It’s 7 o’clock on a Friday night and the place is packed: art students with dyed mohawks, hipsters with shaggy hair in tight jeans and a giggling pack of girls in pearls and headbands. But despite the high-tech jukebox in the middle of the room, this is no normal Mexican bar.
It is a grungy cantina serving a thick and pungent 2,000-year-old Aztec drink called pulque that is suddenly enjoying a revival among Mexico City’s hip youth. Pulquerias are deliberately hard to find in seedy areas and close by sundown, but their alcohol-soaked floors still remain a toast to the Aztec gods.
In Centro Histórico at La Risa (The Laugh), rock music gets lost in the excited chatter of youngsters hunkered down on stools. Above the cracked cement floors are funky Aztec-style murals. Under the bar is a relic from the place’s older days — a trough for men to relieve themselves without leaving their drinks (no longer used). Traditionally popular with older working-class men, pulque is fermented from the maguey plant and can come in flavors from tomato and pineapple to celery and pecan to soften its milky taste.
Esao Preciado, a 22-year-old cook, and Marco Higareda, a 27-year-old economics student, were sharing a giant bucket of “natural”-flavored pulque. “I come here at least once a week,” Mr. Preciado said, as he swallowed a glass of the cream-colored liquid. “The problem is that there are not many places to drink pulque anymore.”
Pulqueria owners estimate that only 100 such places are left in Mexico, including the popular La Risa (71 Calle Mesones; like the others, no phone; a large mug is 25 pesos or about $1.80 at 14 pesos to the dollar; a four-liter bucket is 60 pesos).
In the Colonia Portales section in the south of the city, there is both La Paloma Azul (154 Popocatepetl; one liter, 30 pesos) and La Ana Maria (153 Necaxa; one liter, 20 to 35 pesos, depending on flavor). Unexpected extras such as cinnamon toppings can be found at La Ana Maria.
“I love pulque, it’s a completely different flavor,” said 21-year old art student Lucia Izquierdo, exposing her silver braces. “It’s also a bit subversive; you can find so many different types of ideas and people in pulquerias.”
