This isn’t what I was expecting. The walls are white and splashed with modern art. Soft jazz provides relief from the manic pace of the city outside. On the menu is avocado ravioli filled with shrimp mayonnaise spiked with chipotle, a smoke-dried jalapeño pepper, followed by venison rubbed with Yucatán oregano and dried burnt chillies, served on puréed plantain.
Pujol, in Mexico City, is one of a brave new wave of restaurants putting the country on the global gastronomic map. The closest most people get to Mexican food is Tex-Mex, the cuisine of the US border states. But the likes of fajitas, barbecued pork ribs, chilli con carne and nachos bear no relation to true Mexican cooking – even the tortillas are different.
I ate my first proper tortilla – thin, unleavened, griddle-baked cakes of fresh cornmeal dough – ten years ago in Chicago, of all places, where celebrity chef Rick Bayless embraces authentic Mexican cooking at Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, having become hooked after a visit to Mexico as a researcher in his 20s.
More recently, I enjoyed hand-rolled corn tortillas at Green & Red in London’s Shoreditch, using them to soak up a densely flavoured lamb stew cooked up by chefs from the Jalisco region.
Then came Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers, whose obsession with Mexican cuisine led to the opening of Wahaca in London’s Covent Garden (and, more recently in the new Westfield shopping centre), where queues snake out the door for her interpretation of Mexico’s street food.
But Pujol (pujol.com.mx) is something else. This is classy fare, presenting Mexico’s mysterious and multi-layered flavours in a much lighter way (and a bargain at around £30 a head).
Are there other places like Pujol, I ask chef-owner Enrique Olvera, who reinvents classic dishes using tricks he learnt on his travels. ‘Oh, yes – and many more like us will be coming through,’ he says.
‘It’s a very exciting time for food in Mexico City. The problem is the world doesn’t think about our cuisine in terms of fine dining. They think of it as street food, and we have to change that perception – although it’s true that street food is the closest to a Mexican’s heart,’ he adds with a grin.
That’s good, because on my culinary journey I’m keen to try the street food, too. And before I venture into the world of modern Mexican cooking, I want to get a handle on the traditional – though it might take a few more visits, as there are 56 cultures and 52 languages in this country of 2m sq km.
A good place to start is the market. Mexico City has 22 million inhabitants, making it the third most populous city in the world, and goes on for miles – sprawling up and over the scrubby hills that surround the high plateau valley. That’s a lot of mouths to feed – and all their food will come through the vast central market of Abasto.
I’ve never seen anything like Abasto market. It’s a city in itself, where food is sold from stalls and buildings stretching far into the distance.
There are more than a hundred varieties of chillies, from the hottest, lantern-shaped habenero to the gnarled, black-green chilaca; plenty of tomatillos – the small, light green, tart-tasting fruits in a papery husk, which are the foundation of most Mexican green sauces; a beet-shaped root called jícama, eaten raw with a squirt of lime; and nopales – cactus paddles stripped of their spines and grilled; plus the inky corn truffle huitlacoche, destined for the champion of sandwiches, the quesadilla. Talking of corn, I see more here than ever before; it’s the staff of life for a Mexican – indeed, you could say it’s almost sacred.
Stomachs rumbling, we head to El Tajín (+52 55 5659 5759), one of Mexico City’s finest restaurants, run by Alicia Gironella de’Angeli, recipient of numerous awards and author of Larousse de la Cocina Mexicana. Here I find a cleaner, fresher, less fiery version of traditional Mexican cooking – and my first proper mole.
Go to the next page for cactus tacos, the truth about Mexican moles and Mexican seafood.
Find out what inspires Masterchef winner and Mexican restaurant owner Thomasina Miers.
