(Re)Made in Mexico

Mexico City’s culinary renaissance pays homage to heritage and homegrown ingredients

In the past few years, Mexico’s capital has reinvented itself as a stylish me­tropolis. A new generation of tastemakers leading the charge are both cosmopolitan and confident in their country’s heritage. And nowhere is Mexico City’s transforma­tion more visible than on the tables of in­novative restaurants serving creative dishes based on traditional ingredients.

But it hasn’t always been this way. “When I started my apprenticeship in France in 1998, there was no such thing as Mexican haute cuisine,” says Edgar Núñez, executive chef and co-owner of Sud 777, which re­cently landed a spot on “Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants” list for 2016. The culinary talent was present, as was a host of tradition­al cookeries in the capital city. High-end gastronomy, however, meant anything but Mexican. Aspiring chefs like Núñez would study abroad and, when they returned home, dutifully emulate European food.

“But then I slowly began to remember how well we ate while growing up,” Núñez says. “My mother always grew her own veg­etables, and I started thinking more about the importance of fresh, local produce.” It turns out that Núñez wasn’t the only one challenging the status quo. All across Mexico City, chefs young and old were getting reacquainted with their roots.

Here, five of the city’s hottest restaurants – along with the homegrown ingredients they champion – that demonstrate the depth and diversity of today’s Mexican cuisine.

Sud 777

At his fashionable Sud 777 in the stately southern suburb of Jardines del Pedregal, Edgar Núñez serves dishes based on simple ingredients, such as carrots that are simmered for 12 hours in duck fat, charred for seven minutes, and then topped with fresh cream.

Traditional it’s not – but this sophisticated comfort food is firmly rooted in the local soil. In fact, Núñez now grows many of his vegetables in a greenhouse behind 777.

Carrots also add life to the chef’s signa­ture tostada, which features local tuna (“the world’s best tunas are caught off the coast of Mexico,” he boasts) tossed in lime, yuzu, soy sauce, and ginger, paired with avocados and green tomatoes. Crowning the dish: a fried corn tortilla, dotted with carrots, this time in the form of a buttery puree.

Anatol

It may come as a surprise to find black beans, the decidedly unglamorous, unsung hero of Mexican cuisine, on the table at Anatol, an upscale restaurant in the boutique Las Alcobas hotel. Justin Ermini, who designed Anatol’s farm-to-table menu along with co-executive chef Mayra Victoria, fell hard for the fruity black legumes brought by a farmer who’d traveled all the way from Chiapas to sell them door to door in Mexico City. Ermini decided to celebrate the humble frijoles with a black bean sopa reminiscent of the classic Mexi­can cream soup, lightened with fresh cilantro and ripe tomatoes. He serves the thick, silky soup, made with duck fat and Oaxacan chilhuade chiles, with a terrine of smoked foie gras from Guadalajara.

As an American cooking in Mexico, Er­mini has a distinct perspective. “I’ve never seen a food scene change so dramatically and quickly,” he says, noting that he moved to Mexico City in December 2012 to open Anatol. “In just a few years, the emphasis has moved from molecular fine dining to tradi­tional, organic ingredients.”

Rosetta

After Elena Reygadas opened Rosetta in 2010, the acclaimed chef found herself leaning more and more to­ward Mexican flavors, infusing her Italian menu with distinctly indigenous DMA.

“I was trained in Italian cuisine, but I also have a duty to show what makes us proud to be Mexican,” she says. Wistfully recalling dif­ferent kinds of heirloom potatoes from her childhood that are now extinct, Reygadas says that supporting traditional ingredients is a form of cultural preservation. In her airy restaurant housed within an old mansion in the Roma district, she continues to serve handmade pastas, but doesn’t shy away from using native ingredients such as chaya leaf for her pesto in lieu of basil.

Reygadas has also made pulque, an alco­holic beverage created from the ferment­ed sap of the maguey agave, a main fixture in her recipes. For instance, she marinates rabbit in the pungent liquor, which tenderizes the meat while imbuing it with a slightly tangy taste. The most impressive use of pulque might be in her simple meringue: The liquor not only lends an un­mistakable tartness to the dessert, but also adds extra elasticity.

Fonda Fina

Mexico’s traditional fonda, the modest caf­eteria that serves as a neighborhood meet­ing place, gets a touch of urban refinement at Fonda Fina (Medellin 79), which chef Jorge Vallejo opened in late 2015. Its menu, executed by hometown chef Juan Cabrera, celebrates the uncomplicated dishes that grandmothers prepare, such as freshly made tortillas topped with avocado and coarse salt. Take, for example, Cabrera’s spin on the sopa seca, a casserole as ordinary and comforting to Mexicans as Americans’ mac and cheese. Cabrera’s version tosses noodles in rich chipotle sauce, contrasts them with crunchy chilaquiles, and presents them as a tower topped with fresh cheese.

Nixtamal – corn that has been cooked and soaked in an alkaline solution (a Mesoamerican technique that goes back to around 1500 BC) – also plays a leading role at the restaurant. Here, this unas­suming maize takes on new personalities as panucho, a refried tortilla stuffed with refried black beans and finished with soft beef bone marrow and spicy habanero sauce; peneque, a puffy tortilla, which takes on a texture like fried tofu skin and serves as a pedestal for a fried egg yolk and grilled poblano peppers; and memela, a fried masa cake that Cabrera tops with a medallion of salt-cured beef tenderloin.

Azul Histórico

Since the 1980s, Ricardo Muñoz Zurita has traveled around Mexico in search of obscure recipes, cooking techniques, and foodstuffs. His ethno-culinary research has yielded more than ten books, culminating in his renowned 600-plus-page Encyclope­dic Dictionary of Mexican Gastronomy. He puts his study to good use at his three restaurants, including the atmospheric Azul Histórico, set in a seventeenth-century courtyard dotted with laurel trees.

The restaurant highlights a particular region or theme each month. You may find a menu dedicated to a single ingre­dient, like mangos, or a distant state, such as Tabasco. There is one constant, how­ever: “In Mexican cooking, you always need the right chile,” says Muñoz Zurita.

At Azul, nearly every dish contains chiles, all with different flavors, ranging from fruity to smoky to chocolaty to spicy (and more) .The pepper, for instance, figures prominently in Azul’s mole, the many-spiced sauce that comes in infinite versions, the most famous being mole poblano, “the chocolate sauce most for­eigners think of,” says Muñoz Zurita. But “mole is more complex than that,” he notes. “It’s at least 700 years old, and it varies so much from place to place. It’s a milestone dish, eaten at birthdays, bap­tisms, weddings, funerals. It’s life.”

Sometimes innovation means return­ing to your roots, and Muñoz Zurita’s research has done exactly that. “We have incredible restaurants – both traditional and contemporary,” he says. “It’s the best moment in history for Mexican cuisine right now.”

Word on the Street

“To appreciate how Mexican cuisine has evolved, I suggest my clients visit street-food stands in the upscale Polanco district,” says Carlos Alvarez, who divides his time between Mexico City and Texas. Every neighborhood in Mexico City has a tianguis, or street market, and in Polanco, food stalls spring up each Saturday morning in Lincoln Park.

“Seeing the food in its humblest form helps you understand the foundation upon which the city’s top chefs are building,” Alvarez adds. Some of his suggestions: blue corn quesadillas stuffed with flores de calabaza (zucchini blossoms); cochinita pibil, a spicy pork stew; and, if you’re feeling adventurous, huitlacoche, a fungus known as the Mexican truffle, which grows on organic corn.