One Great Trip with Evan Benn
A family trip to Mexico City with the journalist (and former Miami Herald restaurant critic) for a market tour, salsa-making class, and plenty of top-tier tacos
Welcome back to One Great Trip, where a cool and curious traveler shares a recent stand-out adventure — including some of the best things they ate, drank, and did — to help inspire your own travels.
Evan Benn will travel for food. The journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer — a former food editor and restaurant critic at the Miami Herald and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — is always in search of his next epic taco, or eggplant sabich, or cozy cassoulet. But a recent 5-day trip to Mexico City was actually inspired by something else entirely. (Although there were plenty of memorable meals, too.)
“We chose it because Jagger thinks Frida Kahlo is the most beautiful person and wanted to visit her home,” he told me. Benn’s son Jagger is almost six, and he already has exceptional taste in art. (And also food!)
Along with a visit to Kahlo’s Blue House, Benn shares some of his best moments of the trip, including a visit to the floating gardens of Xochimilco, dinners of fried squid tacos with pickled mushrooms and sourdough bread with ant butter, and a family-friendly cooking class — fueled by sips of mezcal-spiked hibiscus tea.
Where: Mexico City, Mexico
Arrived by: Flight, with a layover in Dallas
No direct flights from PHL-MEX, so we connected on American Airlines through DFW (a behemoth of an airport, but there’s a Chick-fil-A and a LEGO store right across from each other in the D Terminal, so our almost-6-year-old was thrilled with the manageable layover).
Stayed: The Ritz-Carlton, Mexico City
It’s a modern high-rise (our view from floor 46 was expansive and breathtaking) that opened in 2021. It’s well situated by neighborhoods like Roma Norte, Polanco, and La Condesa, but we also loved its proximity to the sweeping Chapultepec Park, where there is an amazing (and free!) zoo, children’s museum, modern art museum, anthropology museum, botanic garden, and the grand Chapultepec Castle.
[Side note: They chose the hotel in large part for its pool, but it was closed for maintenance when they arrived. Instead, they spent time at the Four Seasons pool across the street, where they were charged a nominal fee and, Evan says, “they treated us like their own guests.”]
Ate:
Rosetta: Chef-owner Elena Reygadas runs the kind of restaurant where you want to eat every day: creative takes on local ingredients, warm hospitality, and impossibly delicious food. The sourdough comes with ant butter if you’re feeling frisky, the pasta comes with truffles if you’re feeling indulgent, and the Mexican orange wines on their list pair with everything if you’re down for a little funk.
Comedor Jacinta: Order one of chef Edgar Núñez’s standout molcajete dishes, served in the lava-stone vessel for which they’re named. We loved the charcoal-fired sweetbreads over a lime juice-heavy guacamole.
El Parnita: Open-air taqueria in Roma Norte that gets busy but has plenty of seating. Try the breaded shrimp Carmelita tacos and the Desnudo (naked) garbanzo tacos with mashed beans, guacamole, and Oaxaca cheese. Simply perfect.
Cantina el Bosque: A classic old-school seafood haunt on the outskirts of Chapultepec Park, where we had lunch after the zoo. For a tableside show, order a traditional Caesar that they’ll build before your eyes, and the salt-baked fish for two.
Contramar: Is it on every list like this about Mexico City must-eats? Yes. Is it for good reason? Also yes. We had a delightful dinner here that felt *much* less tourist-filled than I expected. When I asked for a mezcal, the server brought that and another similar one for me to sip and choose my favorite before receiving a full pour (love that). Highlights were fried squid tacos with pickled mushrooms, ceviche Contramar, kingfish tacos al pastor, and tuna carnitas with cilantro and onion.
Adventured:
Mexican Salsas Market Tour + Cooking Class: Chef Natalia met us at vibrant Tacuba Market to shop for ingredients — dried chiles, pineapple, tomatillos, avocado — which we took back to her apartment a few steps away. She walked us through making four different salsas between sips of mezcal-spiked hibiscus tea. An absolutely lovely experience that was perfect for the whole family.
Chapultepec Park: We explored the zoo and botanic garden, but there is literally something to do every 50 steps here. An amazing green space.
Xochimilco and Frida Kahlo’s Blue House: We booked private tours with Vibe Adventures for this and our Teotihuacán visit (next entry), and they were great about working with me before our trip to trim their typical 8-hour tour (including an extra stop at an art museum) to 5 hours. Our guide Pepe and driver (his father-in-law!) picked us up at our hotel and showed us an amazing morning on the floating gardens of Xochimilco, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, followed by a tour through Frida Kahlo’s former home. Advance tickets are required to Frida’s house, which Vibe arranged for us.
Teotihuacán: It was incredible to experience this ancient archeological site about an hour north of Mexico City. There are lots of touristy things to get pulled into here — tchotchkes for sale and side exhibits to see — but we were grateful to walk around the amazing pyramids, hear about their history from Pepe, and head back to the city.