The Anti-Tourists

When traveling with special needs kids, better to live + eat hyper-locally.

I am in Mexico City with the family this week.

David is producing his show here in CDMX: The Empire Strips Back. Think Star Wars + Burlesque + Comedy. It’s a brilliant and fun show. Sexy, funny, good fun. Total audience pleaser.

Since our two remaining kids at home have full-on special needs, Raffi (13) and Desi (9) and have a tutor who comes to the house, we can travel with David sometimes because we aren’t on a school schedule. Which David and I love because we have always prioritized keeping us all together as much as possible.

In the early years of our marriage when it was just us, and Lucy and Edie (now 18 and 19) and out in the world, David traveled often for the shows he produced. Back then, our relationship was new and more fragile. We were figuring out who we were as a couple and as parents. Things and people and distances could pull us under and we knew it. We had to take care, if we wanted our marriage to go the distance. Riding on lust and attraction wasn’t going to cut it long-term. We learned early that rough words during an argument are sticky, so we changed the language we used when we were mad and fighting. We decided - Everything we said in anger we could come back from.

I remember once David left for two weeks while he was developing a show. When he returned, he walked in the door and Lucy who was still a baby, SCREAMED in his face and then fell into a heap of missing him even though her little brain didn’t even realize she had been missing him at all.

This experience changed him.

After that he decided he wouldn’t be away from the family more than a couple days at a time. Even when he had shows in NYC or close by, he cut back the post-theatre all night partying and cocktailing, so common in the industry, to make sure our marriage and family worked.

I know, even though he never admits it, that he made decisions for us that hampered his own career. He never complained. He has always put us first and I can say this is one of the major reasons our marriage is as strong as it is.

So even though I am just a tad agoraphobic and would always rather be home - keeping the children on their routines makes for a calmer more productive life - being together, traveling together, has always been and will always be a part of our family life.

Lucy + Edie growing up backstage wth David’s shows. Hanging with the performers and their kids in Australia, and trying to replicate the acts they saw on stage.

Here in CDMX (Ciudad de México): When we are all together and David isn’t at the theatre, we do bigger more adventurous things, like sight seeing, walking great distances, ubering to jungley ziplines, exploring children’s museums. David always gets the kids out into the world.

But when he is at the theatre, I cover the close-by. These times for me are times to get to know the neighborhood and the neighbors, to be hyper-local, to speak the language and hear it spoken back to us in response, or to speak English in conversation so other people can practice. The idea is connection.

Not just eating hyperlocal, but living hyperlocally. We are making a home here. For a single week.

Desi + sushi. Her favorite food.

We come from a tourist-driven city (Vegas) so we do come to other locations with that experience, and a desire to do right by the destinations we visit. Earlier on, we’ve used Airbnbs because we have special needs kids, who won’t eat everything (I know how to raise eaters, but autism-related eating issues and ARFID are tough to breach). I need to cook because we can’t always eat out in restaurants or street stalls.

But Airbnbs can really dessimate communties, and we have witnessed this firsthand in Vegas, so now, we mostly stay in business hotels that have kitchens. They can be pricier than regular hotels, but we make up for it by not eating out for every meal. My kids LOVE a grocery store, it’s mystery they love to crack. So shopping in local markets means the kids are out and about in the neighborhood, hearing and using the language, connecting with other shoppers, and learning hands-on the customs and rules of the people we are visiting.

Raffi is very into Mexican currency and what can be bought with whatever amount of pesos he can scrape up. He has been collecting leftover coins to make some kind of big purchase before we leave. And Desi has experienced the lovely hospitality of older Mexican ladies who tell her she is preciosa with her ojos verdes. She demures and sinks into herself, unable to stop smiling and asks to return to those shops over and over to buy little candies and to wave and say “Buenes Tardes!” to the ladies, who always seem to remember her and make her feel special.

She got her very first manicure ever yesterday. She has been bursting from the experience ever since.

Desi + her first manni.

There are times when David and I long to be eating ribeye tacos at Tacos Atarantados, which is around the corner from us, the myriad of cevicheas on offer, tostadas with ice cold cervezas, on a sidewalk table filled with a wealth of magnificent salsas and we will do some of this soon. We’ll order the kids cheese quesadillas and Frescas and let them play on their ipads while we eat the food we came to eat. Maybe they will try some bites, maybe not.

Raff is getting really good at trying new foods. Often, he refuses - resistance is his thing - then gets curious and tries a bit of ours, and then finds out he loves it and wants to eat it constantly. His issue with food is preparation: When he likes something he wants it prepared the exact same way everytime and this is largely impossible when moving country to country.

A California Roll in Vegas is not gonna be the same roll in Tokyo, London, Canada or Mexico City.

Other times, I’ll be in the hotel kitchen preparing baked salmon, or noodles, or very runny sunny side up eggs with machaca, for them. I make chicken or beef tacos with avocado, briny onions, crema and squirts of lime for David and I. As I said on IG this week: This trip is not about slowly perusing bookstores and eating at Michelin-starred eateries.

No, we are living in Mexico City this week.

Ribeye tacos at Tacos Atarantados with all the sauces. Please put all the sauces in my mouth.

Desi can eat any measure of salmon nigiri anywhere in the world.

So, we have eaten at every Izakya/sushi joint in the neighborhood, to the point where she has established her favorite a little place called Izakaya Kura. Her favorite server there is Jonathon, who we met the first time at our table outside the leafy garden table we inhabited. I started rambling to him in my broken Spanish, and then he hilariously answered me in near-perfect English. He is a student, so we speak English so he can continue to practice. Sushi is a food that feels safe and known to her, so she wants to eat it as much as possible.

At first it feels disjointed to be eating so much Japanese in Mexico City. Shouldn’t we be immersing ourselves in regional Mexican foods? Shouldn’t we be lapping up every drop of every thing that reads as Mexican?

Well, turns out, we are.

CDMX like all major metropolitan areas isn’t one kind of people or one kind of food. If you come to Vegas or LA or NYC or Chicago or Philly, you don’t just eat hamburgers or pizza or cheesesteaks, you eat the world.

Cities offer us the world.

In fact there are historical reasons that Japanese food is so prominent in CDMX. After Pearl Harbor, the Mexican government forced all Japanese people to move to either Guadalajara or Mexico City, as a way to monitor and control them. Most of these folks moved to CDMX because there was already an exisiting community of Japanese people.

The garden at Izakaya Kura.

To me, this means that Japanese culture is Mexican culture. And this is reinforced by a NY Times piece in 2019 that tracks the Japanese presence in Mexico City back to the 1600s and from there, a modern proliferation of food, hotels, and clothing lines. The piece quotes food instagrammer Max St. Romain about the way Japanese culture slips into and is distinct from Mexican culture:

“A lot of us Mexicans admire Japanese culture because it’s the polar opposite of what we are,” he said. “It has this elegance, subtlety and minimalism, and in Mexico we’re all about the loud and the big and the explosive.

How can there be loneliness in Mexico City? There is always a metal chair to be pulled up at a Taquieria or food stand, right next to someone else.

Today, we have some things on our list to do.

Desi with Brown Sugar Milk Tea at Gong Cha. With extra tapioca pearls. Duh.

I need to go to the market for eggs, more butter, Topo Chico, avocados, Frescas for Raffi. (Who knew Fresca was still so popular?) Desi has already said she wants to walk back to Jonathon’s Izakaya for lunch because they have “the best quality salmon” although her usual sush spot in Vegas is still “the best.”

She and Raffi will inevitably ask to go to Gong Cha, a Taiwanese chain boba shop where the kids will order large Brwon Sugar Milk Tea. With extra tapioca pearls, of course. And we will pet all the perritos and gatitos on the way to and from the store. I will pop over the legal dispensary for edibles because I have learned on this trip that the HRT (hormone replacement therapy) isn’t what is allowing me to sleep well at night, it’s the pot.

Raffi at Kura.

Then, we will stop and see Beto, the young candy maker at Sticky where the kids can watch him make candy by hand and buy some for their friends back in Vegas.

Desi is so excited to watch them make the candy - because she had seen it on the internet and that makes it famous - it has become a place we stop by daily. We gave Berto and his friends tickets to Empire Strips Back and they are going this weekend.

Beto made his candy in the shape of a heart + let the kids try it.

Candy haul for gifts to friends back home.

The more our kids feel safe and stable and have routines, lots of downtime, food that feels right to them, the better time they have, the saner it is for David and I, the less anxiety attacks Desi has and the fewer moments of aggression Raffi has. The fewer the meltdowns and crises in public and private spaces.

No need for salsa tajín, chamoy, salt, or chile. Perfect just this way. The color + flavor = CDMX in a bowl.

And this morning as I write this?

Sometimes Mexico City can simply be found in a bowl of local, ridiculously overripe and juicy-loosey mangoes, straight from La Central de Abasto wholesale market, eaten on a leafy terrace.

Gracias, como siempre, por leer. xo Kim