The insider’s guide to visiting Guadalajara
Guadalajara is home to several spectacular cathedrals and churches, like the Basilica de Zapopan.
When I first came to Guadalajara in 2009, I could hardly have found myself in a more contrasting environment from the small southeast England town where I grew up. The nation’s second biggest metropolis and the home of tequila, mariachi music and charrería (Mexican rodeo), Guadalajara is the most traditional of Mexican cities.
The bright colors, rich culture and daily chaos gripped me from the outset and I ended up relocating there permanently in 2011. Having now spent over five years covering Guadalajara for local and international media outlets (Vice, The Guardian, etc.), I could no longer live without the warmth of its people, the year-round sunshine and the amazing local cuisine.
Here’s nine things you must do when you visit the city:
Las Nueve Esquinas is one of the best places in Guadalajara to eat birria.
Explore the historic city center: Downtown Guadalajara has it all. Gaze in awe at the fiery murals in the Cabañas Cultural Institute; shop for souvenirs in the labyrinth-like San Juan de Dios market; eat birria, a delicious local goat stew, while being serenaded by mariachis in the Plaza de Las Nueve Esquinas; then sip a tequila at La Fuente, one of the city’s oldest cantinas.
Check out Mexico’s hipster scene: Avenida Chapultepec and the surrounding streets comprise Guadalajara’s hipster district. Lined with trendy bars, cafes, restaurants, taco stands, craft markets and open-air spaces for concerts and dance-offs, it is the place to be on Friday and Saturday nights. The hippest joint to end the night is Pare de Sufrir, a much loved mezcal bar where eclectic DJs and live bands have crowds dancing until the early hours.
Decorated with thousands of bones, Hueso is one of Guadalajara’s top restaurants.
Eat in a restaurant made of bones: Guadalajara is home to many excellent but affordable restaurants but few offer as unique an experience as Hueso. With a pure white interior, an open kitchen and an ever-changing menu of gourmet dishes, Hueso feels tasteful, not macabre, despite the 10,000 bones that line its walls…
Mexico is set to host three regular-season NFL games over the next three years.
There will be few working-class fans inside Mexico City’s monstrous Estadio Azteca when the Oakland Raiders face the Houston Texans on Monday night. Mexicans on a minimum-wage salary would have to work for over nine days to afford the cheapest tickets, while the most expensively priced seats equate to 98 days of labour.
Renovated to meet the NFL’s needs, Mexico’s most famous stadium has had its capacity permanently reduced from 104,000 to 87,000 to make way for more lucrative VIP suites, new locker rooms and a larger press box. Tickets sold out minutes after going on sale, illustrating the level of excitement the NFL inspires in Mexico – but also the purchasing power of those drawn to the sport.
While soccer remains Mexico’s most popular sport and the game of working people, American football has made serious inroads in recent years, particularly among the urban-dwelling upper and middle classes. It has strong college roots in Mexico and this, plus the cost of attending games, has given it an air of exclusivity that appeals to those who aspire to a first-world gringo lifestyle. While many Mexican soccer fans make do with buying counterfeit jerseys from street markets and watching games in local bars or cantinas, American football is geared towards those who buy merchandise in Walmart and watch games in American restaurant chains like Chili’s, the NFL’s official partner in Mexico.
The Mexican market’s potential has not gone unnoticed by the NFL, and Monday’s game – the first regular-season fixture held here in 11 years – is one of three tentatively planned over the next three seasons…
End your suffering at Guadalajara’s hippest mezcal bar
Pare de Sufrir is one of Guadalajara’s most popular bars.
Hidden away on a quiet side street in central Guadalajara, Pare de Sufrir is a small bar with an unremarkable facade that gives no indication of its status as a haven for mezcal lovers.
Inside, though, the walls are lined with striking murals of a majestic agave plant and a hippie-style bus. Mustachioed DJs spin eclectic mixes of funk, mambo, cumbia, boogaloo, and dancehall in between live sets by rockabilly outfits and experimental sound art bands. And at the center of it all, beneath a chaotic wooden sculpture strung together with nails and fairy lights, stands a bar stocked with probably the greatest mezcal collection in western Mexico.
Named after a slogan from a Brazil-based Christian denomination, the bar’s full title “Pare de Sufrir. Tome Mezcal” is a nod to the agave-based spirit’s famed curative powers. It means “Stop Suffering. Drink Mezcal.”
Pedro Jiménez keeps his bar stocked with about 70 different mezcals at any given time.
While this smoky spirit’s popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, it took a degree of audacity for owner Pedro Jiménez to open a mezcal bar in Guadalajara, the heart of Mexico’s tequila-producing region, back in 2009. Yet Jiménez, a bearded 41-year-old filmmaker who grew up in Mexico City, tells me his primary motivation was simply to get hold of quality mezcals for himself and his friends in a city where the drink was hard to come by…
The Tequila Files 