The Big Apple goes to Mexico

It's nice when your hometown recognizes and seemingly appreciates you. Especially when your place of birth happens to be full of the most competitive, cutthroat sell-your-own-grandmother-for-a-crumb-of-the-pie kind of folk. Yes, I'm referring to the Big Apple.

A native New Yorker, I spent my early years in Greenwich Village, then still a mythical place inhabited by Bohemians and Italian immigrants. Later we moved up to the Upper West Side, the world of Zabar’s, the Thalia cinema, and suffering Jewish intellectuals like Woody Allen and my father (critic Richard Gilman). My twenties wizzed by in Brooklyn. I then made the big leap over psychological and physical borders to another world, Mexico, where I’m now a citizen. I’m here to stay. I no longer have even a thumb planted in what my Russian grandparents alluded to as 'ze old country'. And I've become an authority, of sorts, on eating in my adopted hometown, Mexico City. So when New York Magazine chose to honor our sprawling metropolis with a feature spread it was with pride that two dedicated food aficionados and I named our favorite hangouts. It's because we all know how cool it is here, and we want the world to know it as well.
In addition to me dishing the fish, read the opinions of:

Market-tour queen Miss Lesley Téllez, themijachronicles.com, a transplanted Angelina with Mexican roots as deep as a Yucatecan cenote. She's come back to the homeland and wants to stay. She also spends more time in the markets than anyone I know, vendors included. So wherever she says to eat mole is where to eat it.

And Sr. Guillermo Ysusi - elpurogusto.tumblr.com - born and raised here and knows the city inside and out. A 'salaryman' by day, he's a bloguista by night. He also happens to know where best to knock a few back. They should have also asked him about cantinas...

So take a little trip to New York this week:

http://nymag.com/travel/features/mexico-city-restaurants-2012-2/