Visited Mexico for business and pleasure during November. We stayed in the Condesa neighbourhood in Mexico City and a short time in Acapulco. All the photos here in Flickr, as usual a selection below.
Mexico trip, November 2012
Tag Archives: food
Authentic Mexican restaurant in Finland: Cholo Street Mexican kitchen
The team behind Patrona decided to try a new concept in the place where it all began. Café de Nopal is no more, but now Cholo offers a much wider variety of Mexico City style tacos and even Northern Mexico style burritos that the previous restaurant ever could and it is open for lunchtime during weekdays and Saturdays too.
This is one taquería I will be frequenting as much as I can 
.
Authentic Mexican Restaurant in Finland: Patrona
The team behind Café de Nopal has done it again. Now with a much larger space, a fixed menu and an alcohol sales license this place is always packed with food lovers, including the occasional Mexican resident in Helsinki.
Unfortunately it’s not open during lunch time and bookings are still difficult to get, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Authentic Mexican Restaurant in Finland: Pueblo
The proper Mexican food invasion in Helsinki continues. After Café de Nopal opened at the end of 2010, a separate team set up Pueblo in Eerikinkatu 25 during 2011.
I know some of the Mexican staff personally. Their tortillas are excellent and they have my favourite beers on offer, but the food is sometimes a little too salty for me (I cook without salt, so that might be the problem). Regardless, it is very nice to have an alternative open during lunchtime in the heart of the city.
Beans = Kryptonite
I’m allergic to beans. Maybe that’s why I had to flee so far I ended up in Finland 
. Take the delicacy above, called huarache, for example. It happens to have beans inside the dough, and made me sick the whole night after I ate it. At least I didn’t end up in hospital with serum like the time before that.
It’s ridiculous. It’s akin to a Finn being allergic to potatoes or a Japanese being physically unable to eat seaweed.
Mexico, summer 2011
We spent 2 excellent weeks in Mexico visiting my family. With the new member of the family in tow we didn’t do a lot of tourism so I do not have that many “publishable” pictures this time, but below you can find some.
The rest, as usual, in the set.
Globalization is…
Eating a taco based on a Lebanese recipe in a taquería run by the descendants of Japanese immigrants to Mexico. You would only notice they’re Japanese-Mexican for the plea to aid the victims of the Japanese earthquake and the fact that their grilled onions are served in soy sauce.
Finnish-Mexican fusion cuisine part III
My friends at Café de Nopal have been offering birria tacos (goat Jalisco style) with broth for some time now, so I decided to try to prepare reindeer the same way. The result was excellent, probably one of the best attempts at Finnish-Mexican fusion I’ve gone for.
Reindeer birria, tacos & broth
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 16 tortillas
- 1 kg of reindeer meat without bone (luuton sisäpaisti)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 6 dried Chile de árbol chillies (without seeds, sliced and diced)
- 1 dried chile ancho (without seeds, sliced and diced)
- 2 teaspoons of cumin
- 4 tomatoes (sliced and diced)
- ½ onion (sliced and diced)
- salt
- Cooking oil
- Coriander
- Mexican salsa roja or taquera
- Green lemons/limes
Warm the oil and fry the garlic, onion and chillies until they’re soft. Add half a litre of water and the cumin. Let boil a few minutes. Blend this mix and then sift it. Return the sauce to the fire and add4 litres of water. Cut the meat in small cubes and add it together with the tomato. Leave cooking for 3-4 hours, add more water if necessary. Serve the broth separately from the meat. Warm the tortillas. Offer some sliced and diced onion with coriander and lemons on the side for people to put together their own tacos. Serve with Mexican rice and pico de gallo on the side.
Proper Mexican food restaurants worldwide
As you probably know if you read this blog, one of my passions is food, especially of the Mexican kind. Unfortunately, most of the Mexican food you find outside of North America is not really Mexican, so I make a point of testing Mexican restaurants when I’m traveling to make sure they are more Mex-Mex than Tex-Mex so that I can recommend them to friends.
You can find an abridged list after the map below (they’re listed by how far away they’re from Finland, with the first being the farthest out).
- Viva México, Singapore, Singapore. Pretty decent decor. Indian & Pakistani staff wearing Mexican dress. Some of the items in the menu are Tex-Mex as that’s what people know so far away from the land of nopales, but the chef is from Oaxaca so he can recommend what to eat. I had caldo tlalpeño and chiles en nogada when I was there and they were very good (photos). From what I hear, they have to import a lot of the foodstuffs, even the rice (kinda funny as it’s in Asia).
- Fonda de la Madrugada, Tokyo, Japan. A restaurant in a huge basement, descending those steps transports you from Harajuku to an Hacienda. Mexican movies shown in a corner. The chef was Mexican, even if the owners weren’t. The staff speaks Spanish and Japanese (few things cuter than a Japanese girl in a huipil), but no English. While it’s not the cheapest place to eat out, the food was absolutely worth it: we had guacamole, caldo tlalpeño, enchiladas and even carnitas a la michoacana (photos).
- El Mexicano, Shanghai, China. Small place slightly out of town. Mexican owners. The pollo en salsa verde was not great, but the tacos al pastor more than made for it (photos).
- La Palapa, New York, USA. A restaurant that wouldn’t be out of place in Coyoacán, even if the portions are American-sized. Their quesadillas were to die for (photos)
- Tehuitzingo Deli & Grocer, New York, USA. The best taquería I’ve been to outside of Mexico City (no wonder as it’s smack in the middle of Puebla York). Once you get inside past the grocery part of the locale, you will reach a small corner of heaven in Hell’s Kitchen. Tacos de lengua, pastor, chicharrón or suadero, sopes, quesadillas de flor de calabaza… all washed down with a Pacífico (photos).
- Rosa Mexicano, New York, USA. You realise the Mexican food market in NY has matured as they’ve gone from Tex-Mex to Mex-Mex to haute cuisine Mex. A selection of tequilas that will leave a connoisseur drooling, their arrachera & shrimps plate was very good and worth the price tag (photos).
- Barriga Llena, Madrid, Spain. Part of a mature Mexican-owned chain in Spain, the food is close enough to its origins and the sense of humour is a breathe of fresh air.
- Ándele, Barcelona, Spain. I used to visit Barcelona every year for work, and I always tried to visit this small place. The tacos are quite OK and they also sell Mexican foodstuffs and tequilas (indispensable if you live far away like me).
- Anahuacalli, Paris, France. This is the only one I haven’t visited of the restaurants in this list, but everybody I know and trust who has eaten here recommends it. The founder has lived in France for 40 years.
- Mestizo, London, UK. Mexican-owned as well. Also a little bit pricey, but the food was excellent. We had ceviche, tacos al pastor, pato en mole con ciruela, tamales, pozole, flan & crepas and it was all good (photos).
- Taquería La Neta, Stockholm, Sweden. For a while the closest source for proper Mexican food, this taquería was opened in 2009. Their menu is simple: tacos and their relatives, but the results are excellent as they have their own tortilla-making machine (photos). Mexican-owned.
- Café de Nopal, Helsinki, Finland. Recently opened. I just wrote a review about the place. They offer a “comida corrida” lunch every weekday with a choice of two/three main courses and brunch on weekends (photos). Mexican-owned.
Authentic Mexican restaurant in Finland: Café de Nopal
When a Mexican moves abroad, one of the first things he or she misses is the food (obvious if you’ve read this blog for a while or know me personally). The Mexican food supply in Finland is very limited, so obviously many of us have had the idea to open a proper restaurant here where we could show our Finnish brothers what and why we long for: real tacos, sopes, tortas and other far-away delicacies.
Nobody had had the guts (and the knowledge) to do so until now. A couple of friends opened Café de Nopal in Lönnrotinkatu 9 a few days ago and my prayers have been answered ;). In a few days I’ve already had avocado soup, lentil soup, gringas de pastor, tacos dorados, chile relleno, flan, pan de elote and Chiapas coffee. The taste was good enough to remind me of Mom. I guess I’ll continue visiting often.
Update 8.10.2012: Café de Nopal has now become Cholo, Street Mexican kitchen. Great authentic Mexican food as well, slightly different concept