Travel Casserole: June 2012

Dulce Patria was a great recommendation from the concierge @ the W Mexico City. My wife and I were just in town for an overnight stop before continuing on to Havana in the morning. After a somewhat long day of travel (car to ORD, wait around, flight to ATL, connect, flight to MEX, go through customs, taxi to hotel in evening rush hour traffic), we needed dinner. And we had just a few key criteria in picking a place. It had to be close, and had to be relaxing. Dulce Patria fit the bill.

The walk is 5, maybe 8 minutes through Parque Lincoln and a block or two of the sleek Polanco neighborhood. First impression of the restaurant is its sharp, contemporary exterior. It was pretty quiet when we walked in @ 7:45 on a Tuesday night the week leading up to Christmas. By the time we left ~9:15 it was buzzing. Since we had to be back @ MEX ~8am we were not ashamed to be eating so 'early'.

The first thing we noticed inside was the service. It was team service. Like SWAT team service. Every glass, utensil and napkin was placed, replaced, adjusted, etc. seemingly every minute. Honestly it was almost too much. One of the servers literally swooped in and moved my knife a millimeter back into its proper position after I had accidentally nudged it while putting my drink back down. If these guys were getting paid by the touch, they were racking up the pesos. On the positive side, one of them was quick to advise my wife about not leaving her purse on the heated floor and brought over a stool for her to rest it on. Good call, since we weren't expecting a heated floor. Especially since the air temp outside was probably ~70F.

Maybe anything would have tasted great after a long travel day, but the horchata con mezcal was amazing. It was like a rather sophisticated adult milk shake. Tasty.

Food was mostly good. Los antojitos (the starters) we tried were mixed. The quesadillas (which are more like empanadas in Mexico and I need to remember this because I've ordered them more than once expecting US style quesadillas) with huitlacoche were nice. The corn dish, esquites, was less pleasing. I like corn. A lot. It's very hard to serve me something corn based and have it not be a raving success. The esquites here were just okay. But as I've learned since esquites is a dish that lends itself to customization and interpretation (perhaps similar to how every has their own custom mac and cheese recipe). So try esquites if you see it on the menu. Just maybe don't try it @ Dulce Patria.

Dulce Patria antojitos esquites y empanadas de huitlacoche

For my entree I went with a enchiladas con platanos en mole, which were very flavorful and rich. That richness could have used a bit more citrus or something to balance it out and break things up a bit. But on pure flavor, I'd get those enchiladas again.