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All Mexico Mexico City Cafebrería El Péndulo
AO Edited Gastro Obscura

Cafebrería El Péndulo

Part bookstore, part café, and part forest.

Mexico City, Mexico

Added By
Oliver Hong
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Cafebrería El Péndulo Second Floor.   Nan Palmero/cc by 2.0
Péndulo San Angel.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
Péndulo San Angel, note the glassbox housing a palm tree.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
Cafebrería El Péndulo   Xavixavir / Atlas Obscura User
Péndulo San Angel.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
Interior of Péndulo San Angel.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
  notoriousFIG / Atlas Obscura User
Stairs in Péndulo San Angel.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
The palm tree in Péndulo San Ángel.   linkogecko / Atlas Obscura User
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This amazing chain of Mexico City bookstores normally follow multi-story floorplans incorporating café and restaurant facilities. A healthy serving of eye candy in the form of wooden floors, balconies with curvy green handrails, and living plants that seem to protrude from the shelves are common to the seven locations spanning the entire city. These stores will stir up your imagination, or at least give you something to look at as you stir your coffee.

Common items for sale include new titles or reprints of older books in both Spanish and English and music (CD and vinyl) sealed in plastic wrap. Designer items commonly with Mexican and literary themes—porcelain luchador-themed salt and pepper shakers, or plush toys of William Shakespeare for example—are abundant on the stores' gift sections. Don't expect to find old, rare books or to have to dig through dusty crates of trash and treasure in these chic establishments.

Two of the locations are small, single-story cafebrerías in the shopping malls of Santa Fe and Perisur. The locations on neighboring Roma and Condesa neighborhoods both feature 2-story floorplans in former mansions built in the traditional art deco style. In the Central Zona Rosa location on Hamburgo street, the dining gets less formal over each floor—table dining on the ground floor, sofas and reading for the cafe on the first floor, and a bar on the second floor.

Most of the pictures above are from the featured Polanco location on Alejandro Dumas street. The mid-south San Angel location in the Centro Cultural Helénico theatre also features fascinating architectural features over its wooden-paneled 3 floors, including a very tall palm tree that grows through the entire height of the building.

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Shops

Know Before You Go

Every store has different opening times but the constant in which all will be open is between 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Changes to the restaurant/café menus usually occur throughout all locations but still tend to offer at least a few vegan and vegetarian options.

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Added By

Oliver Hong

Edited By

karynhughes1, Erin Everywhere, Junost Apodo, nanpalmero...

  • karynhughes1
  • Erin Everywhere
  • Junost Apodo
  • nanpalmero
  • Monsieur Mictlan
  • acoumbis
  • maxmaya86
  • linkogecko
  • notoriousFIG
  • Xavixavir

Published

April 14, 2013

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  • https://www.yelp.com/biz/cafebrer%C3%ADa-el-p%C3%A9ndulo-m%C3%A9xico-3
  • https://www.facebook.com/Cafebreria.el.Pendulo/
Cafebrería El Péndulo
Alejandro Dumas 81
Mexico City, 11550
Mexico
19.430423, -99.195638
Visit Website

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