Puebla was almost an afterthought on our trip. We were travelling through it anyway, so we decided to stay a couple days. The guidebooks didn’t give much reason to visit the city and online recommendations were primarily to skip it and spend more time in Oaxaca. My wife, who planned our itinerary, was suggesting we pass it by as well. Puebla, though, is the home of mole poblano and chiles en nogada, two dishes considered integral to the Mexican culinary identity. They’re also the home of tinga, al pastor, tacos arabes, and a range of sweets including camote, rompope, and dulces de Santa Clara. So I knew I was stopping (chiles en nogada and tinga poblana are two of my favorite dishes), but I figured I could get my fill in two days.
I was wrong. I’m not sure I could ever tire of Puebla. Not only was the food terrific, but I fell in love with the town itself — the architecture, the relaxing yet vibrant Zocolo, the college town atmosphere. I could live there and be happy. I know I could eat there and be happy. I’ve done that.
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Another reason I insisted we visit Puebla is that I had eaten at Taqueria Puebla in Chicago and they had given me a taste for Poblana street foods, dishes like tacos arabes and cemitas which I had never tried before. When researching where to eat, it was these delicacies I was most interested in.
My wife still lusts for Tacos Tony. I can’t think of another place, whether here or abroad, I’ve ever heard her authentically do the Homer drool for besides Tacos Tony. But the mere mention of its name sends her into sensuous salivations. I fully expect her to yell out its name in bed some day.
It’s understandable. Tony was her first. We walked the several blocks from the Zocolo passing doorway after doorway of places that my wife insisted were plenty good. If the smell of twirling meat, dancing in front of hot wood coals, sweating beads of luscious fat didn’t change her mind, then by the first bite she was convinced.
Puebla is home to a large Lebanese population. When they immigrated, they brought their upright spit-roasted meats with them. In the U.S. we’re most familiar with al pastor, marinated and spit roasted pork. But in Puebla, pork unadorned is actually more common. That’s what Tacos Tony serves. There are three main choices: tortas, tacos, and tacos arabes. The latter uses pita bread instead of tortillas.
We tried all three. The meat is like roasted instead of fried carnitas. It has a well-seasoned, crispy and caramelized layer that yields to succulent and juicy pork. The tortas come on a much better roll than tortas here or in Mexico City. The bread is more substantial, less Wonder-like. The pita seems more like a cross between a flour tortilla and the pita I know. It’s actually better than what I can get in most Lebanese restaurants in Portland. Each antojitos is very simple. It’s just starch and meat, the latter clearly being the star. But it’s so good there’s no reason to do too much with it.
In the same area of town, and just as good, is Super Tortas Puebla. (Actually, both Tacos Tony and Super Tortas Puebla have multiple locations.) They have a huge menu of sandwiches at ridiculously cheap prices.
My wife got the pollo, nicely poached chicken and slices of avocado on the best bun of the trip. I would have been happy with their bun for a gourmet sandwich at a local artisan bakery here in Portland. I got the toluquena, one of their specialties with milanesa, chorizo, and salchicha on a sesame seed hoagie roll (aka, a cemita). The salchicha in this case was hot dog sliced down the middle and grilled. The sandwich also had both avocado and frijoles. Mexicans do excess better than almost any other culture. Only Mexicans would put three different forms of pork on the same sandwich and then balance that richness with larded beans and avocado. If it takes a year off my life, it was probably worth it. Honestly, though, it was balanced. The diced chorizo carried the seasoning and the spice. The hot dog added sweetness. The milanesa lent its earthy fried starch flavor. With a little salsa for tanginess, it was perfect.
In addition to salsa, they gave an interesting set of condiments for our meal: pickled carrots and jalapenos, chipotles, chile flakes, and a salad of mixed cooked veggies and, I think, scrambled eggs.
(Just as an aside: I was impressed with how clean Super Tortas Puebla was, too. They even had a little handwashing basin for customers in the dining area, a nice touch since walking around in Mexico can make your grimy in a hurry.)
We did try one more taco and torta spot, La Princesa, partly because it was right off the Zocolo and their huge spits of meat, while clearly not going to be as good as that from Tacos Tony — were so oversized, so absurdly over-the-top, that I had to give them a try.
La Princesa served both marinated and unmarinated meat. We got a cemita arabe and two tacos arabes. Neither the meat nor the implements for holding holding the meat were as good as the other places, but they were acceptable. The meat was drier and less flavorful, though charred more than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. The bun was insubstantial and the pitas were too soft and doughy.
Puebla had plenty of options to satisfy our sweet tooths — or, rather, to give us that extra energy we needed at such a high altitudes, as we told ourselves. My favorite was La Churreria Antigua Catedral. I love churros, but won’t eat them anymore unless fresh. Also, I prefer lighter, less bready, churros like you most often find at street vendors. Antigua Catedral met both of these prerequisites. Day or night, they were always packed with good reason.
Everything is made fresh in the window to tempt and amaze passersby. Pate a choux from a large bowl heaped high with the dough gets stuffed into an extruder which then pushes out the star-shaped columns into bubbling hot oil. The golden brown pipe of fried dough is then tossed into cinnamon sugar and laid out ready to be bagged for customers.
Like El Moro, hot chocolate is large part of their business. I’d say El Moro’s chocolate is better, but I prefer Antigua Catedral’s churros, which are light and crisp, but yield to a moist and airy interior.
We visited another churreria while in Puebla, but it was a weak imitation of the best. It was called, unimaginitively, La Churreria and was right on the Zocolo. Their specialty was a thick, dense churro smothered in cajeta, the sweet and tangy Mexican caramel. It was better than their standard churros which were pre-cooked, dry, and chewy. But there was no point returning here once we found Antigua Catedral.
We also toured the Calle de los Dulces, a multi-block section of road populated with candy shops specializing in Poblana confections. Most of the shops carry similar items. Don’t be confused by signs noting that their candies are all from Santa Clara. That refers to the nunnery where many of the famous sweets were invented.
Camotes are one of the local favorites. They’re delicate sweet potato pastes, often mixed with other flavors. Bocados are a “mouthful” — large sticky rounds of sweetened coconut mixed with mostly fruit flavors. There were also little tartlets with various sugary fillings and jamoncillo, a caramel and nut paste with a dry fudgy texture.
I’ve never seen such a giant seletion of candied fruits and vegetables. Anything that could be fit in a jar seemed to be candied, from items you’d expect, like limes to things that while unexpected still worked quite well, such as strips of cactus paddle. Several shops were also selling exquisite little colored sugar sculptures of things like skulls (calaveritas) and long-necked chickens.
We didn’t venture far beyond the Zocolo, rarely anything outside of walking distance. Since I didn’t have many recommendations from those I trusted, we had to rely primarily on guidebooks for restaurants. Ultimately, we only went to one true restaurant, Fonda de Santa Clara.
Fonda de Santa Clara opened in 1965 in order to make the regional foods of Puebla found in home kitchens and markets easily available for visitors. They specialize in Poblana classics such as moles, chiles en nogada, pipians, mixiotes, tinga, and so on. The night we were there, escamoles (ant roe) and maguey worms were seasonal specials, too.
We started with the botana poblana, a mixed plate of antojitos: gordita, molote, and chalupa. The gordita was small, stuffed with beans and topped with cheese and crema. The molote was a thick tortilla topped with a tinga. The chalupa was more like a quesadilla — an empenada stuffed with squash blossom, cheese, and julienned chiles. On the side was a salsa cruda, consisting primarily of tomatoes. Each was fine, though not at the same level as El Bajio’s antojitos in DF.
My wife got the manchamanteles, normally a favorite dish of mine and my favorite mole. It has a foundation of fruit, giving it a sweeter flavor than most moles. This one was overly fruity, having little chile flavor. Instead, the most prominent secondary flavor was cinnamon. My wife liked the sauce fine, but the chicken was too dry. I thought the sauce was too one-dimensional. No complexity. It was certainly not in the same class as Cafe Azul’s manchamanteles, which is still my gold standard.
I got the mole poblano. Chiles en nogada weren’t in season. If we had visited in the fall I wouldn’t have thought twice about which of the two most Poblana of all entrees to get. It would have been the chiles en nogada. The dark sauce was very chocolatey, more bitter than sweet. It had a silken texture only disturbed by the scattering of sesame seeds. The chicken wasn’t very meaty, but unlike my wife’s breast meat, was tender and succulent. The rice on the side was quite good, too.
We didn’t trust them enough to order dessert.
The restaurant is cozy, the service attentive, the decor festive. As was usually the case on this trip (the exception being in the Polanco district of Mexico City), the attempt at midscale dining in Mexico didn’t live up to my expectations — expectations established by the wonderful low-end dining.
But it was a minor letdown in the midst of two days of fabulous eating and site-seeing. Puebla is a gorgeous, relaxing, inviting, culturally rich town that should not be passed over, treated like Mexico City’s unsophisticated cousin, or the town with moles, but not as many as Oaxaca. Some day I’d like to live there, and when I do you can visit me. We can sit under the large shade trees of the Zocolo, eating our cemitas and tacos arabes, watching the jovenes holding hands, making out defiantly in front of the large cathedral, kids playing in the fountain. You’ll never want to leave either.
Ud. hizo una excelente descripción de la comida poblana, al mismo tiempo
breve y detallada, felicidades.