Literature and Food / Café Quito, Café La Habana, and The Savage Detectives

By: Editorial Team / Photos: Mediateca

Three café con leches, cheap tobacco that dries out your throat: magnets for rebellious poets and dreamers lost in the maze of ideology. Idealists with their Marxist convictions etched into their youthful blood. Wooden tables worn by time and endless, paranoid, incoherent conversations that peek into the tone and psyche of the characters. Café Quito, a witness to heated debates, impromptu verses, and uninhibited laughter. Bolaño's Quito on Avenida Bucareli is Café La Habana in this other multiverse we call reality. Through letters, narrative, and discourse, Bolaño disguises reality as a CDMX that never existed.

It is the Café Quito of García Madero and María Font, protagonists of Bolaño's story, where in the detective’s eyes she appears beautiful in her Oaxacan blouse, a blend of love, caresses, and illusions among characters depicting complicity and paranoia. A bohemian café with the scent of warm conchas and crumbs on the lips. A place that defies conventions and seeks truth on the margins of society. An imaginary café—imaginary?—mingling on every page with eccentric and passionate characters, like Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, the leaders of infrarrealism, a group of poets who proclaimed themselves the "wild detectives" of literature.

He remembers the endless nights at the Quito, where time stopped and ideas flowed like a torrent. There, between cups of not-so-great coffee, poetry, politics, and philosophy were discussed, verses recited, and revolutions planned. Quito was a refuge for misfits, a space where they could be themselves without fear of judgment or censorship. And in that multiverse, which literature brings us closer to, how Roberto Bolaño would have longed to know the imaginary Quito, or to be fused with the real La Habana, amidst letters, coffee, and forgotten loves.

But in the factual world, or another multiverse, Quito is our Café La Habana. With its wooden walls, evoking Che and Fidel. With that feeling of being lost in time, with that revolutionary air, legitimate or not, revolutionary nonetheless. Today, it remains a place to breathe in the moisture and nostalgia for that bygone island with a couple of Cuban dishes like moros y cristianos and fried plantains. But you will also find Mexican fare, adopted or rather, the destiny of what once was. Mexican food with enchiladas, machetes, tortas. Moments, sweet bread, and a space to breathe before returning to the present.

• Address: Av. Morelos 62, Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, 06600 Mexico City, CDMX
• Phone: 55 5535 2620
• Hours: Monday to Saturday from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m., Sundays from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.
• Ideal for: Coffee and Mexican breakfast
• Type of Food: Mexican, Cuban
• Payment: Cash and cards
• Accessibility: Yes
• Parking: No
• Reservations: Can be made by phone but not necessary
• Nearby Public Transport: Metro Hidalgo
• Pet Friendly: No
• Suitable for Kids: Yes
• Vegan Options: No
• Price of Beer: 45 pesos