Gin Gin
Gin Gin, a constantly flexed bicep of a restaurant, has staked its territory in Roma Norte. This is the neighborhood where Mexico City's designers, doctors, and hipsters walk small dogs through colonial-era gardens. Most of the neighborhood is quiet, but here, stone buildings and sleepy sidewalks give way to a massive strip of extremely trendy, extremely loud watering holes elbowing each other for room. Here, even on Sunday, Gin Gin pounds a constant, insistent beat. Massive speakers blare four-on-the-floor house. The tempo is brisk, constantly a half beat ahead of your heart. Brace yourself and enter.
The servers welcome you with consummate professionalism. They are alert and crisp in black and white chef's jackets. Their silhouettes cast shadows against the brick-and-plaster walls. Overhead, a ceiling of bare scorched brick hints at past trauma—a fire, or maybe revolution. Iron wheel chandeliers hang stiffly from their bolts, their Edison bulbs adding an eerie cast. Skulls grin from every shelf and corner. The DJ stands and bobs his head.
The restaurant is mostly empty. A few brave drinkers huddle over their tables, faces dim in the red incandescence of the moody, modern interior. A too-young woman with large, drowsy eyes fills the air with hookah smoke, her pink nails glinting. Her date, hunched in his puffer vest with beer in hand, has been doing the talking. You can't help comparing him to the menu, photo after photo of extremely thick cuts of meat. Is his mouth, his arm, his chest as thick and resilient as these steaks? The hookah smoker is unconcerned. She touches his wrist when she laughs. Above them, a TV shows American football. The Raiders kick it off, land a tackle at the 30. They are winning. Nobody watches their mute, violent ballet.
Marinated green olives arrive. The server clicks a tiny torch alight and scorches a sprig of rosemary as a garnish. Toothpick by toothpick, the briny olives disappear. Smoke and acid make for an effective opener, swaggery and penetrating.
The Bloody Gini comes next. It is clean and deep. The homemade clamato is complex and relaxed, cozying up to Bombay Sapphire gin. The tomato juice, diluted with brine and lime, stays backstage while worm salt and ginger extract draw your attention to a concentrated point. The Gini is far thinner than its West Coast brunch equivalents: it is a drink, not a meal. The olive garnish is surprisingly dry, a far poorer complement than their marinated brethren from moments ago.
The DJ is several tracks in now, subtly accelerating. Where before a sultry Spanish refrain wove romantic undertones, now a gospel singer repeatedly declares her "ticket to go" over unnerving synths. Organ hits fill out the back. Another song ends as the tacos arrive.
Here is the first flex of muscle. Cochinita pibil, savory and firm, takes up all available room with its slow-cooked nestle of achiote and savory spices. Surrounding it are the thinnest possible soft taco shells, a spray of micro greens, and a modest ramekin of barely-pickled arcs of red onion. The onion is crunchy and bitter, offsetting the bite of lime and chile. The salsa, also very modestly portioned, ties it all together: roasted chilies spread a slow background warmth, lubricating the inner layers of the shredded meat, while a rawer, hotter chili belts its shrill alarm, adding urgency to every layer of the bite.
The flex becomes a full-body, vein-bulging power pose with the arrival of the tuna. It is as thick as your thumb and as wide as your face. A thin sear conceals its jewel-red interior, warmed to firmness, yielding to your fork. Its thick, too-salty sauce parches your tongue, shocking and sharp despite its creamy texture. Against this bed of salt, the tuna slab explodes with moisture and savoriness, bombarding your palate with complex flavors usually found only in aged beef. This push and pull of land and sea is the central drama of the dish. The sesame crust is an unwitting bystander to the carnage. To the side, blackened squash buffers the sauce. Pureed sweet potato below answers the need for starch, resetting your palate for the next salt blast.
In style, portion size, and composition, these dishes overdeliver. They fall into the tradition of the Great Western Meat Slab, each portion an unapologetic fortress of top-grade protein, enshrined and garnished by sauces and vegetables. The meats are frank, direct, and unsubtle. They do not break eye contact. They may be blunt, but power has a grace all its own: the careening swing of a baseball bat, the deft knife of a glutton's assault, the laughing slap on the back that almost knocks your wind out, the enveloping mitt of a massive man's handshake. Gin Gin is a temple to this power, the power of protein. There is an old saying never to order sushi in a steak shop, but this tuna is the exception that makes the rule. It can turn a boy into a man.
Demand dessert. Lavender ice cream, tart berries with bitter chocolate sauce, and a queso volcano jockey for attention. The volcano is a sugar-dusted cake of sweet corn, erupting with a very light cheese sauce when severed with a spoon. Like each dish before it, the dessert does not balance itself for you. It's up to you, the diner, to swing back and forth between its triple poles of flavor and texture. The berries are too tart, the cheese sauce a little on the rich side, the lavender ice cream simple and cloying when taken alone. Here again are the elements of grace without the choreography. Your spoon is the conductor, your mouth the audience. Swing wildly at your own peril.
After the salt, the bass, and the tang of meat and sweets all grab you and shake you into wakefulness, demanding your reciprocal muscular squeeze, you would expect them to let go. They don't. They hold you in their grasp. You feel their collective heartbeat throbbing in their too-firm grip, a mirror and a measure of your own bravado and endurance. Who will blink first in the staring match of man and meat? Not this meat, that's for damn sure. You will blink first. And when your eyes open, that sound and pressure and thickly cut salty slab will still be holding you tight, even through the next blink and the next, until you start to believe that if it can feel this way for this long, maybe—whether or not it should—it can feel this way forever.
