Letters from Mexico: Mercado

This weekend due to the rainy weather, we stayed in the city and explored it more. It has been 3 weeks we weren`t in the city, so it was a bit exciting again.

We visited two markets in the city, one was the Mercado de Artesanias la Ciudadela (Balderas y Plaza de la Ciudadela 1-5) in Col. Centro, the other was El Basaar Sabado (Plaza San Jacinto 11) in San Angel.

Both were not the markets with fruits and chili and food, but were full with handicrafts: potteries, bronze and aluminum objects, glassware and of course the inevitable sombreros, guitars, hammocks and lots of lots of other things. Typical to any latino culture, everything was colorful, just a feast to the eyes!

The Mercado de Artesanitas la Ciudadela is just next to Plaza Ciudadela, which is a small park with lots of green and lots of people. It was lovely to see that the park was full of people (mainly elderly as I saw) and they just enjoyed the day: everybody was dancing or learning to dance for latin music, eating, drinking.

The other one, El Basaar Sabado (as its name says) is only open on Saturdays. It is located in San Angel which is a lovely district with colonial style houses, and cobble covered streets. The market is as well in a colonial house, with an inner garden inside which takes place to a restaurant. The handicrafts you can buy here seemed more "professional", it looked like the artists themselves were selling their products.

While in the market Ciudadela, you could find cute, really traditional and typical Mexican souvenirs, in the Saturday Market, you would find more artistic and sometimes unique handicrafts from Mexican artists.

After strolling all day in the markets, we went for dinner to a nice restaurant, close to the Saturday Market in San Angel: the San Angel Inn. We were told about this restaurant from many people, so we were curious about it. It serves international/mexican dishes of both seafood and meat.

Although it seems to be a really famous restaurant, the price was not as expensive as we were afraid of: 200-300 pesos for a main dish. The food itself was very very delicious (I had sword fish with lime sauce, my husband shrimps with garlic sauce) and although the main dish was not such a big portion, with a dessert at the end, it was just enough to be full.

Next to its good kitchen, the exclusivity in San Angel Inn is the restaurant itself: it is an hacienda, a typical Mexican "ranch". The building was said to be built 300 years ago and has historical significance as well: it is said the the peace pact of the Chapultepec Battle in 1847 was signed here. The restaurant itself has over 40 years of history, so this place can be really a good choice to go when you`re in Mexico: it has history, and cuisine, and some nice gardens and fountains to enjoy during dinner.

The next day, as a continuation of seafood meals, we tried the Los Arcos restaurant. It is located in Zona Rosa in Mexico City.

This restaurant was opposite of the day before: very local, simple, but still with a huge variety of seafood dishes. My husband had the same garlic sauce shrimps, and I made some adventure with a shrimp in mango sauce.

Both were delicious, fresh in a very reasonable price: one main dish was about 160-180 pesos. I think we`ll have to go back a few more times to try the other dishes out!