Bar & Restaurant Reviews

All prices are in Mexican pesos.

We landed in Mexico City a week ago, drove to Oaxaca and back, and were now on our second weekend back in the nation’s capital and the largest city in the world. As much as I was enjoying the trip it was exhausting straining my limited Spanish, and I was starting to look for easier prey than the unpredictable guys in the bar scene.

So I turned my attention to traveling companion and fellow Black Hearts Party staffer Davibey, grateful that he doesn’t write our restaurant reviews or he’d know what I was doing in a second. I convinced him that he and I should have a night out while the other guys were meeting friends, and took him to Tezka, the sister restaurant of hot Basque country restaurant Arzak. My goal: to mesmerize his palette with the startling food preparations of Tezka and strike when his guard was down.

The atmosphere wasn’t exactly sexy. In fact it was a little more upscale and uptight than I’d expected. The place was located in a pricey hotel and had that exact look of a restaurant located in a pricey non-design non-W hotel. In other words, lots of drapes and table cloths all in tasteful, if sterile, shades of cream, beige, saffron, and sunflower. The wait staff were dressed formally and if they were an army our waiter was their general. His formal suit and impeccable grooming would have looked more natural in a German pharmaceutical company; he didn’t exactly contribute to the sexy atmosphere for which I was hoping.

Tezka certainly didn’t have the sexiest environment but the food was everything I’d hoped for, the fascinating blends of seemingly mismatched flavors and textures were as fun an adventure as they were good to eat and beautiful to see. I’ve found that the quickest way into someone’s pants is to share a common adventure with many twists and turns, and this night’s began with Tezka’s parade of bizarre ingredient pairings. And of course the wine didn’t hurt either. We’d been drinking Mexican wine all week, but my favorite was the bottle of Bodegas de Santo Tomas Merlot 2001 ($345) we shared that night.

We were served a curious amuse bouche, a warm shot of lettuce soup which was both clear and foamy, greenish, and tasted distinctly of… well lettuce. But in a good way. We looked at each other with dopey smiles, lettuce soup is definitely weird but good. The wait staff was generous, it seemed a fleet of bowtied guys was standing by to pick up any empty dish the moment it was set down. But they didn’t rush the courses, which worked to my advantage as you never want to be rushed when you’re going with the romantic approach.

My appetizer arrived, the three little sandwiches of foie gras served between crisp cookies ($190) were drizzled with sauce made from a kind of flower (because of my limited Spanish I was unable to ascertain what kind of flower it was exactly). The crispness of the cookie added just the right firmness and texture to the creamy foie gras, and the sweet flavor was the perfect complement to its taste. The sauce added the perfect floral finishing touch, and most importantly the little sandwiches were fun to share, as I made Davibey bite from between my fingers. I didn’t try Davibey’s fish soup ($96) but I took his word that it was also amazing.

My entrée was sparse to the point that I wondered whether they had given me another appetizer by mistake. The calamari served with squid ink ($165) was both delicious and sculpturally astounding, but insubstantial as a main course. Five short tubes of calamari stood upended, their tops ending in tentacles like small mollusky trees. The tentacles held bits of sautéed calamari with onions, and perched atop each tree was a marvel of culinary physics, a puff of squid ink like a bulky black globe that deflated when poked with a fork. Again I found myself thinking about how the exploration of this weird food terrain made for a great shared experience between the two of us. Davibey was clearly enjoying his lamb wrapped in gelatin and served with a coffee sauce ($300), which I tried and found wonderfully rich and earthy.

The dessert was equally fascinating, though my curious chocolate mousse-pudding thing ($66) was served in a very narrow ceramic trough that was hard to access with my spoon. The dark chocolate and hot pepper ice cream that accompanied it was brilliant, an initial bittersweet and super chocolaty taste was followed by a gradual heat sensation from the pepper. Davibey had a weird olive tart ($66) that I couldn’t even begin to descibe.

They finished us off with a round of amuse bouche desserts, including a delicious peanut mousse, small dark chocolate popsicles, some unidentifiably-flavored crisp cookie wafer things, and a small cube of a yummy paste whose flavor we also couldn’t place.

All in all it was a satisfying experience, not the sexiest restaurant I’ve ever visited but the food provided enough of an entertaining adventure over which we could bond. I think if I hadn’t known Davibey better I might have had to work harder to get him into bed with a second bottle of wine, but Tezka gave me just the little push I needed to send him over the top and into my hotel room that night. Mission accomplished.

chumwater

November 5, 2004

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