Finding a burrito in Mexico City isn't easy. That's because the burrito comes from the northern part of the country, and isn't truly representative of Mexican food. The Tex-Mex hybrid Americans so often mistake for authentic “South of the Border” cuisine is an unrefined interpretation of true Mexican gastronomy. Mexico is a country with a deep culinary tradition that spans millennia and is far more sophisticated than most people expect.
Like everything about modern Mexico—the local cuisine is also a hybrid: an amalgamation of ancient Mesoamerican ingredients and recipes and Spanish culture. In order to appreciate it, you first have to understand its roots. The indigenous tribes of Mexico are responsible for the nation's most essential foods—tortillas, tamales and mole—as well as some of its most exotic and flavorful ingredients. Some are well known to us like cocoa, corn, and chile while others are more exotic, including a great variety of flora. Flor de calabaza (squash blossom), nopales (cactus leaves), and cuitlacoche (a truffle-like fungus found on corn) are three staples of classic Mexican cooking.
The Spanish brought religion to the New World, but they also brought such essential basics as beef, pork, rice, garlic, and oil. Their ethnic influence, along with later contributions by other cultures including African, Asian, and other European nations, greatly expanded Mexican cuisine.
So what is Mexican cuisine, and specifically, nouveau Mexican cuisine? The answer lays beyond the marriage of indigenous and Spanish cooking. It is a philosophy deeply rooted in the past while exploring new techniques, presentations, and flavor combinations. It is, in short, an ongoing evolution. How this cuisine takes shape is a matter of debate among many of its champions. Mexico City's top chefs have helped form the vanguard of refined Mexican cuisine.
Chef Patricia Quintana needs no introduction in Mexico or the United States. A decorated and celebrated chef; she is a culinary pioneer who has helped establish an international reputation of haute cuisine in Mexico. Her fabled restaurant, Izote, continues to draw gourmets, gourmands, and legions of fans. Quintana's guiding philosophy in the kitchen is honoring tradition while making subtle changes to boost flavor and offer a more distinguished presentation of the classics. A good example of her purist style is her starter of four tamales, filled with cheese and epazote (an aromatic herb known unfortunately as wormseed), flor de calabaza, cuitlacoche, and chicken and tomato. Using tradition as her base, Quintana delivers exciting flavor combinations. A cocoa-crusted beef filet, for example, sits on a bed of mole of Jamaica (hibiscus), a departure from the traditional recipe that enhances the flavor of the meat without compromising the bitter-chocolate taste of the typical mole.
What is Mole?
According to chefs in the colonial town of Puebla, where the dish originates, a mole is a sauce that combines three cooking techniques: frying, boiling and roasting. The most popular version of the sauce is the mole poblano, or mole from Puebla, which is made using a variety of chilies, chocolate, plantain, blackened tortilla, vegetables, and sesame seeds. Mole poblano is most typically served with chicken, producing a rich Mexican specialty that has a smoky, semi-sweet, and robust flavor.
Chef Enrique Olivera takes a different, almost maverick approach to nouveau Mexican cuisine. Olivera's restaurant, Pujol, is considered by many to be the best in the city. It offers cutting-edge techniques, wildly innovative compositions, and unique plates that reinvent, or in some cases completely transform, the classics. He calls it cocina del autor, or “author's cooking,” his way of presenting his interpretations of Mexico's diverse gastronomy to his audience. Olivera enjoys taking liberties in his kitchen, and this whimsy is perhaps best represented in one of Pujol's most popular dishes: a rich, creamy “cappuccino” of flor de calabaza served in a clear mug with a coconut milk foam. Some would consider this an almost heretical departure from tradition. Olivera, however, simply says, “We're playing.” The chef is certainly charting his own culinary course, but he also understands the importance of tradition. Everything he cooks comes from his experiences traveling and dining around Mexico, from the finger-foods of the streets to regional home cooking. So, when he presents his lemon pie (with a meringue that takes 24 hours to perfect), he is not producing a French specialty, but rather the same lemon pie he ate at home as a boy.
Taking the middle road in nouveau Mexican cuisine is Chef Daniel Ovadia. From the décor to the menu, his restaurant, Paxia, remains solidly grounded in the past. However, he too presents a list of specials that he calls nuevas locuras (literally, “new crazies”). These are dishes that take the well known and modify them with something new and unexpected. Take his budin azteca for example. The original form of this savory tart uses chicken, mushroom and butter between layers of tortilla but Ovadia replaces the chicken with duck, the mushroom with black truffle, and—in a master stroke—the butter with foie gras. The result is a rich balance of robust new flavors. Another reinvention of a classic recipe is a mole made with seven different local fruits. In other dishes, Ovadia concentrates on changing the visual perspective. Rather than pouring the classic mole negro over his Quesadillas Oaxaca, for example, the chef presents the mole in a sugar-crusted martini glass, to be used as a dipping sauce.
Three chefs, three interpretations of sophisticated Mexican gastronomy, but one consistent point of view about what constitutes nouveau Mexican cuisine: Finding new ways to honor, remember, and celebrate tradition.
Izote is located in Masaryk 513, Col. Polanco, Mexico City. Tel: 044-55-5280-1265.
Pujol is located in Petrarca 254, Col. Polanco, Mexico City. Tel: 044-55-5545-4111.
Paxia is located in Hotel NH Santa Fe, PB, Col. Santa Fe, Mexico City. Tel: 044-55-2591-0429
Avenida de la Paz 47, Col. San Angel, Mexico City. Tel: 044-55-5616-6964.