BAJEL — Restaurant in Mexico City

Tried this restaurant on christmas day. With only one month opened it shows a really nice level. We got the 5 course menu, (beeing a bit pricey for the city, but not for the space), which you can choose and make it your way. We choose 10 different dishes so we could try more. Starting with an amouse bouche which was pretty interesting, containing a purple sauerkraut, a homemade raspberry bonegar gel and holandaise with the sauerkraut juice, along with it, a crispy toast composed with cereals, lima beans and its pure, very fresh. The chef claims that he wants to work with some fermentation and traditional local products. We start the menu with the section of insects, trying one dish with escamoles (ant eggs) that was amazing, the texture was untuos, taste like earth a bit mushroomy but fresh bc it cantaint aguacate and chile serrano, on top a crispy ant made with burnt onion, that disnt taste too much. The other course was the chicatana ants, which we didn’t like too much, I guess the flavours all together didn’t work for us. Following up a bit more fermentation, this time kefir (great acidity, but too sweet for me) foam-like, betabel (purple craut) and nuts, interesting and nice combinarion but my taste was always looking for some more salty, taste like dessert. Onion soup with jamon emulsion, and. Oaxacan cheese. Nice soup, warm, savoury, served with jamon chicharron, also crispy and tasty, if smth i’ll ask for more jamon flavour on the soup which wasnt too much tasty. Following with some eggplant in escabeche along with a pure made with black and white garlic, some crispy layer made with chard and also some chard cream, nice course maybe didnt work as much as the other ingredients the texture of the eggplant. One of the most interesting dishes was the totoaba (croacker fish) with a huitlacoche pil pil and some stirfried huitlacoche. Being for me huitlacoche one of the most amazing ingredients that I ever seen, it ws such a nice idea to use emulsified in the pil pil, the obly thing i’ll say is that since the dish was a big portion, and the end felt a bit overwhelming aince there was nothing else to break the earthy/unamu flavour, just a bit fresh cilantro (really nice, but not enough). We go with some lechon (suckling pig) served with pipian (kinda green mole) and some mexican herbs, fresh and in tempura, ended with a demiglace made with pork ear. Fresh, spicy, spiced as well, meaty, i guess that’s a nice dish that express perfectly the mexican flavours, i liked pretty much the pipian and reminded me a lot to a thai green curry. On the other side we had a fish served with seaweed. There’s a placton emulsed with aji, we fins some kombu (roasted that was amazing flavour) egg roe and alot of seaweed, 7 kinds they said. I would love to have again this dish, but i’ll add, ofc thats only my opinion, a sashimi cut, instead of a cooked fish served cold, i find the combination was amazingly good, really interesting but missing a nice texture of a fish that felt a bit rubbery, i’d love a fatty sashimi cut on there. A stop to clean abit the palate, an interesting interpretation of paletas (local frutty icecream) made with homemade berries vinegar and served really elegant. Ending with to meat courses, we had the sweetbreads, perfectly cooked and tasty, served with cauliflower pure, dried cauliflower (didnt work as good as the other dried textures) and pasilla chile sauce (i guess it was pasilla or maybe im wrong). A really tasty dish, overpowering abit the sauce but that combines reallly good, and u also fins a bir crumbs of what i think was oaxacan matured cheese. On the other side we had wagyu beef (which i understood was mexican) served with a really tasty and interesting bread yeast sauce , some perfectly cooked tupimanbur and a demiglace made with pork ear and infused with some mustard. Honestly, this dish doesnt need the wagyu, that was totally eclipsed by the other ingredients, i mean the wagyu was good, but man that tupinambur with the yeast dauce and the meatty flavor form the pork saue...

Frustratingly close to excellent. Some really good food, and I’d say the first 3 or so courses we had we were doing the happy dance in our seats. And then they served us overcooked lobster. Yes, i realise how spoilt that sounds, but they are charging Michelin prices and the fact is that the food was not consistently up to that standard. We ate it, but made clear the lobster dish fell far short of expectations. They listened attentively to the feedback, and presumably passed it on, but made no effort to rectify the situation, e.g. by recooking the dish or providing some kind of drink to recompense. That’s up to them, but offering some glass of whatever is a very easy way to placate a customer when the kitchen has fallen short of the expected standard. The desserts were also merely average in my view but fine. The most damaging course was the slowcooked beef with parsnip purée. One of the earlier courses was pork belly, another slow cooked dish. It was tasty and served with various accompaniments which elevated it to a high level. But the beef just felt lazy, and, in the context of the overcooked lobster, like slowcooked courses were covering for a lack of skill in producing a la minute dishes. Neither of us finished the beef - it just felt very uninspired and unworthy of comparison with the preceding courses. I would personally advise removing it from the menu. The service was exemplary and setting lovely. The restaurant was mostly empty on a Tuesday night which didn’t make for great atmosphere. But you can tell this place has great potential as some of the dishes, like the mole and cauliflower, were truly great, multi Michelin star worthy dishes. Currently there is much room for improvement, but the...

Sobre paseo de la reforma, exactamente antes de la embajada de los Estados Unidos, encontrarás la fachada de una casona de esas de hace más de cien años que representaban la opulencia de la época, ahora arropada por la estructura moderna de un edifico de cuarenta pisos que impresiona por su arquitectura destacable por altura y estrechez.

Justo en medio de la fachada, se asoma la entrada de un pasillo de dos automóviles de ancho, blanco, bien iluminado, que pasa por lo que aparentan ser las escaleras de la vieja casona, un pre-lobby del hotel, y por último, el área de recepción del Valet Parking con elevadores para auto.

El pre-lobby, con finos y minimalistas acabados indican donde está el elevador que te conduce al lobby principal, a la mitad del edificio. Al abrirse las puertas, unas escaleras que cortan la torre a lo ancho y acomodado con una estructura poligonal, te permiten ir hacia la parte inferior del espacio de doble altura. El final de las escaleras es la bienvenida a Bajel. Pasando la incipiente pero bien anunciada recepción, estaba “Chuy”, el jefe de mixología del hotel con todos los conceptos que éste ofrece (cuenta con otras opciones, como el lobby bar, Cityzen, Freehouse, y el propio Bajel. Todos muy recomendables, pero bastante diferentes.).

Para empezar, la organización del lugar. Uno entra por un pasillo que por un lado tiene una vitrina llena de finas bebidas, y por la otra, la barra, que permite vislumbrar paseo de la reforma hacia el castillo con sus ricos trazos porfiristas. En esa barra se ofrecen 4-5 bebidas firma como aperitivos antes de pasar a la mesa. Mi hermosa acompañante pidió un Tequila-Martini perfumado con esencia de trufa, el cual mencionó que era de buen gusto. En mi caso, pedí un negroni a base de Henessy con un excelente equilibrio entre el amargor de los cítricos deshidratados y el matiz licoroso.

Ya en la mesa, el espacio es acogedor, contrastando lo oscuro de las paredes, los tonos cobrizo en los adornos alrededor, y el espacio bien iluminado con luz natural, con mesas y sillas rústicas y bien estilizadas que te invitan a reconocer el espacio, y la cocina abierta al fondo, con una gran barra de mármol donde uno puede ver la acción gastronómica de primera mano.

Optamos por el menú de cuatro tiempos, todos con su respectivo con maridaje. De entrada, comenzamos con una “galleta” conformada por una base crocante de arroz y ajonjolí, al que le seguía una espuma de aguacate, cubos de lo que parece era lobina, y una decoración a base de un germen con flores comestibles. Se acompañó del que para mí fue el mejor vino blanco de la tarde.

Al centro, espuma de mantequilla al ajo con aceite de aguacate y pimienta recién molida, posteriormente, unos camarones cubiertos en salsa blanca, acompañados de caviar de salmón, tinta de pulpo y espárragos, después, una sopa de cebolla, la cual se acompañaba con una espuma de queso Oaxaca, que por si misma valía la pena.

De plato fuerte, y acompañado por el único vino tinto, fue el pollito de leche, que sin duda resultó en una carne blanca bastante suave para las dos piezas que se presentaban por plato, aunque de la batería de platillos fue el menos entusiasta de todos, aunque no por eso decepcionante, sino más bien conservador.

De postre, y acompañado por un vino dulce que no era empalagoso, fueron las texturas, bolitas de helado más cercanas a una gelatina de guanábana y frambuesa junto con una bola de merengue sobre una cama de polvo de éste, que permitía cerrar con la experiencia.

Bajel es una experiencia gastronómica muy interesante para todos aquellos que quieran alta cocina mexicana y buena mixología sin tener que pasar por las aglomeraciones y las complicados esquemas de reservación que ofrecen otros lugares del mismo nivel, aunque no necesariamente de la misma calidad. Sin duda, es un lugar para una ocasión especial en un ambiente cuasi-íntimo y personal, en el que los pequeños detalles, como la atención por tu nombre, te...