The past year has been a very good one for food in Mexico City. We’ve had a wonderful time exploring new restaurants, tracking down exciting dishes and meeting great people along the way. There have been so many memorable moments over the past year that it was hard to sit down and come up with a list of the ones that really stood out the most. Through debate and discussion (and some revisits), we narrowed down the worthy field to our top favorites. Here are our Best Bites of 2012 from Mexico City. El Pozole de Moctezuma First up on our best food experiences of the year would have to be the pozole at El Pozole de Moctezuma. Located near Metro Garibaldi, the building is nondescript and shows no sign of the deliciousness that lies within, so if we hadn’t been taken there by a friend, we never would have known about it. But what a discovery! The friendly staff showed us exactly how to build the perfect bowl of pozole, from choosing the color and flavor of the broth to adding oregano, chili powder, lime juice and, of course, a splash of mezcal. A bowl of soup never tasted so good or filled us up more satisfyingly than that at El Pozole de Moctezuma. Best of all, the place is a long-term neighborhood fixture that celebrated its 65th anniversary in 2012, a fact that bodes well for future visits.

Mexico City is probably not the first place one thinks of when it comes to ice cream. Enchiladas and tacos, sure, but ice cream? In fact, the city has quite an established ice cream scene, with spots in nearly every neighborhood. La Especial de París, an ice cream parlor on the edge of Colonia San Rafael, stands out as a family-owned venue that – unlike many of its competitors, which have increasingly turned to selling mass-produced dairy products – still makes all its ice cream the old-fashioned way, by hand and with fresh, all-natural ingredients.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, What and where is safe to eat in Mexico City? We’ve heard horror stories from other travelers about “Montezuma’s Revenge” and would like to avoid getting sick while visiting the city.

In Mexico, sandwiches generally come in the form of the torta, usually made out of a white bread roll known as a bolillo that has been sliced in half and then filled to the brim with meat, avocado, tomato, onion and sliced jalapeño peppers. In Mexico City’s San Rafael neighborhood, however, a family-owned sandwich shop called La Vaca de Muchos Colores is doing its best to expand the city’s sandwich scene.

To call Tacos & Deli, a one-year-old family-owned spot in the popular nightlife district of Zona Rosa, small would be an understatement. The main dining area contains six little tables, a tiny kitchen, a taco station and a cashier stand, all of which are squeezed into a micro-sized area that in many other restaurants would probably end up being used as a broom closet.

Mexico City’s southern neighborhood of Coyoacán, once a separate town outside the city limits, is now a popular area with cobblestone lanes full of art galleries, museums, restaurants and flea markets. For us, though, the real allure of the neighborhood is the opportunity to visit Tostadas Coyoacán, a marketplace restaurant that elevates the humble tostada to dizzying culinary heights.

One of the staples of Mexican cuisine (and of bar menus everywhere), the quesadilla can be found on almost every street corner and in every neighborhood market in Mexico City. Those served at Mercado San Cosme in Colonia San Rafael, however, redefine the quesadilla. Indeed, while this neighborhood market is far from being the city’s largest or most famous, it’s worth visiting just for a chance to eat at Quekas, an eatery housed in the market that makes some of the best quesadillas we’ve had in the city.

Caldos de Gallina Luis – which a friend had been raving about to us for months before we finally made it there – is essentially a street food stand that has been trussed up to look more like a sidewalk café. Just a short walk from the Insurgentes metro stop, the venue is located on a side street next to a parking lot and opposite a sex shop, the glowing neon of the shop’s sign casting its pink light over pedestrians walking by.

Mexican cooking is clever. With just a handful of ingredients, each region of the country has managed to create a unique cuisine that reflects local lifestyles and traditions. This fact is made abundantly and deliciously clear at Con Sabor a Tixtla, a small, family-owned restaurant in Mexico City’s hip, vibrant Roma neighborhood.

The sap of the spiky maguey plant has long been used by the indigenous peoples of Mexico to prepare pulque, a milk-colored, viscous drink that has roughly the same alcohol content as beer. When they arrived in Mexico, the Spanish were introduced to pulque. Used to imbibing harder stuff, however, the conquistadors experimented with distilling a mash made out of the maguey plant, in the process inventing the beguiling spirit known as mezcal. Previously a liquor considered the province of the poor and working classes, mezcal has in recent years become one of the trendiest and most popular alcoholic drinks in Mexico, with more than 150 different brands now on the market. (Tequila, made from blue agave – a kind of maguey – and produced within a specific region of Mexico, is the best-known member of the mezcal family.) The rise in mezcal’s popularity has led to a proliferation of mezcalerías, wine bar-like spots that specialize in pouring the drink. In Mexico City in particular, mezcalerías have popped up in nearly every neighborhood, and their numbers keep growing.

Editor's note: This week, Mexico City joins Culinary Backstreets as our fifth city. We're delighted to launch Culinary Backstreets: Mexico City and look forward to sharing our culinary discoveries in this captivating metropolis. The vast megalopolis of Mexico City is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented cities in the world. Adventurous tourists are often surprised to discover a vibrant national capital filled with incredible architecture, beautiful weather and amazing food. In some ways, this scene has been playing out for 500 years.