La Docena

Oysters kept close to the pass

The oysters reach the pass without ceremony, cold and direct, while Tomás Bermudez works as chef at La Docena in Polanco, Mexico City. His cooking here stays close to the product: shellfish, tuna tostada, camarones al ajillo, grilled oysters, and the small decisions that keep seafood from being overhandled. Training at Mausi Sebess in Buenos Aires gave Bermudez a disciplined base, and the La Docena kitchen uses that discipline in a plain register. The gesture is not austerity. It is refusal of excess. Bermudez is known for making oysters feel less rarefied, less bound to ceremony, and more available to the table. That idea matters in Polanco, where the room can carry a charge without asking the food to perform. The restaurant language draws on the New Orleans oyster bar, then turns toward Mexico’s Pacific coast and local producers. San Blas, Baja Ensenada and Kumamoto oysters sit inside that vocabulary, alongside fish crudo, ceviche, grilled shellfish and cured meats sliced on site. The lineage here is practical rather than ornate: Buenos Aires technique, Pacific sourcing, Mexico City appetite, and a chef who keeps the bench pointed toward clarity.

The raw bar sets the measure

La Docena’s program is built for the hand and the knife before it is built for the menu. The raw bar carries towers, tostadas, crudos, clams and oysters, with grilled work close behind. A Fuente Royal brings 12 San Blas oysters, 4 Baja Ensenada, 4 Kumamoto, 6 specials, bluefin tuna crudo, Peruvian ceviche, daily fish crudo, 250g king crab, and either 3 reina clams or 6 chocolatas. Those figures tell the shape of the place better than a category can. The kitchen also works with 450g king crab, 380g cangrejo moro, jaiba concha suave frita at 180g, hueva de pescado at 80g, and pepitos built around 150g cuts. Technique stays visible: grilling with olive oil and sea salt, curing fish lajas, folding aioli into the plate only where it belongs, keeping tostadas crisp enough to carry tuna or octopus without softening. The beverage program follows the same line, with crisp beers, Mexican wines from Baja, and cocktails that leave room for salt, chile, garlic and shellfish.

Low light, open kitchen, a lively room

The room at La Docena does not ask for quiet. It has open kitchen views, low lighting, and the movement of an oyster bar that understands pace: plates crossing the counter, shells stacked after the pass, servers moving through groups sharing small plates. The format suits the cooking. A tuna tostada can arrive beside grilled oysters; camarones al ajillo can sit between a glass of Baja wine and a plate of cured meat. The atmosphere is lively, but the food still has a line to follow. Bermudez’s point of view depends on that contrast, a casual setting with product handled cleanly and without distance. Polanco gives the restaurant a different tempo from the Roma Norte outpost, yet the central method remains the same: fresh seafood, direct seasoning, and a bar built around the shell. La Docena serves grilled oysters.