Casa Virginia

Good restaurants move us: between places and through periods of time, setting forth a torrent of feelings that are both familiar and unfamiliar, nostalgic and entirely new. Mónica Patiño has dedicated her life’s work to creating good restaurants. The first, Taberna del León, opened its doors back in 1978, and still exists today, albeit in a different location and with a number of siblings that have been brought to life by Patiño over the years — some have endured the fast-moving restaurant scene to take on legendary status, others served a more fleeting purpose before shutting their doors. 

Mónica’s sensitivity to food started in Colonia Roma, specifically in La Calle de Tabasco, at her grandmother’s home. Her grandmother, Ana María, grew up against a backdrop of cultural development pushed forward by the political dictator Porfirio Díaz who ushered in all things European. “I grew up integrating another culture with Mexican food. In my grandmother’s house it was very much a European Mexican style. It was a window to the culture of Europe”. This melding of food cultures is an important part of Mexico’s culinary evolution, “but you must always keep your feet on the ground”— Mónica knows when to leave dishes as they are and when to integrate, when to respect tradition and when to innovate. 

The Chef talks through her personal milestones, marking out coordinates on an invisible map that takes us across Europe and back to Mexico. Each moment comes with a visceral food memory; bountiful Sunday breakfasts of marmalade, fried eggs and sausages at boarding school in Wales, humble baguettes holding batons of chocolate at culinary school in France (the original pain au chocolat), vol-au-vents eaten in her grandmother’s kitchen, weekends away from school dining at three-Michelin starred restaurants in France with her father.