Recetario de la Nonna

What Recetario de la Nonna is

Recetario de la Nonna is a small Argentine kitchen at Liverpool 179 in Colonia Juárez, Mexico City. Two things come out of it: hand-folded Argentine empanadas, and Italian-style focaccia used as the base for filled sandwiches. It is a new opening, and it is built delivery first, with a few tables on site rather than a dining room.

That model matters for how you use it. This is not a restaurant you book for an evening. It is a kitchen you order from, or walk into and eat at quickly. The name translates as the grandmother’s recipe book, which is literal: the recipes come from the owners’ own grandmothers and were reworked for about a year before the place opened.

Colonia Juárez is a dense, walkable neighbourhood between Paseo de la Reforma and Avenida Chapultepec, and the Liverpool address sits on the Zona Rosa side of it, in easy reach of the Metro. That makes it a practical stop rather than a destination trip.

Who is behind it

The kitchen is run by two Argentine owners with roughly twenty years of restaurant experience in Argentina behind them, and they work on site rather than running it remotely. That is unusual for a delivery-first operation in Mexico City, where the model often means a shared kitchen with no owner in the building.

Their stated approach is slow development rather than fast scaling. Both the empanada dough and the focaccia dough were tested for about a year each before the business opened, and the ingredient list is deliberately expensive for the format: flour, olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and cured meats imported directly from Italy. Everything, including the dough and the meat, is made on the premises.

How the menu works

There are two product lines plus sauces and a dessert item, and the whole menu is designed to travel.

• Empanadas: six fillings, all 70 MXN, all about 130 grams, folded by hand on site. Carne is knife-cut beef with onion, pepper, spring onion and boiled egg. Pollo is the same treatment with chicken breast. Then jamón y queso, elote with caramelised onion and mozzarella, cebolla y queso with onion cooked down slowly, and verdura y ricotta with baby spinach, creamy ricotta and melted mozzarella. The card asks you to choose baked or fried for each one, except the elote, which is baked only, and the carne and pollo come in mild or spicy.
• Focaccia: two steps. First the bread, either focaccia clásica, slow fermented with rosemary and coarse salt, or focaccia siciliana with roasted cherry tomatoes, red onion and black olives. Then the filling: milanesa de res 249 MXN, milanesa napolitana with ham and mozzarella 300, prosciutto with parmesan and rocket 205, and salame, mortadella or jamón y queso at 190 each. Every focaccia arrives with fries.
• On the side: fries 90 MXN, and the Mediterránea de la Nonna, mixed leaves and cherry tomatoes in a house vinaigrette, 90.
• Sauces: chimichurri de la Nonna, parsley, oregano and ají, 20 MXN. A chimichurri side and a chipotle side are on the card without a price beside them.
• Sweet: Franui Pink and Franui Milk, 99 MXN for 90 grams, Patagonian raspberries dipped in white chocolate under a pink chocolate shell, or dipped in milk chocolate.
• Drinks: the Coca-Cola range at 49 MXN for 355 ml, including Topo Chico, Sidral Mundet and Ciel, and Modelo beers at 55, including Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, Corona and Michelob Ultra.

What I ate

The empanadas are the reason to come, and of the six fillings the verdura y ricotta was my favourite, baby spinach with creamy ricotta and mozzarella. The focaccia is the bigger commitment: beef, gooey cheese and vegetables inside a thick, soft bread, cooked long and slow, which the kitchen puts at eighteen hours sous vide, and it is a full meal rather than a snack. The card now prints the beef focaccias as milanesa de res and milanesa napolitana, so ask which version is on that day. The chimichurri is among the best I have tried, and the Patagonian raspberries in pink chocolate are dangerously good, which is why the whole thing got filed under guilty pleasure rather than lunch.

What it costs

The prices below are the ones printed on Recetario de la Nonna’s own card, read on my visit, rather than a benchmark from comparable kitchens. They are in Mexican pesos, and they move.

Item	Price
Any empanada, about 130 g	70 MXN, about 4 USD
Three empanadas	210 MXN, about 11 USD
Focaccia, salame, mortadella or jamón y queso	190 MXN each
Focaccia, prosciutto	205 MXN
Focaccia, milanesa de res	249 MXN
Focaccia, milanesa napolitana	300 MXN
Fries, or the Mediterránea salad	90 MXN each
Chimichurri de la Nonna	20 MXN
Franui Pink or Franui Milk, 90 g	99 MXN
Soft drinks, 355 ml	49 MXN
Beer, 355 ml	55 MXN

The card prices every empanada the same, so pick the filling you want rather than the cheap one, and it charges nothing extra for baked or fried. Every focaccia comes with fries, which makes the 249 MXN milanesa a full lunch rather than a sandwich, and it is the reason to order the separate portion of fries only if you are sharing. Two empanadas and a drink is under 200 MXN. Ordering through a delivery app adds a service margin on top of these figures, so eating at the tables on site is the cheaper route.

How to visit

• Walk in: Liverpool 179, Colonia Juárez, and eat at one of the few tables.
• Order online: the business operates through recetariodelanonna.com and the delivery apps that cover Colonia Juárez.
• Social media: my own note from the visit found no Instagram handle published, only the hashtag, so the website and the delivery apps are the reliable channels.
• No reservations: there is nothing to book. This is counter and delivery service.

Hours had not been published at the time of writing. Because it is a new and delivery-led operation, check the delivery apps for whether the kitchen is open before making a trip across the city for it.

Getting there

• Address: Liverpool 179, Colonia Juárez, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City.
• Neighbourhood: the Zona Rosa side of Juárez, a short walk from Paseo de la Reforma.
• Metro: Insurgentes on Line 1 is a few minutes on foot. Sevilla on Line 1 is a short walk in the other direction.
• Metrobús: the Avenida Insurgentes corridor stops at the Glorieta de Insurgentes nearby.
• On foot: about ten minutes from the Ángel de la Independencia, and a few minutes from the Londres and Génova restaurant blocks.
• Parking: street parking in Zona Rosa is difficult. Walk, take the Metro, or have it delivered.

Before you go

• Order the verdura y ricotta empanada if you only order one. It is the one I went back for, and it costs the same 70 MXN as every other filling.
• Say baked or fried. The card asks, at no extra cost, and the elote is the one that only comes baked.
• The focaccia is a meal, not a snack. It comes with fries as standard, so do not order it alongside three empanadas unless you are sharing.
• Buy the chimichurri to take home. It travels better than the focaccia does.
• Check the apps before you walk. Hours are not published and this is a delivery-first kitchen, so the door is not always the same as the service.
• Eat in if you can. Focaccia and fresh empanadas both lose something in a delivery bag.
• Pair it with the neighbourhood. Wanwan Sakaba is a few streets away on Londres, and Niddo is the Juárez breakfast stop if you are here in the morning.
• 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 of the empanadas, the focaccia and the raspberries. For the rest of the city, open my map or browse the Mexico City recommendations.