Mexico City: A great dining capital

Getting there

AirTran and Interjet fly nonstop from Orange County to Mexico City from around $300 roundtrip. Also, most of the major airlines and alliances fly nonstop from LAX, from about $300. Official tourist taxis from the airport to the areas around Polanco and Colonia Roma cost about $25.

The restaurants

Biko
Lunch and dinner,
Mondays-Saturdays
Presidente Masaryk 407, Polanco
+52 55-5282-2064
biko.com.mx

Kaah Siis
Lunch and dinner,
Tuesdays-Saturdays
Schiller 331, Polanco
+52 55-5250-0274
kaahsiis.com

Maximo Bistrot Local
Lunch and dinner,
Tuesdays-Saturdays
Tonalá 133, Colonia Roma
+52 55-5264-4291
maximobistrot.com.mx

Pujol
Lunch and dinner,
Mondays-Saturdays
Francisco Petrarca 254, Polanco
+52 55-5545 4111
pujol.com.mx

Quintonil
Lunch and dinner,
Tuesdays-Saturdays
Newton 55, Polanco
+52 55-5280-1660
quintonil.com

Hotel Review: Hyatt Regency Mexico City

Overview: The new Hyatt Regency Mexico City is one of the best luxury bargains in the city center. Previously operated as the Hotel Nikko, the 38-story property changed its flag to Hyatt last year and immediately began a total transformation. The rooms are now mostly complete and lovely. The new grand entrance and lobby were completed Jan. 14. The lobby bar, however, is still under renovation and probably won’t be finished until late spring.

Location: Campos Eliseos 24. This is Polanco’s luxury hotel row. The Hyatt is adjacent to the Intercontinental, the W and the JW Marriott, overlooking Chapultepec park on one side, Polanco on the other.

Room: Regency Club King, $185. The design is clean, simple and luxurious, about 300 square feet. The bed feels brand new, and the pillows fluffy and plentiful. And because it’s on the Club Level, it includes a daily breakfast buffet as well as afternoon drinks and canapés. The Club Level also includes round-the-clock butler service and coffee delivered to the room whenever you want it.

Food/drink: Two Japanese restaurants on the ground floor (not sampled) are remnants of the previous Nikko era, but they appear to be here to stay. The morning and afternoon buffets in the Club Lounge are truly outstanding.

Wi-Fi: Basic Wi-Fi broadband is free throughout the hotel and guest rooms.

Additional details: Service throughout the property is excellent. Private Town Cars, Suburbans and municipal taxis are readily available.

Rates: From $160. Weekday prices can go a lot higher, but this hotel is an incredible bargain for the neighborhood. Most hotels on this street cost significantly more.

Phone: 888-591-1234

Online: mexicocity.regency.hyatt.com

Mexico City might be home to the world’s most underrated restaurant scene. For more than a decade, passionate young chefs in the Mexican capital have quietly redefined the upper limits of their native cuisine. Drawing inspiration from the international modernist movement while evangelizing local farms and classical Mexican flavors, the fine-dining scene here easily holds its own against the best of New York, Chicago, London or Singapore.

The chef who gets most of the credit for starting the revolution is Enrique Olvera, who 14 years ago opened Pujol, an elegant, 40-seat, midcentury modern restaurant tucked into a quiet, tree-lined residential enclave in the federal district’s most prestigious old neighborhood, Polanco. Olvera is often compared with America’s Thomas Keller or Denmark’s Rene Redzepi, and it’s an apt association.

“Would you like your service tonight in Spanish or English?” asks the host who greets us at the door of Pujol. And I overhear him moments later asking another party, “Would you like your service tonight in Spanish or Portuguese?” The service here sets a worldwide standard for grace. The requisite 10-course menu sets an impeccably high standard, as well.

The first thing to arrive is a giant, hollow gourd with a hole in its top, from which smoke gently billows. Two thin wooden skewers protrude through the smoke. I grab one. On its tip is a whole baby corn about 3 inches long that has been roasted and lightly brushed with chili-flavored mayonnaise and dusted with what looks like ash. But it’s not ash. It’s ants. The insects have been roasted to a crisp and crushed into a powder. The adventure has begun.

Around the third course, I receive what appears to be a piece of raw fish atop a chicharron, or fried pig skin. But as I taste it, I realize the flavors and textures are reversed. The chicharron is made from fish skin. What I thought to be raw fish is actually cured pork jowl.

There’s a “taco” course that will exceed your wildest imagination. The tortilla on mine is black on one side while bright green on the other, filled with raw amberjack, black-bean foam and hoja santa, a large-leaf Mexican herb that tastes like root beer.

Risotto vaguely alludes to Mexican rice, topped with crumbled chorizo and a slow-poached egg. Braised oxtail gets wrapped and roasted in parchment paper with avocado leaves. And about halfway through the meal, my waiter delivers a big, white plate with a small tortilla that has been dipped in mole and sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. It looks rather plain and out of place for a restaurant this fancy.

“A tortilla,” the waiter announces, “with 120-day-old mole.”

“Wait. What?” I ask.

The waiter smiles, reveling in the element of surprise. “We’ve been stirring and feeding this mole for 120 days,” he says.

“How much longer can you do that?” I ask.

“That we don’t know,” he says. “This is still an experiment.”

Using the same process that turns corn into hominy, the chef marinates papaya until its texture is completely foreign but its flavor is still vaguely familiar. This becomes the base for a dessert that’s partnered with honey ice cream, yogurt, crystalized lemon and honey that’s been turned into sand with the magic of liquid nitrogen.

A banana sits on a shelf for two months until it becomes somewhat gelatinous and gummy – aged, they say – then treated somehow with banana vinegar and buried beneath a flurry of snowflakes made from finely shaved macadamia nuts. As crazy as all this sounds, it is astonishingly delicious.

My waiter at Pujol sees me taking pictures of my food and asks me where else I plan to dine while I’m in town. I tell him Quintonil is high on my list. He scrunches his brow, trying to place the new restaurant. He shakes his head no. “I don’t know that one.”

“The chef used to work here,” I say.

“Every young chef in Mexico has worked here at some point,” he says, chuckling.

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Mexico City: A great dining capital