Tonight’s dinner was at Pujol, probably one of the most internationally recognized restaurants in CDMX. We almost didn’t dine here at all because I missed booking a reservation 2 months in advance because I didn’t initially understand that their web site reservation doesn’t initially show what is and isn’t available until you actually try to book (this similar interface burned me when I was trying to book dinner for us at the Eiffel Tower in August….waaah, first world problems). So I actually originally had dinner for tonight booked for Rosetta, but since I’ve been diligently checking for openings pretty much every day for the last 2 months, my perseverance was rewarded yesterday morning with an opening for today/Friday for the omakase bar menu with the 8 taco menu (and you’d think I would have had enough tacos today already…). This did allow us to complete our Mexico City World’s 50 Best hat trick (Pujol is rated #13 (my and Taylor Swift’s lucky number) in addition to Quintonil (#9) and Rosetta (#49)). i also recently saw a Conde Nast article on the best restaurnats in Latin America of which Pujol, Quintonil, and Rosetta in CDMX were all recognized in addition to several others that I’ll have to seek out.
I have to admit that I was mildly bummed that I didn’t secure a reservation for the tasting menu in the dining room, but since we’ve been eating out so much (and for other reasons….more later), the bar seating turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise.
We arrived and were seated next to a father and daughter from LA to our left and a guy from Scottsdale on the right. I read an article in Forbes earlier today about how so many of this high end restaurants are primarily supported by international diners since the vast majority of the locals aren’t earning anywhere near enough to eat here. This seemed to clearly be the case at Pujol and largely seemed to be the case at Quintonil. in any case, our adjacent diners all seemed to be foodies as well and we compared notes a bit on where we had eaten and where we wanted to eat.
There were 3 wine pairing options with dinner – a wine pairing, a mixed (cocktail, wine, sherry, beer, tequila) pairing, and a non-alcoholic pairing; we both opted for the mixed pairing since that sounded the nost interesting. Sitting at the bar, we had a view of the bartenders in action and the individual working directly in front of us was amazing (for a snippet, see video). Our host, Alex, was incredibly engaging and knowledgeable explaining each dish in great detail and injecting his own personal experiences into it. He was a big part of what ultimately made the meal a very memorable one.
I honestly can’t go into great detail on every dish. The menu lists the items, but really that is just a shallow description of each dish with the complexity of ingredients and preparation. Andrea’s favorite was the first dish listed – the margarita scallop and cactus juice and i probably would have to say the sope, oyster emulsion, caviar, fish chips, coriander. most dishes had an additioanl sauce that definitely helped make the dish and with the course I liked, I tasted it without the verde sauce and it was too fishy (and I love fishy), but the acid of the sauce just balanced everything exquisitly.
Notably on the menu, there was a mole dish with an aged mole and a nuevo mole. The aged mole was 3268 days old as hand written on the menu. The age their mole by continiuously renewing it like a sourdough starter and there was such a big difference between the aged mole, the new mole and the thrilling combination of the two.
For dessert, they discreetly ushered us outside to our own tables (this freeing up the indoor seats for the next seating). It was a nice lush garden area and even here in December, the weather was quite temperate and we were so relaxed and didn’t want to leave.
All in all, I would have said the food was better an Quintonil, but the experience thanks to the engagement by our host Alex made it a better overall experience. i really would love to try the tasting menu, which I would expect would be even better than the omakase at the bar, but I also would expect the interaction to be much more perfunctory when dining at a table, so less of an overall experience in that regard. But that final judgment will have to wait until we are able to dine here at Pujol again, which we would certainly do.
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