La Calle - Mexico City

Guy Fiere has never been to La Calle but, he should visit there.  This review marks a new chapter in Bill's Triple-D restaurant review.  This was the first non-diners, drive-inns and dives restaurant review and the first international review.  DD&D is still my inspiration in terms of exploring no-star restaurants with great food and drink in sometimes unusual places, but I'm not going to limit my reviews to just restaurants that have been on tv anymore.  In fact, I'm not going to limit the blog just to restaurants anymore.  Stay tuned.

La Calle is in the Santa Fe section of Mexico City. Most of what I saw of Mexico City would qualify as a super dive but, Santa Fe was not.  It is the shiny upscale area; a phoenix of a development built on what was a landfill several years earlier.  There are high-end department stores and expensive high-rise apartment buildings. 

The atmosphere was pretty cool. It was trying to be an old Mexican restaurant.  As a Gringo, to me it seemed like a Mexican restaurant trying to be a Mexican restaurant.   There were only Mexicans here besides my mixed-nationality group, so I don't think that they were trying to impress anyone by hamming-up their Mexican-ness like you sometimes find in the states.


The first thing that they served us was  soup in a little shot glass.  I had never seen soup presented that way.  It was dark brown in color and someone joked that it was a water glass.  It was actually shrimp soup.  It was really tasty but, rather salty which probably helps with beer sales.   The Pacifico Cerveza went down exceptionally smoothly as a chaser.

I ordered the avocado fish. I couldn't tell exactly what kind of dish it was from the Spanish description on the menu but, it was a white fish.  It could have maybe been sea bass.  The fish itself was okay but, the avocado sauce was the star of this show.

The fish was served hidden under a blanket of vegetables.  The fish and veggies were really only there as a vehicle to pick the sauce up with, in my opinion.  I'm kind of a recent convert to avocado.  I used to be turned off by the green color that caused me to never try it.

I'm glad that I got over it in time to sample La Calle's avocado sauce.  It was good enough for me to break with Triple-D tradition.   It was creamy and savory if a little heavy on the salt as well.  La Calle had their own bakery (panadería) which kept us supplied with lots of fresh bread.  That was a good thing because I just wanted to sop up every drop of the green goodness.

One of my compadres at my table ordered something that basically consisted of a caldron of meat, vegetables and potatoes. I didn't try it but, it looked pretty darned good.

I'd give La Calle a 9.6.  It might not have been unique for a Mexican but, it was for me.  The food was really good and the atmosphere unique for me.



La Calle
Av. Vasco de Quiroga #3800
Centro Comercial Santa fe
Colonia Santa fe
Mexico District federal
05109

tel. 5257 0885
http://www.restaurantelacalle.com.mx

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