It started with the salsas.
At some taquerías, locals grumbled that their beloved condiments were less spicy because of the growing presence of foreigners. Then it was pizzerias opening on seemingly every corner. And third-wave coffee shops charging 100 pesos for a croissant.
The boom in global tourism since the pandemic has proved both unrelenting and unbearable to many of the people who live in destinations like Barcelona, Kyoto and Paris. Some have grown so frustrated by the influx of seasonal visitors and the strain placed on city infrastructure that they have marched in the streets and even sprayed tourists with water guns.
But in Mexico City, the visitors came quickly and many never left. Remote workers rushed to chic, central neighborhoods like Condesa, Roma Norte and Juárez seeking less expensive housing and a favorable exchange rate. From 2020 to 2023, the number of temporary residents and renewals of temporary-resident cards from the United States nearly doubled, to about 24,000, according to a report from El País.
U.S. citizens make up less than 7 percent of foreigners living in Mexico City, according to a report in the Mexican newspaper Milenio. Yet their impact has been outsize: whole swaths of Mexico City’s food scene — a point of immense pride — have been remade in the American image.
“It’s all wine bars, cocktail bars, natural wine, all these New York-style restaurants that do the same super-conceptual food where they just describe three ingredients,” said Rocio Landeta, who runs a food-tour company in Mexico City called Eat Like a Local. “At some point it doesn’t matter if you are in New York or Mexico City.”
In Condesa, known for its verdant parks and fashionable residents, you’ll find a New York pizzeria with the punk-rock feel of a Brooklyn institution like Roberta’s. Interspersed between street vendors stirring guisados or pressing squash blossoms into quesadillas is a contemporary Jewish deli whose everything bagels are plopped into paper bags imprinted with the shop’s logo. There are even identical versions of the Sicilian crudo from the San Francisco seafood counter Swan Oyster Depot. (Some of these businesses are owned by foreigners, but others by Mexicans.)
In today’s globalized, social media-obsessed world, you can find slice shops in Tokyo and rainbow bagels in Paris. But American food lands differently in Mexico City.
What is now Mexico endured 300 years of colonization by Spain and lost significant territory to the United States. Its relationship with its northern neighbor remains tense; President Trump began his first run for office by referring to Mexican immigrants as murderers and rapists, and recently called Mexico one of the “worst places on earth.”
Many city residents feel as if they’re going through another foreign occupation.
“It’s a form of colonization,” said Oscar Rodríguez, who was standing in line at a juguería near his home in Condesa. He pointed out that the juice stand now offers almond milk, protein powder and peanut butter. “Foreigners come in with these different types of food,” he said, “and then Mexicans have a tendency to adopt them as well.”
Mexico City is having “one of the most boring moments in the history of Mexican food,” said Norma Listman, a Mexico native who co-owns Masala y Maíz, a Mexican-Indian restaurant in Juárez that was highlighted in the Netflix series “Chef’s Table” and received a Michelin star last year.
It’s not surprising that American food has found its way to Mexico City. Over the past two decades, as crime rates have fallen and fine-dining restaurants like Quintonil and Pujol have received international acclaim, the capital has become a tourist magnet. In 2022, as part of an effort to cement that status, Claudia Sheinbaum, then Mexico City’s mayor and now the Mexican president, partnered with Airbnb to attract remote workers from around the world. Last year, the first Michelin Guide to the city’s restaurants arrived.
So have protests. This summer, hundreds of Mexicans marched through Condesa holding signs that read, “Gringo go home,” blaming foreigners for higher rents and rapid gentrification in a country where the daily minimum wage in most areas is 278.80 pesos, or about $15. (Remote workers often don’t pay taxes to Mexico.)
Some restaurants perceived as playing to American tastes were vandalized in the protests. On several sidewalks, “Fuera gringos” is spray-painted in red.
Tensions have run so high that even some Mexican chefs preparing Mexican food said they have been accused of catering to only foreign tastes and budgets.
Maizajo, in Condesa, charges 60 to 80 pesos each ($3 to $4) for tacos made from heirloom varieties of corn that it nixtamalizes. (In less-touristy neighborhoods, tacos sell for about 15 to 30 pesos.) Foreigners regularly line up outside, on a block filled with street vendors selling tlacoyos and quesadillas to the people queuing. Santiago Moctezuma, the chef of Maizajo, buys several tons of corn from those vendors each year.
Still, he said, “half my neighbors hate me.”
The chef Mariana Villegas Martínez opened Lina, in Roma Norte, two years ago to celebrate Mexican ingredients. Her menu includes traditional dishes like charro beans and tiraditos, but also small plates like Caesar salad and crab pasta that reflect her travels and experiences working at New York City restaurants, including Union Square Cafe and Cosme.
She sees the menu as personal, but some locals see it as pandering. “There is some resentment,” she said.
“The nationality of the customers who come to eat does not define what this project’s intentions or ideas or heart is,” Ms. Martínez said.
But many locals love these new restaurants. At Pizza Félix, in Condesa, Italian pastries are served in branded mint-green pastry boxes, and cookbooks from restaurants like Noma and Estela sit above the pass.
Gabriela Pacheco, a systems consultant who lives in the area and was eating granola and yogurt, said Italian cafes like this felt “more gourmet” than the other daytime spots in the neighborhood.
Some don’t even mind that Mexican food in the city is changing. At Taquería Orinoco, a restaurant reliably found in American guides, Cristian Pascal, a lawyer visiting the Roma Norte location on his lunch break, said he understood why the salsas there weren’t that spicy, and the al pastor taco now has bell peppers.
“Culture is about adapting to people,” he said. “This is not gentrification.”
It’s both inevitable and positive that tastes are shifting as the city becomes more globalized, said Adrián Hernández Cordero, who heads the sociology department at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City.
“What we see in Mexico is not colonialism, but a new phase of society, of the economy, of migration,” he said.
Foreigners make up just a small fraction of Mexico City’s population, he said, and neighborhoods like Condesa, Juárez and Roma Norte are fragments of a vast, bustling city. “The landscape in Mexico is so wide,” he said. There’s room to preserve the old while making way for the new.
But the outward creep of gentrification can feel inescapable. In San Rafael, a neighborhood best known for its theaters, the building across the street from La Tonina, a 90-year-old outpost of norteño cooking, will soon be torn down to make way for high-end apartments, said Patricia Soto Romos, the restaurant’s owner. Hanging from some balconies are signs that read, “Don’t gentrify this neighborhood.”
Several new transplants to the city interviewed for this article said they didn’t want the food to change because of them, though most wouldn’t give their names because they feared becoming the targets of local ire.
Filip Korycan, a digital marketing agency founder from Boulder, Colo., and the Czech Republic, lives in Playa del Carmen and will soon spend half his time in Mexico City. He said traditional Mexican foods were part of the city’s appeal, but it’s comforting to be able to visit pizzerias and delis, too.
Richard Hart, who used to be the head baker at Tartine in San Francisco, then founded Hart Bageri with the chef René Redzepi in Copenhagen, moved to Mexico City in 2023 to be closer to his children, who live in California.
In July, he opened the Roma Norte bakery Green Rhino, which mixes European pastries with Mexican ingredients (a passion fruit financier costs 110 pesos, or $6). He stressed his efforts to be a mindful foreigner, buying local chocolate and corn, donating leftover bread to food pantries and learning Spanish.
Mr. Hart has been accused online of further gentrifying the neighborhood, but he pointed out that areas like Roma Norte were gentrified by Mexicans decades before he arrived. Also, he said, about three-quarters of his customers are Mexican.
“If you want to be a world city,” he said, “you have to embrace things.”
Some of the city’s most venerated restaurateurs — its taqueros and street vendors — have found that embracing foreigners can be a boon to business.
“A sale is a sale,” said Belèn Espinoza Mendoza, an employee at Tacos Hola El Güero, a longtime taquería in Condesa, where a taco now costs 30 pesos, or $2. But “I give the same heat, I put the same seasonings. I haven’t changed anything.”
At Taquería El Califa de León, the only taquería with a Michelin star, neighbors were initially frustrated by the long lines summoned by the accolade, said Angel Rodríguez, a cook. Then, he said, they realized they could profit by creating merchandise for the taquería to sell to the people waiting.
Cuauhtémoc, the borough that includes Condesa, Roma and Juárez, now accounts for close to 5 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product, said its mayor, Alessandra Rojo de la Vega.
Higher sales, though, can make up for only so much, said Hermelinda Nava Lorenzana, who runs a tlacoyo and quesadilla stand in Condesa. Many American customers act entitled, expecting their every dietary need to be accommodated, she said, while Mexicans who visit the United States are treated like second-class citizens.
But the blame doesn’t squarely belong with Americans, she said. The affluent Mexicans who live in the neighborhood have persuaded city officials to replace stalls on her block with planter boxes.
Those same people are often the ones buying up property in Roma and Condesa and turning it into Airbnb rentals that price residents out, said Ms. Landeta, the food tour operator. (The Times reached out to three developers for interviews; none responded.)
Ms. Listman and Saqib Keval, who own Masala y Maíz in Juárez, are thinking of ways to make locals feel welcome again in these neighborhoods. Last month, they organized a “Pay What You Can” day with more than 20 other restaurants. People traveled in from the outskirts of the city, some paying for their meal with sketches.
The line outside Masala y Maíz stretched around the block.
Reporting was contributed by Miriam Castillo, Gray Beltran, James Wagner and Patricia Nieto.
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
Priya Krishna is a reporter in the Food section of The Times.
The post What Happened to Mexico City’s Food Scene? Americans. appeared first on New York Times.
