It’s been just over a year since we visited La Condesa and this trip we tried lunch instead of dinner. It is a really small one star Michelin restaurant that has been open about a year and a half. There are about 8 closely set small bare wood tables. The use of mirrors helps make the place seem bigger but it has a cozy atmosphere. Music is in the background and the chef Indra Carrillo is in the kitchen but makes frequent trips to the dining room to bring food and check on diners. The menu offers tastings of 3, 4, or 6 courses and wine pairings are available. We chose the 6 course menu and ordered our own wine. Portion control and pacing are both good and the staff is all super friendly, helpful and speak great English.
The meal started with a corn tostada with goat cheese. The tostada was crisp delicate corn lace covered with creamy goat cheese. Good flavors for both parts to make a winning starting combination.
A salsify tempura was served topped with a sorrel mayonnaise. It had a softly crisp exterior with a strongly flavored mayo that brought out the flavor. It was good.
Green apple sorbet with radish espuma was inside a jar topped with pine nut crumble. After opening the jar you were to mix the crumble into the sorbet combination. All parts of this were brimming with flavors and the crumble added a great texture to really make the dish pop. It was wonderful.
Bread service started with a small personal baguette with a warm doughy center and a great crusty exterior.
Warm green asparagus from Anjou were plated with nettle sauce, razor clams and pea sprouts. Hints of arugula enhanced the wonderfully strong flavored asparagus and clams. Some of the leaves were a little hard to cut but that would be the only ding here. A crispy noodle (that I believe the server called fish chips) gave it a crunch. The pleasant flavors blended nicely with a good mix of textures.
An agnolotti was stuffed with veal, spinach and herbs and served in a spicy broth. Roasted coriander added to the flavor of the tender pasta bites. The broth was delicious and well flavored. It felt like a light dish but really sang with taste.
Sliced bread was an additional bread service. It was really crusty and perfect to eat with the food.
Pan fried barbon (type of red mullet) was plated with sage and kohlrabi in buttermilk. The fish was excellently cooked and went great with the rich sauce. Some creamy mashed potatoes were hidden underneath. This was a wonderful dish with great flavors and textures.
The breast of a Poularde fattened for 130 days (chicken) was served with fregula and an artichoke emulsion. The fat had been nicely rendered from the wonderful crisp skin. A well thickened sauce was very flavorful and went great with the bird and the pasta. An excellent dish.
Slightly poached sweet potatoes were served with mandarin sorbet and saffron. The potatoes were sliced and poached in syrup. There was a delicious moist cake hidden underneath that had soaked up a bunch of the syrup and was topped with a bit of fresh orange. All was topped with a well flavored mandarin sorbet. The orange flavor dominated and went well with the sweet nutty cake. It was fun to have raw sweet potatoes and although I think they added more color than flavor they did add a fun texture to the dish. The powder had the taste of orange rind and so brought a balancing bitterness to the otherwise really sweet dish. I liked this one a lot.
The second dessert was called textures of chocolates with white sesame. There was a chocolate mousse topped with ginger ice cream and flanked by a white sesame cookie and a chocolate sabayon cookie. The ice cream had a wonderfully strong ginger flavor and that went perfectly with sesame and chocolate. I really loved the white sesame cookie and overall it was another winning sweet dish.
A final treat came in a fancy box and that was a pistachio profiterole. It was a good pastry stuffed with creamy goodness whose top was covered with crispy sweetness. It was nice and fun to eat.
