Gourmet comida corrida

A while back I posted aboutthe joys of the local fonda that serves a forty-peso comida corrida around the corner from my apartment. While I eat there fairly frequently, the truth about most fondas is that their comidas corridas tend to be heavy on carbohydrates and, depending on what you order for your main course, often on the greasy side.

On Calle Parras between Avenida Nuevo León and Avenida Amsterdam in the Colonia Condesa, however, there are two sidewalk fondas that serve what I have come to think of as gourmet comida corrida. They are not as cheap as ordinary fondas but, at eighty-five or ninety pesos, they are nevertheless a bargain, especially considering the quality of their ingredients.

At both the Gastrofonda Quim Jardi -- named after its chef, who is either a Mexican Catalan or a Catalan Mexican, depending on your point of view -- and the fonda Kousmine next door, run by a Frenchman who posts certificates with his culinary credentials on the outside tarp, you can get meals that are easier on the belly and the blood sugar than at ordinary fondas.

The first course are soups that tend to be made with fresh herbs and vegetables, and the second course -- instead of the rice or soggy spaghetti served at ordinary fondas -- is salad made with fresh dressings. For the main courses, at each place, you have your choice of chicken, beef, fish or something vegetarian, again, all prepared with fresh ingredients and sometimes extraordinary sauces. Quim, for instance, has a fish in a delectably spice mole, while the Frenchman makes a lovely arrachera with soy sauce and crunchy vegetables. Desserts are homemade and served with bracing espresso.

Menu at Kousmine. Lady, would you please get your head out of the way?

No coffee in Cuautitlán

Not long ago, they began commuter train service from downtown to the northern outskirts, a place called Cuautitlán Izcallí that is actually situated in Mexico State but considered part of the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Although it's a ride of only a little more than twenty miles, traffic tends to be so bad that it can easily take you two hours or more to get there or back in a car. I had only been to Cuautitlán once, a few years ago, and the ride home in a taxi was so excruciatingly slow it was heartbreaking.

The downtown port is what used to be the Buenavista train station, where people took long-distance passenger trains. It had been defunct for close to twenty years. Mexico still has a lot of cargo rail service but no longer takes passengers anywhere, except for the privately run trains that go to the Copper Canyon in Chihuahua and from Guadalajara to the tequila factories.

The new service has definitely been built for people who live in Mexico State but work in Mexico City. At the downtown station there are several machines like the one above, which buff your shoes free of charge.

The train is something of a phenomenon. I wonder how many like it there are in the developing world. It's sleek, comfortably functional (there are few seats, but lots of room for standees, and even compartments to store packages overhead). Above all it's fast (I made it through the seven stops to Cuautitlán in a half hour) and cheap (from one end of the line to the other, service costs a mere thirteen pesos).

Yet the message the vehicle conveys (comfort, function, speed, sleek design) has little to do with the riders it transports. Out of the windows you see the misery that is Mexico State, the extended shantytowns on the hills, the corrugated tin roofs, the cinder blocks, the plastic sheets in place of windows, the steam billowing from a factory smokestack.

I had hoped to have a coffee in Cuautitlán when I got out at the other end, but there wasn't any to be had. Just more tin-roof shacks, empty lots covered in weeds, the railroad tracks. I got back on the train and returned, once again reflecting on the vast differences between my life and those of so many others in the city.

Do you have the stomach for this?

Who has the more impressive belly? The sculpted chef or the hovering waiter?

Scribes, silent and vocal

Three reporters were killed in Mexico last year, putting it at number four on the list of the Committee to Protect Journalists' deadliest places to exercise the profession, after Pakistan, Iraq and Libya. Since CPJ began to compile the data in 1992, twenty-seven Mexican reporters have been murdered.

While this might not seem like a huge number -- especially when compared to the 50,000 citizens who have been killed since Felipe Calderón was elected president in 2006 -- they have a special significance. Their murders have effectively silenced many other Mexican reporters, particularly in cities along the border and in interior states such as Michoacán, where reporting about drug trafficking -- and the police, soldiers and politicians who may be involved in it -- can cost you your life.

Yesterday, Sunday the 29th, PEN International summoned forty writers from North America -- Mexico, Canada and the United States -- to a media event at the Casa Lamm here in Mexico City, in which the organization denounced the murders and the Mexican government's woefully inadequate response. Each writer stood up and gave a brief speech, announcing his or her grief, disdain or rage. Let's hope their voices will be heard.

The world is a wedding

On a balmy night not long ago I was walking down Calle Durango and heard a woman scream. I turned and saw a slender young thing in a pink dress, a plastic cup of something in hand, inside this bus celebrating with her friends. She did not seem particularly happy about me taking her picture, but I did get a couple of shots of the vehicle, which was marked "Boda Bus." For the Spanish impaired, boda means wedding.

If you go to the Boda Bus web site, you will find out that the business was started by a couple of guys who were one day part of a wedding party, to which they arrived late -- an incident they vowed would never happen again. They offer various services, including bachelor(ette) parties, one of which I believe I witnessed that night. They also offer tours of the city, trips to soccer games, and transportation to actual weddings. You could probably negotiate to get hitched on the bus itself. Let's just say it's a novel idea in a city with a perennial traffic problem.