When You Can’t Get Into Contramar, Entremar Has Your Back
This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to our very opinionated editors’ favorite things to eat, drink, and buy.
My Co-Star app tells me that my Virgo moon and rising signs make me a planner. It’s clear when I go on vacation. The Google maps, intense itineraries, and saved Instagram posts prove this. But you can’t plan every single minute of your vacation, especially when you’re with seven of your closest friends in Mexico City. And for that, I thank Entremar.
If you know anything about Mexico City (or have followed the BA staff on Instagram recently), you’ve probably heard of Contramar, chef Gabriela Cámara’s iconic seafood restaurant. And you’re probably all too familiar with the food: that butterflied grilled fish, carefully painted with red and green salsas; a plate of four pristine tuna tostadas topped with slivers of avocado; and the mints at the end of the meal stamped with the “Contramar” logo. So you know the deal. Immediately after you book your flight to Mexico City and secure the perfect Airbnb in Condesa or Roma Norte, you make your Contramar reservation. Right? Well kids, I didn’t do that.
Somehow I forgot to make that essential reservation until it was too late. On top of that, we were a party of eight in the city during a long weekend, which meant the restaurant was busy. As in there was no way we’d get seated, and I was panicking. (I define FOMO by the food I’m not eating in a specific moment.) I needed to have that grilled snapper! I yearned for the tuna tostada! And that’s when Entremar saved the day.
Contramar’s helpful staff directed me to the restaurant’s the much-lesser-known sister spot mid-meltdown. It’s got nearly the exact same menu—and somehow none of the hype. We slipped into Entremar on our last night in the city, and it was everything I dreamed of. We ate the perfectly charred fish with still-warm tortillas, those freakin’ tuna tostadas that I still think about, and succulent stone crabs, a new favorite. Sure the mints at the end weren’t stamped with Contramar, but they did bear the name of a place that means so much more to me now: Entremar.
Go there: Entremar
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
