Where To Eat In Roma, Mexico City

When you’re in Mexico City, every path leads to Roma. Located in the heart of the city, and adjacent to some of the other hot areas of CDMX, like Condesa and Juarez, this neighborhood is more bustling than ever. Sure, you'll see combo digital nomads and part-time hot yoga instructors at cafes speaking English, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is where you’ll find some of the very best food, clubs, and bars in town. The area is home to some of the city’s most well-known and legendary restaurants, like Contramar and Rosetta, but you can also find tacos, ceviche, and even excellent bibimbap. Here are all the best restaurants in Roma.

And if you're looking to explore beyond Roma, here's our list of the best restaurants in Mexico City and a guide to the city's top tacos.

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THE SPOTS

This is probably not the first time you’ve heard of Contramar, and it won’t be the last. This place has become legendary for its seafood-focused menu, and you should absolutely make a point to come here for the tuna tostadas and whole fish covered in red and green sauce. You want to be here for lunch—the kitchen closes at 6:30pm most nights (8pm Friday and Saturday), and the upbeat, busy restaurant is at its best during the day when the sprawling dining room becomes an all-out party. If this is your first time in CDMX, a meal at Contramar is essential dining.

CDMX Guide

The Best Restaurants In Mexico City

Plaza Rio de Janeiro could easily be considered the heart of Roma. It’s home to two of the colonia’s most iconic landmarks, La Casa de las Brujas and the statue of David. And it’s where you’ll find some really good restaurants—including Marmota, which might just be the best of them. Run by a lovely Mexican American couple, this place makes some of the heartiest (and best) food in CDMX right now. 

Most of their produce comes from local farms and their meats are all farm-raised. You can also bet that pretty much everything you order (like the smashed baby potatoes with homemade hoja santa yogurt and caviar or the free-range chicken with radicchio salad) will be wood-oven cooked, smokey, and incredibly delicious. Their cocktail menu is impressive, but we always go for one of the many hard cider options here. They go great with anything charred on the menu, which basically means everything.

Chicken is something that Mexico excels at, especially when you consider that it’s a key ingredient of enchiladas, mole, and chilaquiles. So a restaurant entirely focused on poultry is a welcome addition to CDMX. The options here are varied: you can get a Middle Eastern-inspired grilled flour tortilla sandwich slathered with labneh and shredded chicken, as well as the city’s most famous dish, tacos al pastor (with chicken subbed in for pork, of course).

We like to come here for a late lunch and get the whole roasted chicken with a side of rice, potatoes, guacamole, and freshly-pressed corn tortillas. Basically, enough to keep you going until your 9pm dinner reservation. The team behind this fun spot runs Mexico’s most famous churros chain, El Moro, so they’re no strangers in excelling at a short menu.

You maybe already know that Orinoco has some of the best tacos in town, but we’re including it on this list anyway. Their tacos de chicharrón, featuring Monterrey-style fried pork rinds, are as hard to describe as they are to forget. You might be accustomed to crispy, potato chip-like slices of chicharron, but the Orinoco version involves a soft, melt-in-your-mouth interior and seared exterior so you get a mixture of textures—topped off with thin slices of avocado, and served with baby roasted potatoes and an array of homemade salsas.

And, yes, you should also try their tacos al pastor, arguably the best in all of CDMX. In other words: Orinoco is exactly what you’re looking for after a few rounds of mezcal on a Saturday night—especially since they're open until 3:30am every night.

Noodles are the focus at this newish spot from a chef whose grandfather invented one of Mexico’s most coveted snacks, cacahuates Japoneses, or Japanese peanuts. Following in this family tradition, Fideo Gordo fuses traditional Mexican flavors with well-executed Asian dishes. The lamb obi udon, merging barbacoa with serrano chiles and handmade udon noodles, is a standout on the focused but flavorful menu. Don’t just stick to noodles though: the make-your-own tuna and kampachi taquito appetizer is perfect.

Dooriban’s Korean home-cooking style took Mexico City’s Korean food scene by storm after the chef started making “Kimchi Mama Park” out of a ghost kitchen in colonia Juarez. The success of that kimchi was so notable that a freestanding restaurant was inevitable. The kimchi bokkeumbap, a bacon fried rice with that excellent fermented cabbage, is the main event, only eclipsed by the Korean fried chicken wings with a delightfully messy gochujang sauce. If you’ve spent the day walking around Roma, this is a great way to refuel at lunchtime.

Rosetta might be inside a townhouse in Roma, but it feels like it’s actually inside an Italian villa. It’s a beautiful restaurant where you get the sense that every design detail has been carefully considered. The menu is Italian with a Mexican twist, and is on the more expensive side, but our favorite time to be here is lunch, when the place is full of light, the prices are a little lower, and they serve things like al pastor steak tartare and tagliatelle with chile de árbol and Italian sausage. That said, if you’re traveling with a significant other and looking for a romantic night out, dinner at Rosetta should be at the top of your to-do list.

There might be more excellent tacos per square block in Mexico City than anywhere else in the known universe. And while most of them are filled with delicious meats and fish, there are no better vegan tacos than those found at Por Siempre Vegana. The taco de milanesa, served with avocado, is incredible, and worth the almost constant wait for a table here during peak hours. This spot is affordable, and sticks to mostly one thing: 90% of the menu is tacos. Make sure to take advantage of the unlimited free toppings, too.

Wine bars aren’t really a thing (yet) in CDMX, but if the popularity of this place is any indication, that’s going to change. Hugo feels like a Lower East Side transplant but with a Mexican twist, which we guess is what happens when two former New York residents relocate here and open a place. Their wines, of course, are a highlight—largely natural, many from Mexico’s wine region in Valle de Guadalupe, and they have one of the best varieties of orange wines in the city. 

Small plates are the crux of the menu and they keep things simple, with standouts like crab salad with celery and mustard and roasted chicken. This is definitely one of the hardest places in Roma to get a table during peak hours, so make sure to reserve one or show up when your grandparents would.

Máximo Bistrot is a restaurant that’s kind of French, kind of Mexican, and one of the best spots in town for a hot date or group dinner. It’s a fun atrium-like space with great cocktails made of out-there ingredients, and they do really delicious spins on dishes you’ve seen before, like a caesar salad with headcheese. They also have a great wine list, including some Mexican choices, and operate a breakfast/brunch spot called Lalo! that’s just a few blocks away.

In Plaza Rio de Janeiro, new restaurants seem to pop up monthly. Yet, finding a place in the area for a cocktail and a light bite during a late afternoon lull has been weirdly difficult. Until now. The menu at Cafe Janeiro is focused on excellent snacks like deviled eggs, nopales salad, and tomato soup, but the main draw is the relaxed atmosphere. You can spend hours sipping a negroni (or two) here while taking in the action on the plaza. And if you like live jazz, Cafe Janeiro hosts shows on Thursdays and Sundays starting at 8:30pm.

Cafe Trucha is more than just a rustic pretty space you might mistake for somewhere in Brooklyn—the small plates are really good and pretty unique for Mexico City. These “picnic tapas,” as they’re called, include standouts like smoked Portuguese sardines with capers, green garlic and radicchio focaccia, and heirloom tomato toasts.

This place gets busy at breakfast, when they serve strong coffee made from beans sourced in Chiapas, Mexico (one of the country’s coffee capitals) and freshly baked goods. But it’s generally a casual spot, so you can bring your laptop in the late morning and enjoy a few hours at one of their outdoor tables while snacking on homemade potato chips, caviar, and crème fraîche.

Located in a beautiful corner house at the intersection of Roma’s two most iconic streets, Orizaba and Colima, Butcher & Sons makes the best burgers in CDMX. We really like their Bowie burger, which pays homage to Mexico with roasted poblano peppers and fried tortilla, and for vegetarians, the Yorke burger, made with Beyond Meat and vegan cheese, is as close to a classic cheeseburger as you can get without, you know, actually eating a cheeseburger. They also collaborate with local chefs on a unique monthly burger (Enrique Olvera of Pujol and Gabriela Cámara of Contramar have both participated before). Add an order of bacon-wrapped french fries, and a s’mores pie if you’ve somehow left any room in your body for dessert.

Over the past decade, Mexico City has become increasingly international when it comes to restaurants—you can now find everything from excellent ramen to a great tortilla española across the city, and this Thai spot is another example. You’ll see familiar noodle dishes on the menu, but the standouts here are the “platos fuertes” or entrees, like the khao soi and the khai paloh with egg and pork belly. Add on a plate of gai tod golae, which will be some of the best fried chicken wings you'll ever try, and wash everything down with one of their mezcal cocktails. They also have an extremely photogenic outdoor terrace that’s ideal for parties.

First thing in the morning, post-lunch, or even right after dinner, there’s always a line at Churreria El Moro in Roma Norte. And for good reason—this local chain (with 12 locations around the city) makes some of the best churros in existence. You can get a six-pack of them fresh out of the fryer and covered in cinnamon sugar with a side of hot chocolate dip for less than $5. Or, if you need to cool down after walking around all day, take yourself and a consuelo—El Moro’s churro ice cream sandwich—to nearby Plaza Rio de Janeiro to get some shade.

Even in a place as big as Mexico City, it can be hard to find great pasta. Sartoria has come along, however, to fill the void. The menu spans from classics like cacio e pepe to more creative dishes (think cauliflower milanese), and also includes a largely natural and biodynamic wine list. In a city with lots of Italian restaurants, this place offers something that’s actually pretty rare: a pasta-forward spot that’s casual enough for a long lunch, but also perfect for impressing whoever you decide to bring here for dinner.