The restaurant occupies the ground floor of an elegant Art Deco apartment building overlooking lovely Parque México and recently converted into Rodona, a boutique hotel, which means long hours and breakfast service. Its position facing the park inevitably recalls the nearby Foro Lindbergh, inaugurated shortly after the eponymous aviator’s celebrated transatlantic flight in 1927. If there were any doubt about the homage paid to this former hero whose legacy is now somewhat complicated, the bar is named “Lucky”, Charly’s nick-name.
Feldman’s menu moves easily across geographies and decades. Pan-European bistro classics—steak frites, gnocchi with lemon and fresh fava beans, mussels a la marinara—coexist with gestures toward Mexico and Peru, such as Peruvian-style ceviche with leche de tigre and short rib intended for self-made tacos. There are also unmistakable nods to the American comfort repertoire: a cheffy hamburger, a ribeye with creamed spinach, a Green Goddess salad (here done with kohlrabi) recalling mid-century dining rooms, and oysters served with nothing more than a proper mignonette—a welcome restraint in a city where chefs so often feel compelled to improve upon what nature has already perfected. And, undoubtedly as a paean to the restaurant’s hotel affiliation, the menu includes the obligatory but decidedly upscale club sandwich.
The appetizers establish both the strengths and the range of Feldman’s cooking. The berenjena tatemada, blackened thin-sliced eggplant cloaked in a tahini sauce enriched with pistachio and almond, is deeply aromatic with cumin, evoking India as much as the Levant. Leeks in vinaigrette and capers are such a good idea and rarely appear on menus this side of the Atlantic.
