tomatillos. It was as joyful as a morning cup of coffee in a fragrant garden.
Taqueria El Jarocho in Roma Norte was half full with what appeared to be mostly people from the neighborhood. The service was speedy, showing that perhaps the international attention hadn’t sullied the dining experience much. The same could not be said for Taqueria Los Cocuyos, in the Centro Histórico, another Bib awardee. It did not have seats available when I visited, but it did have an older gentleman serenading customers with a staticky microphone connected to a speaker.
Tire shop by day and taqueria by night, El Vilsito is one of the most popular and best tacos al pastor joints in the city. It’s always slammed, with quick waitresses carrying handheld tablets to take orders. This visit was no different.
Los Consentidos del Barrio, in Colonia Tlacoquemecatl del Valle, was smoky inside, making it difficult to breathe, even on the second-floor terrace, where I found the only empty seats for my friends and me. It was loud enough that I couldn’t hear my friends express their disappointment at their tacos, but I could still interpret their facial expressions.
Tacos Charly, in the far southern Mexico City borough of Tlalpan, also received a Bib Gourmand. The district is the largest in Mexico City and is where rich Mexicans once built country homes, but it’s now predominantly rural. When I spoke to Mexicans in my social circles and on the street about a taqueria in Tlalpan being awarded a Bib Gourmand, the consensus was something like, “Why? I don’t believe you.” The ordering process and the lines caused confusion, much of it likely due to the workers adjusting to the new Bib Gourmand status. It’s a good taqueria, but just know you’ll have to take a detour from the main areas to get there.
With all due respect to the years of work the owners and taqueros have put into their businesses, the inclusions of Los Consentidos del Barrio, Tacos Charly, and Taqueria El Califa de León in the Michelin Guide make it seem like the writers were plugging holes they needed to fill to appear in touch with the areas and culture they were judging.
In many cases, they missed the mark. Well-known, high-quality restaurants and taquerias that should’ve garnered stars or Bibs were put under the third-tier Recommended listing. Those include Gabriela Cámara’s seafood-focused Contramar and Santiago Muñoz’s masa-forward Maizajo. That Maizajo didn’t receive a Bib Gourmand is especially odd. Muñoz is a member of the first wave of Mexican chefs to open molinos and tortillerias focused on nixtamalization and counts other Michelin restaurants as clients.
“It is one of the recognitions that any chef who cares about cooking wants to receive or aspires to belong to,” Muñoz says, adding that customers are the most important thing to chefs and restaurants. He also acknowledges that awards make everything harder. “Once the award arrives, you have to continue doing what you do, be analytical, and try to improve everything each time,” he says. Maizajo’s juicy and crunchy taco de milanesa de pollo is among the best tacos I’ve had in Mexico City. That taco alone should have garnered the restaurant at least a Bib Gourmand.
Michelin’s Mexico City guide seems like a list crafted for the white-tablecloth crowd interested in getting stamps in their culinary passports—and perhaps that’s to be expected of the French finally giving their nod of approval to Mexican cuisine.
During his late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century dictatorship, Porfirio Díaz made liberal reforms and constructed architectural wonders partially to show other countries—mainly France—that Mexico was a developed, modern nation. When his government was toppled, in 1911, Díaz exiled himself to France, where he died four years later. I reckon he’d be giddy about all this.
But Mexico does not need Michelin’s endorsement, although the chefs and taqueros have enjoyed the benefits. Bravo to them. Tacos stand proud next to the finest fare. And they should. Mexican food gave the world chiles, chocolate, corn, and vanilla. Through the local talent and ingredients, Mexico City has cemented itself as a culinary destination, one that goes beyond street food, especially for Pujol, a fine-dining establishment that does in fact have two Michelin stars. But it doesn’t need them to be great or beloved.
The same is true for the restaurants that will be in Michelin’s Texas guide. We don’t need the institution to give us its blessing. Frankly, I don’t think we deserve to go through the pay-to-play anguish. While Texas does have Michelin-level Eurocentric dining, that’s not the way we generally eat, and I don’t believe in making ourselves look respectable to highbrow culinary tourists.
