More new Mexico City restaurants; Hotels.com bitterness; a gay bar in a major airport
Plus, Airbnb makes the argument for its opponents, a major Newport hotel goes forward, and more.
I’m limited to North American travel for a little bit (a situation my body is very pleased about), so I took advantage of the holiday weekend and flew down to Mexico City. Usually a terrible idea this time of year as it’s rainy season, but I was there to catch up with friends and buy some things for the house.
I finally visited the restored and expanded Museo Anahuacalli, the museum built by Diego Rivera in a sort of Pre-Columbian Revival style with new outbuildings designed by Mauricio Rocha. The main building has never quite worked for me, requiring too great a leap between the conceptual ideas it’s supposed to convey and the actual experience of its design. (A friend who is much better educated than me sent this long explanation of why he loves it that I couldn’t understand because it was so theoretical, so perhaps I’m just not cultured enough.) I did like Rocha’s new pavilions, although there was something a bit sad how the whole space now seems set up for parties more than anything.
While in town, I stopped into two new restaurants I didn’t get the chance to visit back in December when I gorged my way through 10 of the city’s newest spots. As readers may recall, I’m particularly interested in the explosion of “cool” new restaurants in Mexico City since the pandemic. So without further fanfare, the two I visited:
Félix Parque
Av México 99, Colonia Condesa
Once I like a spot for breakfast, I will resent having to go anywhere else and if the place you suggest isn’t as good as the eatery I like, expect a sullen grump. This is why you can probably find me every day I’m in Mexico City going forward having breakfast at Félix. (They also have a pizza joint in Roma.) The location is awesome, right on the Parque México. You can choose to have a scene-y breakfast out front or in the first open-air dining room. Or, if you’re struggling a bit, the restaurant goes pretty deep and has more discreet tables in courtyards to the back. The menu very much reflects current Mexico City—a bit of Mexico, a bit of the U.S., and a bit of Europe. For instance, the eggs come with what I would describe as a mini-khachapuri. The torrijas (Spanish version of French Toast) is to die for.
Darosa
Barcelona 24, Juárez
I haven’t had the best experience with Italian cuisine in Mexico City over the years (I have my theories about why), so I wasn’t enthusiastic about trying Darosa back in December when I was compiling my list of new restaurants to check out. While it’s a bit expensive for Mexico City, Darosa would be an excellent Italian restaurant in any cosmopolitan city in the world. It sounds simple, but I am still thinking about their arugula salad that they assemble into a dense and delectable pile. And my ragu pasta was ask-for-bread-to-wipe-it-clean good.
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
He’s not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, but I really liked this essay on David Coggins’s Substack The Contender talking about a different approach to travel:
“One reason there’s an exhaustion with travel—and I do think there’s a restless level of diminishing returns—is that we’re constantly comparing where we are with some imaginary better way of doing it, or some perfect photos or revved up list of insider expertise.”
Perhaps things will change as more and more of my generation has kids, but one thing that’s always struck me about the millennial and Gen Z zeal for travel is the lack of tradition. When I was a kid, family and friends had a place they loved that they did year after year at the same time. There’s something freeing about being back in a place where you have your routine, you aren’t rushed, and you can just enjoy the things about it you like, day after day.
If it wasn’t featured in a news outlet, I’d think IHG’s Voco brand was a 30 Rock bit. Until reading about it in Travel Weekly because of its Canada expansion, I’d never even heard of it. It’s one of roughly 20 brands under the IHG umbrella. Here’s how the parent company describes it:
“Designed to stand out from the crowd, voco hotels is IHG's fastest-growing premium brand, offering a hotel experience that is consistently thoughtful and distinct. Each property is characterised by its individual charm … Centred around the brand hallmarks 'Come on in', 'Me time', and 'voco life', voco delivers delightful and uplifting experiences brought to life by easy-going and attentive hosts.”
A) I don’t have a clue what “voco life” means B) the name is horrendous and C) the images of the voco property in Niagara Falls look anything but “premium.”
Last week’s newsletter was a destination guide for Amsterdam, so I didn’t cover the news that Chase was upping the annual fee for its Sapphire Reserve card to $795. Now, this is important because it’s part of a larger trend of all the card issuers upping their fees after years of staying flat. It may not be collusion, but it sure feels like they’re all taking the plunge one after another. It’s also newsy because Chase Sapphire users were one of the most cult-ish when it comes to points chasers, and they’re absolutely melting down on Reddit. My favorite comment? “Can someone explain to me why tf Southwest is the airline they partnered with. I'd consider keeping this card even with the increase but I can't get over this.” It’s a massive increase without, to me, a clear payoff. Unless you’re willing to play the convoluted game of sorting through the various incremental benefits that net out to be higher than the yearly fee.
All I’ve thought the entire time I’ve read anything about the complicated new Chase Sapphire Reserve program is, “God I miss the old Hotels.com rewards.” I am still bitter about Expedia trashing the simplest, most rewarding loyalty program in the industry for One Key. All the more because it would have stood out in the current environment that has made being a loyalist a pain in the ass. (It was refreshing to see Agoda’s CEO talking to Skift this week about how he believes, “best loyalty is price.” He feels similarly to me, complaining that, “A lot of those loyalty programs for me as a consumer are confusing.”)
There are many great things about being Canadian, but the gobsmacking cost of flying around your own country is not one of them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flown from the U.S. to a distant Canadian destination and couldn’t get my Canadian friends to meet me because the cost of the flight within Canada was prohibitively expensive. So it certainly grabbed my attention when a new report by Canada’s Competition Bureau recommended that Canada allow airlines that are completely foreign-owned to compete domestically as one of the solutions to what everybody knows is a major problem.
I love that the Oakland airport isn’t giving up its fight to get San Francisco in its name, despite losing its case last year. And I love how cheeky and blatant they’re being about it, almost childish by just reordering the name they originally proposed.
Rarely do I find myself nodding along with any ranking listicle done by my industry, but the Washington Post’s reader survey and data-based list of the best airports in the U.S. is pretty much spot on. One of their biggest takeaways is something which I’ve long talked about with Airport Architecture’s Edward Russell who also worked on the project. While modern airport design seems to be obsessed with forcing you to spend more time getting through an airport, The Post notes that it “learned travelers adore airports that are easy to get to (and through) above all else.” I don’t want to spoil things but will note that two of my hometown airports rightly made the list—DCA and PVD.
And so it begins! Since getting rid of its free checked bags, Southwest is having to force passengers to gate check their bags at a higher rate. There are no easy solutions in travel, only trade-offs.
I’m kind of obsessed with BIG’s plans for the new Vegas stadium?! Ground was broken on the project earlier this month. I just hope they learned the lessons from Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall when it comes to that metal shell.
I’m sure you saw that video of the guy who ripped a painting in the Uffizi while posing for a photo in front of it. What fascinates me (I've always been afraid I’d knock a vase over), is the reporting on the subject indicates you don’t have to fork over anything to fix it, the museum’s insurance takes care of it!
Will be curious to see what kind of economic impact Bad Bunny’s residency has on San Juan this summer.
The plans for the new hotel on Bellevue across from the Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport have gotten final approval. It’s one of those situations where I’m happy something is finally going in that asphalt parking lot, and I don’t hate the plans. But I also am not in love. It’s all a bit late 90s for me (reminds me of the Reagan Building in D.C. with its quasi-historicism) and I feel it would’ve been better served mirroring the Shingle Style of the Hall of Fame across the street. It’s inspired by the long-destroyed mansion that used to be on the spot, but it was a mansion that nobody ever found particularly inspiring…
Feeling kinda meh about the just-completed Western Sydney International Airport by Zaha Hadid Architects as well as the firm’s proposal for the new terminal at the Vilnius Airport. They look like they could have come from any other big firm, which is not what one would be expecting from this shop.
Something a little sad about getting an email from United the other day with the subject line: “Newark has the best on-time performance in the U.S.”
Airbnb founder and CEO Brian Chesky pushed back on attacks claiming Airbnb is to blame for overtourism and rising housing costs. The company, he rightly says, is a "convenient scapegoat for a failed policy and deep, long-standing housing issues.” BUT, in a separate post on Airbnb’s website, the company claims that not only is Airbnb getting an unfair shake, it’s actually all the fault of hotels!
Some interesting data was shared by the company in its post:
Annual Airbnb guest nights in the EU in 2024 grew faster in locations outside of cities compared to inside cities.
In total across the top ten most visited EU cities in 2024, over 260,000 Airbnb guests stayed in a neighborhood without a hotel.
Airbnb stays in neighborhoods without hotels grew by roughly 60% between 2022 and 2024, signaling increasing interest from Airbnb guests in locations outside of overcrowded city centers.
What Airbnb might not realize is that they sort of just made everybody’s point! People long ago ceded tourist centers to tourists. What Airbnb did instead was bring the tourists to their nice neighborhoods, driving up the costs of apartments as people turned them into cash cows.
No surprise but Foster+Partners won the bid to design the memorial bridge for Queen Elizabeth II in St. James Park. I still think it’s pretty uninspired.
And finally, a nice little thought from Mexican architect Frida Escobedo about her mindset when it comes to the terraces at her Met expansion: "That view of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline right now really only belongs to private residences, so it's a very unique opportunity to bring it back to the idea of the public being able to experience that.”
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
JetBlue will end its Miami operations and reduce Seattle presence
The Vatican has finished its restoration of the Raphael Rooms, all scaffolding now down
The European Parliament wants to ban carry-on bag fees
Expect to see more and more Indian travelers in the coming years
Chicago’s O’Hare might be getting a gay bar
Waymo is rolling out availability in Atlanta
The Taliban have a tourism ministry and want people to visit
Dishoom has opened a small hotel in Notting Hill