Mexico’s best-kept secret
Guadalajara’s underappreciated dining and bar scene overflows with exciting options
Editor’s note: Houston bar owner Bobby Heugel has visited Guadalajara, Mexico, more than 30 times. “What started as a city to visit for tequila and mezcal research trips quickly became a fascination with the city itself,” he says. The Chronicle asked him to write about some of his favorite places.
In recent years, travel and food writers eager to be the first to “discover” Mexico City’s booming restaurant and bar revolution have showered the colossal capital in sweet praise. Today, as these worthy accolades continue to publish across the globe, another Mexican city — Guadalajara — often is overlooked despite its dynamic, entrepreneurial culinary spirit that not only rivals the very best Mexico City has to offer, but the best of any international city.
I began visiting Guadalajara years ago as an American bartender eager to learn about tequila. But what I’ve found as a Houstonian is a sister city south of the border that is both as casual and hospitable as my hometown and equally diverse and eclectic.
Walk into Alcalde restaurant in the Valle Norte area, for example, and every stereotype about Mexico’s second-largest city — the dirt, traffic, sprawl — is immediately challenged. Happily modern in design and drenched in the warm hospitality of its locale, Alcalde’s food is quietly dismantling the ceiling of dining expectations in the region. On a recent visit, a dish presented in a palette of blacks and grays offered grilled pork dramatically dusted in an ash of other ingredients and a mole sauce that could only be served in Mexico. Elsewhere, this dish might be deemed unattractive. But in a country that celebrates death, the plate unifies its ingredients in a singular composition that is both reflective of culture and exceptionally executed — the mark of a world-class restaurant.
The more a visitor eats and drinks in Guadalajara, the easier it is to see that this standard is maintained by a growing generation of restaurant and bar owners throughout the city.
Palreal, staffed with baristas who have ranked internationally in the world’s best competitions, is an unparalleled marriage of food and coffee. The lonche de pancita with salsa verde rivals any sandwich in a city renowned for tortas. With a shot of espresso from as many as eight Mexican regions, it’s tough to move on from this special cafe in the Colonia Americana neighborhood. Customers, however — a mix of artists, bartenders and other locals — eagerly help with this problem by sending you on to the next “Palreal” down the road.
That would be Res Pública, an outdoor Argentinian-influenced grill that serves incredible cuts of meats and sausages with an occasional salad under the remnants of a giant yellow awning from a long-gone nightclub. Standing next to his dog, Res Pública’s owner Pedro Trujillo recommends wine, Mezonte mezcal and beers from his own tiny microbrewery, Diógenes.
There is an avid enthusiasm for craft beer in Guadalajara after decades of drinking essentially the same macro-lagers distributed throughout the world as “authentic Mexican beers,” which were actually brought in by German immigrants. Bars such as El Grillo have massive selections of craft beers that often fuse trendy styles with Mexican flavors and preferences for drinkable session beers — the type that pair perfectly with the bar’s outward-facing patio lining the city’s most famous street, Chapultepec.
Mezonte mezcal, like Diógenes, is a passion project of a local entrepreneur. Pedro Jiménez Gurría travels throughout Jalisco, Michoacán, Guerrero and other nearby states and bottles mezcal from traditional producers who live in the shadows of Jalisco’s famous tequila brands and their fancy tourist vehicles decorated as giant tequila barrels. His mezcaleria, Pare de Sufrir, was one of the first bars in Guadalajara committed to serving locally produced, traditional mezcals.
Modern cocktails have found a home in Guadalajara, too. Bars including Fat Charlie and Pigalle draw on influences from a burgeoning global cocktail movement to showcase previously unavailable spirits such as Japanese whisky — a welcome addition given Guadalajara’s significant Japanese population. Though inspired by international bars, these bars and others avoid the pretentiousness of high-end cocktail lounges. Grandeur in Guadalajara is refreshingly reserved for the city’s monumental churches.
Unless you visit Mercado Libertad, a market so gigantic that the four-story, amphitheater-esque maze in which it lives bursts with vendors spilling onto the streets. You can find just about anything, but the juxtaposition of tortas the size of your head with Japanese sushi stands reminds you of how international Guadalajara is.
And as the famous market overflows with tradition and evolution, my words thus far about the city’s dining scene can hardly contain the exciting new options. Restaurants including Magno Brasserie, Tikuun, Allium and Eulogio continue to push this movement forward. If Mexico City is one of the world’s most exciting dining destinations, Guadalajara is one of the most underappreciated.
Yet the sentiments of those focused on redefining their community rarely care about living in the shadows of Mexico City. Evidently, there are too many wonderful options to explore while sitting in the shade.