From the Editor’s Desk: Research (Premium)

Here in Mexico City last night, my wife and I took an Uber over to the one place in the area where we can buy capsules for our silly little Nespresso machine. But we decided to walk home and figure out a place for dinner somewhere along the 30-minute route. My stomach had been mildly upset for most of the day---I still suspect a somewhat gamey oyster from the day before---and I was in that weird place where I couldn't tell if my stomach was churning or I was just hungry. But I wanted something familiar that wouldn't make matters worse.

You may laugh that what popped into my head was sushi. But not expensive, high-end sushi with lots of fish. Instead, I was looking for the more pedestrian sushi we now eat on most Wednesday nights at home, small rolls that are mostly rice. We have a favorite sushi spot near our apartment, but they don't have that kind of sushi. (Indeed, they were the source of the suspect oyster.) So we walked and looked around on Google Maps for something suitable.

There are sushi joints all over Roma Norte near our apartment---indeed, it's a little strange how many there are---but we'd never bothered to try any because we'd already found that one special place. But after a bit of searching around, we came across a restaurant that is about four blocks from our apartment and had very good reviews.

Four blocks is not far. But we have so many excellent restaurant choices that are even closer to our apartment than that, including many, many inexpensive places, that we rarely seek to go further. So in the strange world that is this place, we had never heard of this nearby restaurant that is so highly rated.

And it was exactly what the doctor ordered. I could have gotten something more daring, but all I wanted and maybe needed was some basic sushi rolls, and that's what I got. That was good, and my mild queasiness passed nicely with no drama, but I was most taken with how we have just settled in here. We have already kind of stopped looking for anything new.

This reminded me of the copious amounts of research I did before our first trip to Mexico City, especially, but also the ongoing research I did over the first year or so. One way that I store "to-do" type information for restaurants, bars, and other locations is to mark them with a "Want to go" pin in Google Maps. And for places like this area, where we travel a lot, the local map is a sea of those green pins.

I add a lot fewer "Want to go" pins here these days, but it still happens. More common, I guess, is that we've visited a place on that list and it either turns into a "Starred" place or is removed from the list. Sometimes it's removed from the list because it's not great, but as often it's just a common place like a monument or park that doesn't need to be called out anymore. (I did add this sushi place to the "Starred" list.)

I was likewise reminded by how much I enjoyed discovering how much Mexico made sense for us, how I would present this idea t...