Bygone places / Cantina Salón Madrid: "the polyclinic"
At Salón Madrid, intellect mingled with youth. Witness to celebrations and tears of medical students, you could just as easily find writers, journalists, and the occasional lost soul playing with its famous jukebox at its tables.
By: Youyi Mayora Eng
Photos courtesy of: Christian Nader / INAH Media Library
I can still remember when my best friend and I got it into our heads to enter what we thought were seedy dives; how wrong we were! We were around twenty years old when our feet (and our hearts) first stepped into Salón Madrid. We had spent hours wandering tirelessly through the wonderful adventure that is exploring the Historic Center of Mexico City. We arrived hungry, I remember, but our almost empty wallets led us to more obscure places. What we discovered was a time machine. Entering Salón Madrid was like peering into the past that stood on Santo Domingo Plaza since 1896. Witness to a Carlos Fuentes with his "Aura" in mind, or a Jacobo Zabludovsky with a note stuck in his thoughts, its walls filled us with a strange promise of excitement and curiosity.
What do you do in a cantina?
We ordered a couple of campechaneada balls, as tradition dictates, as true chilangos. The wise and aged waiter brought us the snack, piping hot and spicy birria. We discovered, back then, the treasure that is having food included with drinks at no extra cost: it's the nearly lost essence of a cantina forgotten in time. The metal plaques hanging on the bar made us look at them with curiosity. It was then that the man collecting the empty balls told us that each generation of the Medical School, which used to be just around the corner, gifted them as a tradition and token of affection to a paradise that made their years of study more bearable.
By the second ball, "emboldened," we stood up to the jukebox. It was like operating a relic from a 1960s spacecraft. The song cost five pesos. We inserted the coins and took over the melancholy of the place: José José and Joan Sebastian, a complete nostalgic package—you cry for the girlfriend, you decide. The other diners got emotional, applauded us, and even invited us to a round of "well-dead" Coronas. Perhaps they didn't have much hope in the musical tastes of two young men born four decades after them. Upon returning, another snack: two small tortas filled with oven-roasted pork leg and some spicy homemade rajas, genuine, not tasting like canned food; personally, I'm one to pick the pickled carrots drowned in vinegar.
The illusion came to an end, with empty wallets and only two metro tickets for the ride home. It was the beautiful beginning of a nostalgia for traditional cantinas. Today, knowing that Salón Madrid closed its doors in 2018 fills me with the emotion of understanding that I was able to laugh and cry under the spell of its charm.
