Salon Familiar La Mascota Cantina — Restaurant in Mexico City

Anthony Bourdain came here and that's how we knew about it. Apparently, it's not a big deal for them here. No one local person we spoke to knew about it, which I guess we should be thankful. We arrived on a Sunday night, and it was pretty chill. The location is near the city center down a small street but by Sunday night, the streets were kind of dead. We weren't even sure if it was open.

There weren't a lot of people there, just a handful. But numerous servers standing around waiting to serve you. Luckily we had a spanish speaker in our group of backpacking travelers to help translate everything. Apparently, Sunday is seafood day. They have about 15 different dishes which they will keep bringing out to you as long as you keep drinking. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, they only had 4 dishes left but we were OK with it.

So you have to start with 2 drinks, then order more as you get more food. The food is FREE, it comes with your meals (very much like they do in Granada Spain). But the drinks are BIG with extremely generous pours.

I was showing our friends photos from Bourdain's show and one of the servers asked if he can see it. Then he took my phone and showed it to his co workers. I guess they didn't realize how popular Bourdain is. So I showed them a clip n youtube of the show. It was pretty funny.

The food they served were really delicious with a seafood soup, huge prawns soaked in some spicy sauce with rice, a type of quesadilla with seafood and raw oysters. Yes, we ate the oysters and it was perfectly fine!

With the party of 6 and 3 drinks each (range of beer, tequila shots, wine, margaritas and mixed drinks) with all the free food, the bill only came out to about $15USD per person with tip! I love the peso...

It is hilarious how accurate the Google reviews are.

It's classic cantina spot with bad food. We went Sunday at 7pm, which is late for this type of place. I have a feeling that the food experience here is highly variable. As in, they made most of the food at 10am, and if you're there at lunchtime, it's pretty good. But if you're there at 8pm, you're still eating food from the morning.

This was Sunday, seafood day (the food rotates). The food was horrifically bad, just as the prior reviews stated.

We had the paella, which was both cold and overcooked. Yet it was the best dish we had. The "fish fillet" was cold and had a tough elastic texture unlike any fish I've ever been served. Like it was undercooked, then left to congeal under a dim warming lamp for hours. I was unable to slice a piece off with the butter knife given in the table setting.

And at the end... they tried to charge us for more drinks that we ordered! Exactly as the other reviews mentioned!! All worst fears confirmed. They resolved this after we protested, though.

Drinks hover around the 90-120 peso range, which is pricey but not exorbitant.

Despite all this, Mascota does have an old school charm to it. For best results, go early, have less than zero expectations for the food, and pray that you get lucky. I have a feeling that this could easily be a decent cantina if you arrive when the...

Small bar restaurant modeled on several of the more historic cantinas in the Centro Historico. Corner location with doors on both adjoining streets. Service started out great, but then went down hill. Although the place wss not busy, once seated, it was hard to get the servers attention. Servers spent most of their time standing in a gaggle and joking around. Once I finally got a menu, I ordered a beer, which seemed to take a long time to arrive at my table. Then server left and did not take my order. Food on the menu seemed way over priced. A domestic beer cost more than $10.00 US at the current exchange rate. That is almost double what even the best places charge. I got the distinct feeling that I was being ignored by the servers. I finished my beer, went to the cashier, paid for the beer and left, no tip. Will not return. Maybe they didn't like the way I looked or they have had bad experiences with tourists, I do not know, but I had a bad...