Costa Condesa

What Costa Condesa is

Costa Condesa is a casual seafood restaurant at Avenida Tamaulipas 134, in colonia Hipódromo on the Condesa side of Mexico City. It works the way a good marisquería works anywhere in Mexico: raw and cured plates to start, a grill and a fryer for the middle of the menu, and a couple of big centrepiece dishes that arrive with some theatre attached.

The room itself is plain. There are screens for football, music that gets louder as the evening goes on, a DJ on some nights, and a constant flow of people through a dining room that is not large. Booking platforms class it as pet friendly and put the average spend at 300 to 600 pesos a head. When I filmed there in August 2026 the food was clearly the point and the interior was not trying to be anything more than a neighbourhood seafood joint.

Two things separate it from the dozens of other mariscos places in Condesa and Roma. The first is the octopus. The second is the size of the plates.

How the menu works

The menu is à la carte and organised the way most Mexican seafood menus are, moving from raw to cooked:

• Aguachiles and cocktails: aguachile in green, red, black and passionfruit versions, plus a shrimp cocktail. These are the plates to start with.
• Tostadas, tacos and costras: the house tostada, taco gobernador, octopus and shrimp tacos, and crisp cheese costras.
• Guacamole: served topped with either octopus or shrimp.
• Mains: pulpo al pastor, the bolsa de mariscos, rice with seafood, and whole fish including a zarandeado.
• Dessert: the house marquesita, made with Gansito, is the one that turns up in listings.

What I ate in August

The pulpo al pastor is the dish the restaurant is built around. The octopus arrives stacked on a miniature trompo, the vertical spit used for tacos al pastor, standing over a whole onion with roasted pineapple underneath. You get a pair of black gloves and a pair of scissors and cut the tentacles off yourself. It was properly cooked, which is the hard part with octopus.

The other centrepiece is the bolsa de mariscos, the seafood bag. It comes to the table as a sealed bag of shrimp, octopus and roasted vegetables and gets poured straight onto your plate.

The house tostada was the size of a ceviche: two crisp tortillas with avocado between them and a mountain of shrimp on top. The aguachile negro was fresh and genuinely spicy rather than spicy as a suggestion. Portions across the board were large.

What it costs

Prices move, and the delivery menus published on aggregator platforms run higher than the dining room. These are the figures I saw and the ones the platforms list, in August and September 2026.

Item	Price
Average spend per person	300 to 600 MXN, about 16 to 32 USD
Tostadas and ceviches	around 250 MXN at the table, listed up to 190 to 340 MXN on delivery
Aguachiles	around 340 MXN on the delivery menu
Guacamole with octopus or shrimp	365 MXN on the delivery menu
Pulpo al pastor	around 600 MXN at the table, listed at 780 MXN on delivery
Bolsa de mariscos	listed at 780 MXN on delivery
Rice with seafood	380 MXN on the delivery menu

Drinks are charged separately. The two big mains are priced for sharing, so a table of two can eat well on one starter each and one main between them rather than ordering a main each.

How to book

Costa Condesa does take reservations and they are worth making from Thursday to Sunday, when the room fills early and stays full.

• Instagram direct message: @costacondesa, which is the channel the restaurant actually answers.
• WhatsApp: the number is linked from the Instagram profile.
• Reservándonos: the restaurant is listed on the platform, which sometimes carries a members discount.

Weekday lunch is usually straightforward as a walk-in. If you are a group of more than four, say so when you book, because the dining room has few large tables.

Getting there

• Address: Avenida Tamaulipas 134, colonia Hipódromo, 06140 Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City.
• On foot: five to eight minutes from Parque México and about the same from Parque España.
• Metro: Patriotismo and Chilpancingo on Line 9 are both around a ten-minute walk.
• Metrobús: the Campeche or Sonora stops on Line 1 along Insurgentes are close.
• Parking: street parking in Hipódromo is difficult in the evening. A taxi or ride hail is easier.
• Note: Tamaulipas runs through both Condesa and Hipódromo. Number 134 sits in Hipódromo, so use the colonia name when you tell a driver.

Before you go

• Come hungry and order less than you think. The plates are bigger than they read on the menu.
• The octopus is a share dish. So is the seafood bag. Neither makes sense as one person’s main.
• Expect noise. Music, sport on the screens and a DJ some nights. This is not a restaurant for a quiet talk.
• Bring a card, but carry some cash. Small Condesa kitchens sometimes have terminal trouble.
• Go early for a table outside the rush. Around 13:00 to 15:00 the room is calm; after 20:00 on a weekend it is not.
• Pair it with a walk. Parque México is a few minutes away, and there are enough cafés nearby for afterwards, including Lunarena Café in Condesa.
• Check the hours before you go. The hours on this page come from the venue’s public listings, which drift, so confirm on Google Maps or the venue’s own channels before a special trip.

Watch the visit

The reel above is the short version, dish by dish, including the octopus coming off the spit. For everywhere else I have filmed in the city, open my map or browse the rest of the Mexico City recommendations.