On our 2nd full day in Puebla, We booked Carlos Riveros’ Mid-day Food Walk and were so happy with the decision. Carlos met us at our hotel near the Zocalo at around 11 AM for any easy walk around the historical city center. Along the way we stopped at 4-5 local restaurants/food stalls to sample some of the regional specialties Puebla is famous for. We stopped at places that university students catch a quick inexpensive breakfast, sampled local sandwiches, Arab tacos and candies.
Another highlight of the walk was time spent in the Catedral Basilica de Puebla; aka the Puebla Cathedral. Carlos went into great detail explaining the role of Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza not only in the construction of the Cathedral but also his leadership in implementing many of the progressive and enlightened for its day (17th Century) social services provided to the indigenous people of the region.
The interior of the Cathedral more than matches it outside grandeur.
Carlos also took the time to walk us upstairs at one side of the Cathedral and through the Biblioteca Palafoxiana. Established in 1646, it was the first public library in the New World and includes volumes dating back to the mid-15th Century. Adjacent to the library is a first-class gallery with all manors of art work. Among the statuary is an impressive bigger than life-size icon from the altar in the Cathedral.
At the beginning of our tour with Carlos we asked if we could include a stop at a shop selling Mezcal produced in Puebla State and at the end of the day on our way back to our hotel, we stopped by the restaurant Mesón Sacristía de la Compañía. We enjoyed a delightful and intoxicating afternoon break talking and sampling some good and even better mezcals with the chef of the traditional restaurant and only to discover when it was time to buy that everything we really liked was actually made in Oaxaca and not Puebla.
At that point, the chef pulled out a couple small bottles of mezcal actually produced in Puebla State that we felt obligated to buy, even though it was nowhere near as good as some of the Oaxaca mezcals we tasted. But we were serene in our knowledge that we would be traveling to Oaxaca in a couple days and already knew some of the fine mezcals we would be buying there and taking home!
We had dinner that evening at a small place named Antiqua something located just across Cinco De Mayo from our hotel. It was a cool rainy evening so we both opted for soup: a very good Pozole for me tortilla soup for my wife.
The restaurant is also just around the corner from Barrio del Artista, formally a market but now a walking street lined with very small artist studios. It was raining that night so we ducked in the Coffee Gallery Amparo, a cozy bar/café with live acoustic music. The music was pretty good. The house mezcal was not.