Tales of Crime in Mexico's Restaurants / La Bombilla, a high-end dining spot for the rich and political elite
Founded in 1925, this restaurant, once a haunt of Mexico City's most powerful, is located where Álvaro Obregón met his tragic end, and where a monument to him now stands.
By Alejandro Pohlenz
It is rumored that it was a religious fanatic influenced by a nun. I suspect that, as in other cases (see Lomas Taurinas), the lone gunman hypothesis is not logical. José de León Toral pretended to be a cartoonist for the press. With his left hand, he showed President-elect Álvaro Obregón his drawings: with his right, he took out a revolver and shot him 6 times at point-blank range. Álvaro Obregón had won the elections for a second term (strange, when non-re-election had already been enacted) and died instantly. A year later, in 1929, Don Plutarco Elías Calles was elected.
The trendy restaurant in the 20s
I quote Relatos e Historias: "the restaurant La Bombilla offered its clients a rural and relaxed atmosphere (...) It was the trendy restaurant in Mexico City in 1928. It served typical dishes of the country and important national wines (...) The great novelty is that it had telephones for reservations..." It is called La Bombilla, because its owner, Emilio Casado Medrano, was a Bilbao native nostalgic for his land, and in Madrid, there was a park with the same name. Other authors attribute it to the light bulbs that hung from the ceiling of the restaurant.
La Bombilla went bust
La Bombilla acquired relevance for aristocrats and politicians since its creation in 1925. A surprising fact is that all the waiters were Spanish. After the assassination, on July 17, the restaurant suffered the same fate as the Bar-Bar: it never opened its doors again. Emilio Casado went bankrupt, along with the Café Madrid, at Bolívar 20, also owned by him. In the 1930s, La Bombilla Park was built with a monument to Obregón where the arm that a bomb tore off during the Revolution is exhibited.
1925-1928, Chimalistac, San Ángel.
Permanently closed.
