Eternal Spring

Restaurant Review: Quintonil

We recently dined at Quintonil, one of two restaurants awarded two stars by Michelin Guide Mexico. Here’s what we thought.

Quintonil is one of two restaurants the inaugural Michelin Guide Mexico awarded two stars. This is the latest in a long list of awards and other accolades it has won since it opened in 2012.

We’ve dined at Pujol, the other restaurant that Michelin awarded two stars, but Quintonil has been high on our list since we began exploring the Mexico City food scene. And now that we’ve visited both, we understand why they are routinely compared. They are both world-class dining experiences, far removed from the inexpensive street food for which Mexico City is famous.

When we learned about Michelin Guide coming to Mexico, we immediately set out to reserve a table during our June 2024 trip. Here’s how we did that, what we ate and drank, how much we spent, and what we thought.

How can you book a reservation?

Getting into Quintonil is not easy.

And we’ve tried before: In summer 2023, we got on the waitlist at Quintonil about three weeks ahead of time and still didn’t get a table. So, if you want to have a meal here, try to make a reservation as soon as you can, and don’t be too picky about the day or time.

We made our reservation on May 17 and booked dinner for 5:45 pm on Tuesday, June 12. That’s early for dinner in Mexico, but it was the closest we could get to a dinner reservation for any day during our three-and-a-half-week trip.

You can reserve on Quintonil’s website through Tock, an online reservation service. In a search we did on June 13, there were only three timeslots open in June and nothing at all for the first three weeks of July. More options opened up in late July and early August, which was the furthest out you could book then.

What’s on the menu?

Quintonil offers customers a choice of two tasting menus, and you must decide when you make your reservation. They are:

Barra—kitchen counter experience. Groups of one to four people can sit at Quintonil’s bar with a view of the kitchen, watching the action. With this option, you pay for your meal when you book the reservation.
Main dining room. Groups of two to six people can have the seasonal tasting menu at a table in the main restaurant. For this reservation, you pay a deposit of $1,000 MXN per person ($54 USD at the time of this writing). The deposit gets credited to your dinner bill.

You can request vegan, vegetarian, or pescatarian options when you place your reservation.

How much should you expect to spend?

Dining at Quintonil isn’t cheap, and the wine pairings add a lot to the total. Here’s a rundown of the prices per person:

Barra

Tasting menu: $4,500 MXN ($244 USD)
Menu with non-alcoholic drink pairing: $5,800 MXN ($314 USD)
Menu with seasonal wine pairing: $6,825 MXN ($370 USD)
Menu with Soigné wine pairing: $9,110 MXN ($494 USD)

Main dining room

Tasting menu: $4,100 MXN ($222 USD)
Menu with non-alcoholic drink pairing: $5,400 MXN ($293 USD)
Menu with seasonal wine pairing: $6,425 MXN ($348 USD)
Menu with Soigné pairing: $7,569 MXN ($410 USD)

What should you wear?

Quintonil doesn’t have a formal dress code, but you will feel out of place if you don’t dress up at least a bit. Business casual or a dress shirt and nicer jeans are fine. Of course, it is a fine dining experience, so if you want to go all-out you can.

We saw mostly dresses (but not gowns) on women and button-down shirts and jeans or pants on men.

Do they speak English?

Yes. When you arrive and they greet you, they ask if you want your service in English or Spanish. Even though we usually like to practice our Spanish in restaurants, we chose English so we could better understand all the ingredients and the preparations.

What’s the food like?

Part of the appeal of Quintonil is the element of surprise, so if you’re planning a meal there you may want to just let it unfold.

If so, stop reading here.

The menu changes seasonally. We had the main dining room menu in June 2024. Here’s what in included, along with our thoughts:

Corn and turnip chilled atole with Mexican herbs. Right from the start, it was clear this was going to be an experience. Two servers came to the table, each with a bowl of atole, a beverage that’s traditionally served warm. They told us to swirl the liquid around in the bowls before we drank it, which combined the ingredients and created nice “legs” along the side of the bowl. It was a delicious start to the meal.

Melon and tomato salad, rice horchata, and pumpkin seeds. This small course was perfectly balanced—the melon and horchata were sweet, the tomatoes added a bit of acidity, and the pumpkin seeds delivered a nutty crunch.

Blue fin tuna, aguachile de brassicas, wasabi iced powder, pickled watermelon radish, and spring herbs. We’re seafood fans, so this tuna dish was a hit, and the flowers made the presentation beautiful. What put this dish over the top was the wasabi iced powder, which was sprinkled on at the table to add a crisp chill.

Pibil duck tamal with young corn cream. This was phenomenal. The slow-cooked duck in the tamal was ridiculously delicious and the corn cream complemented it perfectly. It was served on a banana leaf, as pibil is traditionally cooked slowly in banana leaves.

Entomophagy festival: Vegetable ceviche in smoked cactus leche de tigre; charred avocado tartare with escamoles; oyster mushrooms alambre with salsa macha and grasshopper chintextle; santanero beans from Oaxaca and confit onions; abalone homemade chorizo; salsa roja with jumiles and epazote; striped bass barbacoa in adobo de chapulín, grilled green beans, cauliflower cream; criollo corn tortillas from Opichen, Yucatán. After the first four courses, we started to feel like we had a good sense of how this meal was unfolding—small, delicious dishes one after the other. And then the first main course arrived. Someone had removed the flowers from our table, and we realized they needed all the space to cover the surface with small plates and bowls. This is like the fanciest build-your-own taco bar you’ll ever see. We liked and ate everything, but the striped bass, cauliflower cream, oyster mushrooms, and veggie ceviche were standouts. Lots of insects are included in this course: Entomophagy means the practice of eating insects (we looked it up). But they are mostly ground or blended, not whole. The word they used to describe escamoles (ant eggs) was maggots—we could have done without that translation.

Braised oxtail in recado negro panucho, almond purée, and red onion. For the second main course, we were back to one plate, which was plenty. This was another delicious dish—the panucho is an open tortilla with toppings. Brown butter poured over the top at the table was an amazing finishing touch.

Cactus paddle sorbet. Of course, we needed a palate-cleansing sorbet between the savory dishes and the desserts, and what better ingredient to use than nopales?

Crème fraîche and melipona bee honey, passion fruit, and caviar. This was one of the most interesting dishes on the menu. We each got a wooden spoon filled with honey, and we ate the honey first, then used the spoon for the dessert. That gave us the taste of the honey along with all the other flavors. The ingredients worked together really well, and the caviar added a nice crunch without any noticeable fish flavor.

Mango colado, toasted rice, and seaweed. For the second dessert, another nice blend of flavors and textures.

Mamey fruit panna cotta tartelette, and pixtle cream along with 71% chocolate Soconusco Chiapas cookies and vanilla from Veracruz. The final dish was two treats, a delicious little tart and some chocolate chip cookies. We were offered more cookies, but we didn’t need anything else to eat.

Bonus: We were handed a few gifts as we left the restaurant. There was a sweet potato conch topped with cinnamon for each of us, copies of the food and wine menus, a booklet highlighting some of the restaurant’s ingredients, a list of other places they recommend in Mexico City, and a little sheet they use to track your service that has your name, number of people, language, any allergies, the time each dish was served, and whether you are celebrating a birthday or anniversary.

And here’s the barra menu. We didn’t experience this, but you can see there was a mix of dishes from the main dining room menu sprinkled in:

Corn and turnip chilled atole with mexican herbs
Blue fin tuna, aguachile de brassicas , wasabi iced powder, pickled watermelon radish, and spring herbs
Stone crab in pipián verde, with sunflower seeds, makrut lime, and Thai basil, blue corn tostadas
Grilled pickled mussels tostada, mole del mar, and charred onion sauce
Pibil duck tamal with young corn cream
Entomophagy festival: Vegetables ceviche in smoked cactus leche de tigre; charred avocado tartare with escamoles; santanero beans from Oaxaca and confit onions; abalone homemade chorizo; oyster mushrooms alambre with salsa macha, chintextle de chapulín; salsa roja with jumiles and epazote; criollo corn tortillas from Opichen, Yucatán
Red lobster from Baja California, with chilhuacle rojo and orange gastric, kohlrabi, and plankton cream
Beef tongue chalupa, salsa de chile morita, and heirloom avocado
Cactus paddle sorbet
Crème fraîche and melipona bee honey, passion fruit, and caviar
Mango colado, toasted rice, and seaweed
Mamey fruit panna cotta tartelette, pixtle cream along with 71% chocolate Soconusco, Chiapas cookies and vanilla from Veracruz

What can you drink?

The Soigné wine pairing included seven wines from quality producers from around the world:

Oremus, Petracs-Furmint, Tokaji, Hungary, 2018
Vinirari, Blend, Valle D’acosta, Italy, 2023
Viña Tondonia, Rose, Haro, Spain, 2022
Alfalfa, Valle de Guadalupe, Mexico, 2019
The Meeker, Zinfandel, California, USA, 1999
Krug, Champagne AOC, France
Klein Constantia, Constantia, Sudafrica, 2008

The seasonal wine pairing included seven wines from smaller producers, all of which were organic and biodynamic wines:

Aura, Pinot Blanc-Pinot Gris, Oregon, USA 2017
Alpamanta, Sauvignon Blanc, Mendoza, Argentina, 2023
Bodegas Cota 45, Palomina, Andalucia, Spain, 2022
Bodegas Del Viento, Pinot Noir, Arteage, Coahuila, Mexico, 2021
Le Petit Clos, Colchagua, Chile, 2016
Nicolad Maillart, Premier Cru, Blend
Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company, Vinter, White, Black and Chai tea

Both of the wine pairings were excellent, and the wines were all interesting. The sommelier explained each wine as she served it. In a few cases, when we first tasted the wine, we weren’t sure if we liked it, but once we tried it with the food, we realized how well it paired. One exception: The Meeker, a 1999 wine, tasted like it was past its peak.

Each wine was served in a different type of glass, a nice touch that highlighted the aroma and flavors of each wine.

Quintonil also has a drink and wine menu (Spanish) that includes wines by the glass and bottle, beer, liquors and spirits, digestives, cocktails, water, infusions, and coffee. Here’s an idea of what they cost:

Most of the wines by the glass are about $450 MXN ($24 USD).
Wines by the bottle range from $952 MXN ($52 USD) for a 2021 Casa Magoni Chardonnay-Vermentino from Baja California to $393,000 MXN ($21,284 USD) for a 2018 Egon Müller Riesling, Trockenbeerenauslese, GoldKapsule, VDP, Scharzhofberger, from Mosel, Germany. (That price isn’t a typo, and it’s not even that much of a markup over the retail price. It must be quite the wine.)
There’s an extensive bottle list for wines and you can find lots of options in the $1,500 MXN ($81 USD) to $3,500 MXN ($190 USD) range.
Beers are around $150 MXN ($8 USD).
Liquors range from $140 MXN ($7.50 USD) for Bacardi white to $5,937 MXN ($322 USD) for Remy Martin cognac.
Digestives are around $150 MXN ($8 USD).
Cocktails are around $375 MXN ($20 USD).
Non-alcoholic cocktails are around $100 MXN ($5.50 USD).
Water and soft drinks are $52 to $190 ($3 to $10 USD).
Infusions are $62 ($3 USD).
Coffee is about $80 MXN ($4 USD).

You can bring up to two bottles of wine from outside the restaurant for a $1,800 MXN ($98 USD) corkage fee, as long as they are not wines they sell.

What was the service like?

The servers were friendly, welcoming, and attentive, not stuffy or pretentious. But there sure were a lot of them: The Quintonil experience can be a bit overwhelming in this regard. Several staff members greeted us when we came in and asked whether we wanted service in English or Spanish. We were seated right away. All of the courses were brought out by two servers, each carrying one diner’s plate, and we got a detailed description of every course and every wine. We probably interacted with over a dozen servers and other employees during our visit. Some might consider that intimidating.

That said, the attention to detail is rather impressive. Our server noticed that Stephanie was left-handed and moved her silverware rest to the left side of her plate, and subsequent silverware deliveries followed accordingly.

What didn’t we like?

We loved our experience at Quintonil. That said, there’s room for improvement in a few small areas:

As noted, there was a small army of servers and other employees overseeing the experience, and that can be intimidating.
The first few courses felt slightly rushed but the pace improved midway.
We could have used a bit more wine with some of the pairings, especially the one with the first main course, when we added a shared glass of wine for a small additional fee.
We would have liked to have known up front that they would give us a menu and booklet at the end of the night listing all the courses and wines as well as info about the restaurant. We were trying to take notes to keep track of everything.
The space Quintonil is in is not in any way impressive. Where Pujol sits in a gorgeous property surrounded by a garden and separated from the neighbors, Quintonil is jammed between others in a building with a small street-facing front that’s easy to miss if you’re not looking closely. The indoor-outdoor vibe of Pujol is sorely missed at Quintonil.

How much did it cost?

We ate in the main dining room. One of us had the seasonal wine pairing while the other had the Soigné pairing so we could sample both. We added a bottle of sparkling water, two glasses of cava before we started the meal, and a shared glass of wine with the first main course, all of which we had to pay for. All in, including a 20 percent tip, we spent $16,711 MXN ($905 USD). Yikes!

If we had skipped the wine and shared just a bottle of water, we could have had the tasting menu for two people for $10,032 MXN ($543 USD), including a 20 percent tip.

Is Quintonil worth it?

This is subjective, obviously, and it will depend on your budget, whether you value luxury culinary experiences, and if you are open to surprises. A meal like this isn’t for everyone, and the cost is an obvious barrier. But if you’re a foodie and want to experience how a top chef combines quality ingredients into culinary masterpieces—and you can afford it—then go for it. Our meal was truly extraordinary, but it’s worth pointing out that we could eat normally for a full week in Mexico City for what we spent on this one meal.

Choosing between Quintonil and Pujol is difficult: The culinary experiences are very similar, but the space Pujol is in is quite a bit nicer than Quintonil. Pujol is slightly less expensive than Quintonil—bar seating costs $3,995 MXN ($216 USD) and the tasting menu is $3,795 MXN ($206 USD).

Would we go back?

We’d go back to take friends who are into high-end food experiences. We loved it at Quintonil, but it’s just too pricy to go more often than for special occasions or once every few years at most.

New video: First book update!

You have questions. We have answers!

We’ve been working on our Eternal Spring guidebook for Mexico City and wanted to provide a quick update about the progress we’ve made so far and ask for some feedback.

Email Paul to get early access to the book-in-progress

Key points

We are writing a book. It’s a guidebook to Mexico City, name tdb. It’s designed to be read straight through before a trip or used as a reference while you’re in Mexico City.
We wanted to share the progress we’ve made so far. We looked at other guidebooks and created a basic structure with about 12 chapters. And then we took many notes to get everything in place.
Right now, we’re working on the structure for our recommendations. This starts with restaurants and bars, but also includes sights and, over time, more content in the book
We want to make sure we give readers the information they need to make good decisions. So we’ve worked a lot on the presentation for recommendations and have come up with lists of positive and negative attributes that we will display graphically in each.
We need your help. Please let us know what you think of this and whether we’re missing any important things to cover.
We need testers. Also, please email Paul if you’d like to get early access to the book so you can provide feedback as we write it.

Thanks!

New video: How we work in Mexico City

You have questions. We have answers!

We’ve been asked many times how we work while we’re in Mexico City, and in some cases why we work while we’re in Mexico City. We’re both writers, so we can work from anywhere. But now that we have our own place there, we’ve basically replicated our work from home setups in Mexico City, so it’s even easier.

Key points

We have to work. We’re not retired or independently wealthy.
We want to spend more time in Mexico City. And we would like to see the city, not just be there working.
We’re both writers. This gives us the flexibility to work from anywhere.
The key is to find the right balance. We work normally during work days, but take short lunch walks and longer dinner walks. We also spend more time on the weekends exploring the city.
We have duplicated our home setups for work in Mexico City. Now that we own an apartment there, we can leave PCs and other equipment in Mexico City, instead of having to carry it back and forth on each trip.
Our kids visited for one week on the last trip. And it wasn’t all that disruptive to our work schedules. They had a great vacation, and we didn’t need to feel like we were shirking our responsibilities.

New video: Pretty bueno!

Our recent five-week trip to Mexico City inspired us to make a few improvements to Eternal Spring.

Our recent five-week trip to Mexico City inspired us to make a few improvements to Eternal Spring. We’ll keep making videos as before, and we will improve and update our blog. But the biggest news is that we’re writing a book!

Key points

Back from Mexico. We have returned from our five-week trip to Mexico City.
Why Eternal Spring? We had difficulty finding reliable, up-to-date information about Mexico City as a destination and a potential second home. This inspired us to create Eternal Spring, which we originally saw as a blog and YouTube channel.
Improving Eternal Spring. We are going to continue creating full-length videos and shorts, but we would like to focus more on writing. This includes updating the blog and keeping it up to date, and a new book project that we’ve long wanted to create.
We need your help. We met several viewers of the channel while we were in Mexico City, and learning about their own experiences and viewpoints was invaluable. We will use this kind of feedback to improve Eternal Spring.

New apartment tour!

Back in May, we bought an apartment in Roma Norte. Now, just three months later, the apartment is full of furniture and appliances, we have electricity, gas, Internet, and water service, and we added blinds and balcony flooring. And this past week, we added a bed frame, a TV and TV stand, and some chairs and tables for the balcony. It’s interesting to compare the apartment to what it looked like when it was empty, so here’s a new tour video.

New video: Bad behavior

The first video we recorded in Mexico City!

The LA Times published an inflammatory article about Americans who are “flooding” Mexico City and annoying the locals. This story has since been proven to be full of misinformation, but it’s fair to say that Americans and other foreigners are having an impact here. We have some thoughts.

The original article: Californians and Other Americans are Flooding Mexico City: Some Locals Want Them to Go Home

The retort: LA Times Writer Paints Mexico City Residents as Intolerant & Bigoted

View at Medium.com

New videos, back to CDMX

We posted a video version of Why Mexico to our YouTube channel–you can find the original article here–along with a shorter video, Night and day, that shows the views from our balcony.

Also, I’m excited to say that we’re heading back to Mexico City next week for several days. This is my first trip there since May, when we closed on the apartment, though Steph was out in June with our daughter Kelly and made a lot of progress on the furnishings. I’m hoping to make more progress on this trip: we still need a base for the bed in the main bedroom, some kind of combo bed/couch/futon/whatever for the second bedroom, a TV and TV stand, and other items. But it’s shaping up nicely.

Also, our son Mark will be joining us. This is his second trip to Mexico City and the first time he’ll see the apartment.

More soon!

Making progress

Stephanie is in Mexico City this week with our daughter Kelly, and they have overseen two significant improvements to our apartment: blinds for all the floor-to-ceiling windows and Trex composite decking for the balcony. In this video, we connect on Zoom to discuss everything we’ve added to the apartment across the last two trips and what’s still left to do on future trips. We’ll break down how much it all cost in a future video.

Check out the video on YouTube!

Why Mexico?

The most common question we get from friends, family, and strangers about our new focus on Mexico is why? This has been phrased ambiguously, or even politely. But with a few close friends, it was blunter and more forthright. Are you crazy?

We’re not crazy. But it should come as no surprise, especially by Americans, that Mexico is misunderstood: Mass media and our government both portray Mexico as some kind of Narco-controlled hellhole. If the U.S. State Department were to cast the same critical lens at the United States, with routine mass shootings, even of children, it would recommend that no one visit that country too. But maybe we can arrive at some less sensational middle ground. There are dangerous places everywhere. And we avoid those places, whether they’re in Baltimore, Detroit, or New York City. Or Mexico.

But this isn’t about places to avoid. It’s about why we pivoted away from Europe after visiting there for at least one month a year for over 15 years. It’s about why we turned to Mexico. And not just Mexico, but Mexico City specifically. And not just Mexico City, but a specific part of Mexico City, the colonia of Roma Norte. And, I suppose, the apartment we chose, with its nearly perfect location.

This is a complicated story. It’s complicated enough that it will require multiple articles, and multiple videos for that matter. But what I’ll do here is lay out the high-level overview. And then Stephanie and I can expand on this later, over time. And it goes something like this.

I’ve been working from home since the mid-1990s, and my wife joined me over 20 years ago. We’re both writers, and remote workers, and have enjoyed the freedom of working from anywhere for much of our adult lives. But our children kept us rooted in the same home for 15 years: they had friends, and school, and activities, and we didn’t selfishly move around when they were growing up.

We did, however, travel. In 2003, Stephanie and I returned to Europe for the first time in over a decade, and the kids stayed with their grandparents as we toured southern Germany for about 10 days. We then visited Paris in late 2005 and early 2006 thanks to some unbelievable cheap airline sticks. And then we started taking the kids to Europe every summer, starting in 2006, usually for three weeks at a time. We also visited Europe at other times each year, sometimes just the two of us, and sometimes with the kids. We were “the family that travels,” as our daughter Kelly described it early on.

During this time, Stephanie and I started thinking about a future in which we’d split our time between the U.S. in Europe. This time was always vague, in the distance, and so we never really worked out the details about how that would work, or how we’d even afford it. Maybe there would be more home swaps, at different times of the year, once the kid’s school schedules were no longer the deciding factor. Maybe we could house-sit. Or something.

We loved Europe, and still do, but over time it became obvious that it wasn’t necessarily perfect. The weather in most of western Europe is as extreme as it is in the northeast United States, where we live, with very cold, dark, and often snowy winters, and very hot and humid summers. Ideally, we would split time such that we would avoid the worst weather anywhere. But the bad times in Europe, weather-wise, are the same as they are in our part of the U.S.

This problem was driven home in the winter of 2015, when we had over six feet of snow on the ground and the relentless back-to-back snowstorms were so bad that we had to replace our house’s roof and windows that Spring. I had had enough, and I began thinking about how I could orchestrate a future in which I never had to experience a winter like that ever again.

We took a baby step towards that future in 2017 when we moved from the Boston, Massachusetts area to the slightly milder Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. By that time, our son Mark was already in college and Kelly was about to finish her first year of high school. I would never have asked her to move while still in school, but she actually initiated the move, and away we went. This move accomplished a few things. It allowed us to financially downsize. It gave us an extra three weeks of Spring and an extra three weeks of Fall, making winters a bit more bearable. And, most important, it proved that this future we had been thinking about was obtainable: moving out of a house you’ve been in for 15 years is daunting, but we went from decision to move in less than four months. I’m still really proud of that.

A few big changes have occurred since we moved to Pennsylvania. First, Kelly graduated from high school and is now in college herself. Mark, our son, has graduated from college, and he lives in Rochester, New York. And the pandemic hit in 2020, ending our annual home swap streak and, worse, any chance of traveling to Europe. And about two decades of regular international travel, 2020 was like getting hit with a brick.

By early 2021, vaccines had arrived and travel was slowly opening up again and so I naturally started researching what we might be able to do. Europe was out of the question, unfortunately. Though it looked like we would be able to go there, we wouldn’t be able to resume home swaps because it looked like the United States wouldn’t allow Europeans into our country. We had contingency plans for a home swap with our friends near Amsterdam, but as the year wore on, it became obvious that would never happen.

Mexico was among the places I began researching in early 2021. (I also looked at Puerto Rico and Lisbon/Portugal) I wrote about that process in The nudge, but the most interesting thing about Mexico, to me, was that this was a place we had never really considered. We had visited the country two or three times, most recently in Cancun with the kids, but there wasn’t anything particularly compelling about the country.

The thing is, we had only visited places on Mexico’s border with the U.S. or, in the case of Cancun, its coastline. And while neither appealed to us, there’s a lot more to this country, as I discovered in early 2021. And the more I looked at it, the more I realized that Mexico had a lot of the same qualities that we liked about Europe. And, intriguingly, a lot of advantages that Europe lacks.

As with Europe, Mexico offers great diversity, with wonderful urban, suburban, rural, and wilderness areas to explore. It has an incredible food scene that is nothing like the sad “Mexican food” we see in most of the United States. It has a rich history and incredible culture. And there is a surmountable level of difficulty, enough of a difference to our home to make it interesting but not so different that it’s off-putting or difficult to manage.

But Mexico’s advantages over Europe are perhaps more interesting. Where Europe is mostly expensive, Mexico is affordable. Where Europe requires tiring overnight flights spanning 5 or 6 time zones and often with two legs or more, Mexico is an easy 4-to-5 hour non-stop day flight away with just a single time zone change from the U.S. east coast. The climate of the interior of Mexico is consistently mild, with little variation between the seasons, the inspiration for the phrase “eternal Spring,” and a sharp contrast to most of Europe. And the people are universally friendly and accommodating to those from the United States and elsewhere, something we’ve certainly experienced in Europe, but not universally.

In researching Mexico, I quickly realized that we’d probably want to focus on Mexico City because of its accessibility. It’s the biggest city in the country and has the biggest airport with the most non-stop flights from the U.S. It’s also centrally located, and an ideal base from which to explore the rest of the country. But we still tested this theory when we visited Mexico in 2021 and 2022 by visiting other places, like San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and Puebla. Each was interesting in its own right, but also remote, and this only reinforced my preference for Mexico City.

As for Roma Norte, that came out of our January 2022 trip, when we spent two and a half weeks in Mexico City with the specific goal of finding one or colonias—or neighborhoods—on which to focus in the future. We visited several, but Roma Norte—where our Airbnb was located—was by far our favorite. And when the time came for a side trip to Queretaro, I suggested that we simply stay in Roma Norte, and Stephanie agreed. We had found the location we liked and didn’t want to leave.

Mexico isn’t perfect, and neither is Mexico City. There is incredible poverty there, and it can be right in your face. And Mexico City is a big city—the biggest city in North America, and bigger than any city in Europe—and it can be loud. Spanish is a requirement, and anyone who believes that they can simply get by speaking English, even in a friendly area like Roma Norte, is out of their minds. We are learning.

But when I compare Mexico City—and Roma Norte in particular—to any place in Europe, it’s clear we made the right decision. We still love Europe, and we hope to visit again and again in the future. But the advantages of Mexico are real, and the disadvantages are surmountable. Roma Norte, for example, is a very safe and relatively quiet oasis in the sea of noise that can be Mexico City. And for now, at least, it seems like we’ve found that place and are setting ourselves up for that future we always envisioned.

We’ll dive deeper into the pros and cons soon.

Free money: How to make the exchange rate work for you

Day to day, it works out just fine to know that the exchange rate is roughly 20 pesos to 1 US dollar. We don’t need to know the exact exchange rate if we’re just buying some Al Pastor tacos or huevos rancheros.

But when we were buying our apartment, we realized that it was important to pay attention to the rate. If it went up from 20 to 21 pesos per dollar, we would effectively save about 5% on the sale price. That adds up to a lot of money. It’s a $12,500 difference on a $250,000 purchase, for example.

Find the company you want to use for wire transfers

I researched a few different companies for transferring money and settled on Wise. Their balance of fees and exchange rates worked out best for us. (Some companies don’t charge fees, but they offer a lower exchange rate, so it ends up costing more.) You can pick a few sites, enter the amount of money you want to transfer, and see what the cost will be.

Set an alert for the rate you want

At first, I was obsessively tracking the exchange rate by refreshing the web page probably 20 times per day. But eventually, I got smarter and set up an email alert for the rate you want. (You can enter your email address at the bottom of this page to get alerted when the exchange rate reaches a threshold you set.)

The exchange rate ranged from 19.44 to 20.68 in this month

I picked a rate of 20.5 pesos per dollar, which was an OK rate for the time period when we needed to move money. We only had a month to watch for a good rate, so we couldn’t hold out for something like the phenomenal 25-plus rates from March and April 2020. You can look at where the rate has been for the past month or six months and figure out what rate you want.

The exchange rate hadn’t reached 20.5, and our closing date for the apartment was approaching. So, I thought I would have to settle for a rate around 19.8. But some of the documentation we needed from the Mexican government to purchase the apartment wasn’t ready, so we had to postpone our trip. But I had a couple more weeks to watch the exchange rate and ended up with an exchange rate of 20.52. (By sheer luck, when we transferred money for the 20% down payment in March, we hit on a 21.17 exchange rate, which was among the best rates in the past year.)

Be patient, but not greedy

Of course, watching the exchange rate feels a little like gambling. I had decided ahead of time that I’d move money at 20.5. But once the rate got there, I questioned myself. What if the rate kept climbing, and I locked in at 20.5 when I could have gotten 21 or higher? Was I being patient, or greedy? In the end, locking in at 20.5 turned out to be the right choice. That was the best rate it reached in the month when we could move money.

Move your dollars to your transfer bank early

One thing almost made me miss out on the exchange rate I wanted. When you send money to Wise via wire transfer, they lock in your rate for what they consider enough time for your bank to send the money to them. There’s more time built in for weekends. In our case, they locked in our rate for 24 hours. But my bank (Ally) can take more than 24 hours to complete a wire transfer. You have to request a transfer before 3 pm on a weekday, they review the request later in the day, and then send the money by 6 pm the following business day. So, I spent the day obsessively watching the accounts to see if the transfer went through and checking the exchange rate to see if it was getting worse.

I figured out later that I could have saved myself some stress. You can hold money at Wise in multiple currencies. So, I could have transferred the money to Wise in dollars and just let it sit there. Then, when the rate was good, and I wanted to move money, I could transfer it right away. Once your money is in your Wise account, rolling it between accounts only takes seconds. And when we made the final payment on the apartment, transferring money from pesos in Wise to pesos in the seller’s account only took a couple of hours. That meant we could get the keys to the apartment that night, not a couple of days later.

Look into what your bank allows for international wire transfers

Here’s something to know about international wire transfers—not all banks treat them the same. We have some money with Citizen’s Bank, and they allow international transfers only in person. The closest branch to us is about 30 minutes away, so that’s not super-convenient. Ally doesn’t allow international transfers at all. But it works with Wise, because Wise uses a Wells Fargo account for US transfers, so you are effectively doing a domestic wire transfer.

We don’t need to follow the exchange rate as much now that we’ve finalized the purchase. But I still keep an eye on it. If the dollar is strong, we can move a few months’ worth of living expenses into pesos so that money will go further when we need it. It’s an easy way to earn an extra 5% or so with almost no effort.