In a city where it can be hard to keep track of trendy new restaurant openings, dining at El Mirador is a timeless tradition. Open since 1904, the beloved cantina stands in a corner across from the city’s iconic Chapultepec Park, hiding more than a century of history behind its green awning. Stepping inside El Mirador immediately calls for a decision: sitting on the restaurant side or in the cantina. Cantinas, which rose in popularity during Porfirio Díaz’s presidency in the early 20th century, are laid-back watering holes where food and drink are usually served with a side of live music and games such as dominoes. While similar in decor – green chairs, white tablecloths, ornate plates hanging on the walls – the restaurant and cantina at El Mirador offer two different ambiances, especially as the week progresses.

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.

“You can’t call yourself Mexican if you don’t eat rosca de reyes,” jokes Rafa Rivera, head baker and owner of Forte Bread and Coffee in Mexico City. Distracted, he stops grating orange peel long enough to muse about the king’s cake he is making. Only 29, he already has several businesses under his belt, and is about to open a second Forte location in Colonia Juarez. Rafa opened the flagship Forte in the Roma Norte neighborhood, serving up delicious pastries and coffee, with beans from Pólvora Coffee Roasters – where his brother Julián is the lead roaster. (In 2017, Julián won first prize in the Mexican Brewers Cup Championship with his Pólvora beans.)

2023 was such an incredibly busy and exciting year for the Mexico City food scene. It felt like every single week, two or three new restaurants or bars were opening their doors. Sometimes, we admit, it even felt like a challenge to keep track – which is a happy problem, to be sure. At the same time, our favorite haunts and timeless classics beckoned, reminding us that, despite the inevitable change, quality will always stand the test of time. As a testament to that statement, we pay tribute to the always creative and delicious Expendio de Maíz, where corn-based surprises lead the culinary journey, as well as the ever-comforting Caldos de Gallina Luis, which brought us back to life more than once during the year.

Editor’s note: Alfonso Cuarón’s film “Roma,” set in Mexico City between 1970 and 1971, is expected to win big at the Oscars this weekend – it’s up for ten awards. To celebrate the movie’s success, we’re republishing our 2013 review of La Casa del Pavo, where the main character, Cleo, goes to have a sandwich with her co-worker on their day off and meet up with their boyfriends. Not only is this spot one of the few from the film that is still in business, it is almost completely unchanged. The bird that holds pride of place at the Thanksgiving table has just as important a role south of the border. Turkey has actually been a fundamental part of Mexican cooking for centuries: The Aztecs had domesticated the fowl before they had even laid eyes on a chicken.

If you like mole – and we still haven’t met anyone who doesn’t – then a visit to pueblo of San Pedro Atocpan in Mexico City’s Milpa Alta district and its National Mole Fair, which this year celebrates its 46th anniversary, is a must. That the pueblo should host a mole fair makes perfect sense. San Pedro, located about two hours directly south of downtown Mexico City, is known (perhaps unofficially) as the Mole Capital of Mexico (other pueblos also stake their claim to this title). There are only about 9,000 residents and it’s believed that ninety percent of the are involved in some way in the production or sale of mole.

Walking among the stalls of Mercado Coyoacán is as exhilarating as it is slightly overwhelming: mountains of fresh fruit, rows of piñatas hanging from the ceiling, chocolate-covered scorpions, and mystical candles that promise to bring love and fortune all coexist in this sprawling space. The familiar phrase, “¿Qué va a llevar?” (What are you buying?) echoes down each aisle, but as tempting as it is to bite into a creamy slice of mamey – a sweet, orange-fleshed fruit that has plenty of fans in Mexico – we are here with one mission: to eat our weight in tostadas. The market is in the heart of Coyoacán, one of Mexico City’s most whimsical neighborhoods. With cobblestone streets, coffee shops, art galleries, and boutiques, it’s especially popular for weekend visits.

San Gregorio, located in the southernmost part of Mexico City, is a pueblo originario (“original pueblo”), a designation given by the government to towns that have held onto their traditions. One of those traditions in San Gregorio is growing produce in the chinampería, an ancient agricultural system comprised of man-made islands crisscrossed by canals. People who farm there are called chinamperos. One of the prized crops in this area is the small, spicy chile chicuarote, which has been grown exclusively in the pueblo for centuries. People living in San Gregorio Atlapulco are so enamored with the tiny chile that they proudly call themselves Chicuarotes.

In the heart of CDMX’s Colonia Escandón, near the corner of Avenida Patriotismo and Calle José Martí, customers hover about, looking for a spot to sit or stand at El Rincón Tarasco. They’ve come here in search of carnitas tacos, which this family-owned restaurant has been serving in the authentic Michoacán style – tender, juicy pork meat with a crispy brown finish, giving it a kind of special sweetness – for over 40 years. Waiting for our tacos, we talked with Claudia Zapien about the origins of her family’s taqueria. “We come from a small town in Michoacán called Zacapu. My father, Roberto Zapien, had worked in the meat trade there where it was common to do carnitas, so he started to make them here in his regional style, at this same location, in the year of 1978.”

The bubbling of a miniature waterfall melds with the twitter of birds and the sounds of the cats that chase them in the Asociación México Japonesa (The Mexican Japanese Association)’s outdoor gardens. A hodgepodge of cypress trees, elephant’s foot plants, and ferns frame the koi ponds surrounded by red umbrellaed tables. Once an area strictly for members of the AMJ, the outside patio now fills with diners of all stripes enjoying an afternoon at Restaurante ICHI, the association’s highly acclaimed restaurant. It all started in July of 1956 when a group of 20 Japanese immigrants and local Mexicans interested in Japanese culture decided to form the Asociación México Japonesa on a plot of land in the Las Águilas neighborhood.

After a long, hot day of shopping (locals) or visiting museums (tourists) in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico, La Azotea rooftop restaurant may seem like a mirage at first. Located on the terrace of Barrio Alameda, a boutique mall and Mexican Art Déco building that was charmingly restored several years ago, La Azotea looks out over green trees, colonial bell towers, blue-tiled cupolas and the avant-garde buildings of Mexico City’s center and Alameda Central park. This oasis is for real, says its bartender, Ángel Salatiel Flores (32), who is quenching people’s thirst with more than just sparkling water. Dating back to the 1920s, the Barrio Alameda building was constructed by a German doctor and soon after became a professional services buildings for folks like lawyers and accountants.

Back in 1972 when Marsicos Romulo’s opened at the Mercado 1 de Diciembre, a neighborhood market in Mexico City´s Colonia Narvarte, it was just a small seafood joint surrounded by fruit and vegetable stands. What started as a tiny bar with only three chairs soon became known for its fresh ingredients and abundance of dishes. Eventually, Romulo’s acquired the adjacent premises and a couple more stands just in front of the original, meaning a bigger kitchen and some tables for his customers. Ten years later, Romulo’s opened a full brick-and-mortar restaurant just one block away at Calle Uxmal 52, with the same name and food on offer. Even then, the original location in the market just kept growing.

Initially, it was books that led Fernando Rodriguez Delgado to his interest in cacao. Today Rodriguez runs Chocolate Macondo, a café that specializes in ancient preparations of cacao, but prior to that he was a bookseller, fanatical about reading and fascinated by the history of Mexico. The day that he came across the Florentine Codex, a 16th-century manuscript documenting Mesoamerican culture, was an important one: it would eventually spark his countrywide search to discover the traditions of cacao and seek out ingredients, the names of which he only knew in Nahuatl. Rodriguez didn’t speak this native language of Mexico, so trying to work out the recipes for cacao drinks he found in the codex was no easy task.

In Mesoamerica, beans have been a pillar of culinary traditions – not to mention civilizations – from time immemorial. Pre-Columbian peoples depended on legumes as their primary source of protein, but they were more than mere sustenance. Beans (along with corn) were some of the most important crops for sale at the local markets because they could be used as currency. Their value was based on the physical appearance of the product (color and size). The Aztecs included beans in the list of tributes that their vassal states had to pay. Bernardino de Sahagún, a Spanish friar, documented the use of beans in the Aztec empire, noting that the native people ate tamales mixed with beans. Storing and administering these crops was critical in order to be prepared for times of shortage.

“People say, when are you going to expand? when are you going to change locations?... never.” Chef Selene Montero sits at one of the eight tables that comprise her restaurant Malportaco – a play on the word malportado, or “badly behaved” in Spanish. Multicolored ribbons hang from strings attached to the wooden rooftop that covers the sidewalk diners. Around us waiters weave among regulars, handing out Barrilito beers, aguas frescas and Mexico City’s best vegan tacos. “My goal is for people to taste something here they can’t anywhere else, not because we are particularly badass, but because I have studied a lot about how to get to this point,” says Chef Selene, who started out post-college with a marketing degree that she says made her father happy but no one else, including her.