Ready to live your Mexican Period Drama? Dine at the Gran Cantina Filomeno

I’m a sucker for a bully cantina. I’m besides a large instrumentality of Porfirian architecture. Mexico City, to my delight, is simply a hotbed of those eye-catching façades blending French, neoclassical, and Mexican plan elements. So erstwhile my day invited maine to meal astatine the caller Gran Cantina Filomeno, an optimal mix, I each but ran determination successful my kitten heels. Obviously, I was elevating my look — and my tallness — for this elegant outing.

We arrived unneurotic astatine the treble marble staircase encased by an iron-wrought rotunda, crowned by a bronze bull suspended successful mid-air. What my day didn’t cognize was that arsenic I ascended the expansive entrance, I imagined for a little infinitesimal that I was an aristocratic woman of a bygone Mexico, donning an elegant Belle Époque gown. A welcoming hostess guided america astir a woody barroom into a lively eating country with precocious ceilings clad successful dangling ivy. With each step, I delved deeper into Mexico’s storied pre-Revolutionary past, acknowledgment to an abundance of 19th-century artworks that see Victorian furniture, archetypal stained-glass windows and ornate crystal chandeliers. 

If you spot a bronze bull suspended successful mid-air, you’ve travel to the close place. (Gran Cantina Filomeno)

We slipped into carved woody seats arsenic she handed america each a bound paper with the missive F inscribed successful gold. I thumbed done the assorted pages of Mexican specialties earlier stopping connected a abbreviated blurb of the cantina’s history. Wow, I thought, this spot isn’t a cantina, it’s a surviving museum.

And that’s erstwhile I decided to constitute an nonfiction astir it. 

The chaotic travel of a Mexico City mansion

From a millionaire’s mansion to a refuge for Spanish exiles, a girls’ boarding schoolhouse to a celebrated creation gallery, Rio de Janeiro 54 has lived a afloat Mexico City life.

The mansion-turned-restaurant’s origins tin beryllium traced backmost to the aboriginal 1900s. That’s erstwhile Daniel Ruiz Benítez, designer and builder, oversaw its operation arsenic a single-family location connected the southeast country of Parque Rio de Janeiro. Its blase benignant satisfied the plan preferences of Mexico City’s elite of the time, galore of whom roseate to prominence during the past precocious ended Porfirio Díaz regime, and who heavy favored French and Neoclassical architecture.

In the precocious 1930s, during the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas, the backstage mansion transformed into Casa de España, becoming a refuge for Spanish intelligence exiles fleeing Franco’s dictatorship. The exile assemblage soon became El Colegio de México, wherever refugees joined Mexican scholars successful precocious humanities and societal sciences research. Some of these residents would go household names. Alfonso Reyes, for example, served arsenic the college’s archetypal president. Nobel Prize-winning writer Octavio Paz had an bureau connected the crushed floor, and notable scholars similar Daniel Cosío Villegas and José Gaos besides worked there. Even avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky lived successful the annex adjacent door.

By the mid-20th century, Rio de Janeiro 54 went from lodging Mexico’s intelligence elite to becoming a Catholic boarding schoolhouse for girls. For decades, it remained a female-only residence until the 1980s brought different melodramatic transformation.

From creation assemblage to restaurant

The façade of Rio de Janeiro 54 circa 1970, erstwhile it was inactive a boarding schoolhouse for girls. (OMR Gallery)

For the adjacent 30 years, the mansion housed modern artwork arsenic the renowned OMR Gallery, founded by Patricia Ortiz Monasterio and Jaime Riestra. The assemblage became 1 of Latin America’s astir influential modern creation spaces, helping found Roma Norte arsenic Mexico City’s arts district. Where Octavio Paz erstwhile pondered poetry, cutting-edge artists similar Gabriel Rico and Jose Dávila present displayed their work.

OMR Gallery moved to Calle Córdoba successful 2015, and that’s erstwhile this building’s latest, and possibly astir theatrical, section began.

The Filomeno fantasy

The cantina’s translation started with a novel. In 2010, Daniel Liebsohn — 1 of Mexico’s starring antiquarians and creation collectors — published “Filomeno,” chronicling the adventures of a handsome charro surviving successful the last years of the Porfiriato era. Liebsohn, unneurotic with partners Santiago García Galván and George Diamandopoulos, decided to bring his fictional satellite to beingness by transforming Rio de Janeiro 54 into a surviving depository of Mexico’s aristocratic past.

But here’s the amusive part: nobody’s rather definite if Filomeno was existent oregon invented. The cantina displays a striking 1909 representation of the dashing charro Filomeno, implicit with a alternatively pronounced backside that draws each diner’s eye. Actual idiosyncratic oregon fictional character? Una nunca sabe, and that’s portion of the charm.

150 antiques and 1 precise diligent team

Transforming this abstraction into an authentic play cantina meant preserving each imaginable archetypal item portion some making country for a flourishing edifice and gathering analyzable information codes. The restoration, completed successful 2024 aft OMR Gallery’s departure successful 2015, kept the century-old stained solid windows, hand-painted woody panels and Austrian crystal chandeliers that had survived implicit a period of vocation changes.

The squad sourced and installed implicit 150 authentic pieces from the 1880s to 1915. One centerpiece, a monumental 19th-century Victorian showcase from an aged pharmacy, is wholly original. The representation assemblage is peculiarly striking. While each coating evokes play elegance, galore are downright entertaining. “Carmencita,” for example, shows a stout kid successful a bluish formal sporting an look of implicit boredom.

Porfirian epoch decadence is recreated successful Gran Cantina Filomeno’s eating room. (Gran Cantina Filomeno)

Just similar Liebsohn’s novel, the cantina offers a playful, somewhat tongue-in-cheek instrumentality connected Mexican precocious nine during the opulent Porfiriato era.

Dining wherever poets erstwhile worked

An impeccably-dressed waiter mildly places a steaming food fillet successful beforehand of maine and refills my wine. Before I tin instrumentality a bite, a mariachi set approaches our table. When my day politely declines a backstage ballad (grounds for removal!), the vocalist turns to me. “Would you similar to petition a opus for the gentleman?” I concisely see it, past determine I’d similar to eat. “Next time,” we promise, and the set wanders disconnected to another, hopefully much engaging, pair.

The paper was crafted by Chef Alfredo González Rivas, who researched accepted cantina dishes that erstwhile brought unneurotic Mexico’s moving and elite classes. During the Porfiriato era, cantinas served arsenic spaces for statement and networking, making them cleanable venues for some concern deals and societal gatherings. You’ll find options similar sopes de tuétano (bone marrow sopes) and chamorro en su jugo alongside classics similar mole poblano and Baja food tacos. Food arrives connected glassware, ceramics, and silver-plated serveware reminiscent of the crook of the 20th century.

It’s surreal to deliberation that wrong this space, Octavio Paz erstwhile had an office, Spanish exiles erstwhile hid from a dictatorship, and boarding schoolhouse girls from the countryside studied. And present I am, stuffing my look with guacamole.

A gathering that refuses to beryllium boring

As our evening coiled down and the mariachi set serenaded different tables, I marveled astatine this building’s refusal to slice into obscurity. While galore historical mansions crumble oregon crook into museums wherever you can’t interaction anything, this 1 continues to reinvent itself portion staying existent to its elegant bones.

Before leaving, my day and I instrumentality a speedy circuit and past divided momentarily to sojourn the restroom. While washing my hands, I announcement that the walls are adorned with alternatively risqué posters of handsome Mexican men. I curse I took a photo. Only, I can’t find it successful the stacks of ocular snapshots that unrecorded successful my Photos App. Was it real? Or did I ideate it? I guess, successful the end, it doesn’t matter.

Whether Filomeno was existent oregon invented hardly matters either. What matters is that this gathering — with its period of chaotic vocation changes — proves that the champion mode to grant the past mightiness conscionable beryllium to support surviving successful it, 1 meal astatine a time.

Bethany Platanella is a question planner and manner writer based successful Mexico City. She lives for the dopamine deed that comes straight aft booking a level ticket, exploring section markets, practicing yoga and munching connected caller tortillas. Sign up to person her Sunday Love Letters to your inbox, peruse her blog or travel her on Instagram.