Mexico City is certainly a blend of the old and new. Yesterday I wrote about a house that is nearly five centuries old. Today I am writing about a 21st century shopping mall that would not be out of place anywhere in the modern, developed world.
Tuesday evening Alejandro and I met for supper at one of Mexico City's largest malls, Parque Delta. The mall was constructed next to the inner belt freeway on the former location of a baseball stadium.
Of course the mall was decorated for Christmas.
The mall has a variety of restaurants including several U.S. chains such as the Cheesecake Factory and P.F. Chang's. We met however at a Mexican chain called Toks.
I recently wrote about two of the largest Mexican restaurant chains, Sanborns and VIPS. Toks is a smaller chain. Although we like VIPS for breakfast, we think that the Toks is better for dining. I'm not saying that it has out-of-this-world, gourmet food, but sometimes you just want ordinary food. I have found the quality of the meals there to be quite good. It is, however, more expensive than VIPS.
I started with "sopa norteña", a recipe from northern Mexico. It was sort of a cross between tortilla soup and black bean soup, and it was served with garnishes of cheese, avocado, chiles, cilantro and chorizo sausage. It was very tasty.
Alejandro had a mixed grill of steak, chicken breast and pork with guacamole on the side.
My dish was a mixture of chicken breast, strips of poblano chiles, corn, potatoes and cheese in a mild sauce, with tortillas on the side.
The service was rather slow, but, all in all, it was a good meal.
Hmmm, of course I would have gone for PF Chang's or Cheesecake Factory. When you seldom get USA food, one eats it when one has the chance. Actually, PF Chang's now has their dishes in Costco in the frozen food department and they are quite easy to fix and very tasty.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I have only been to P.F. Chang's and the Cheesecake Factory only once. They just aren't conveniently located to where I live in suburban Cleveland.
DeleteAlejandro has been to Chang's in CDMX and didn't care for it, but he did like the Cheesecake Factory.
Whenever I take pictures in Mexico City malls, mall security always finds me and says, "no fotos, gringo."
ReplyDeleteParque Delta is quite nice.
The only time I was told "no photos" was in the Superama supermarket. With the Christmas decorations there were loads of Mexicans taking pictures in the malls.
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