The Joy of Mex

This isn’t what I was expecting. The walls are white and splashed with modern art. Soft jazz provides a 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 a 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 Mexican cooking at Frontera Grill and Topolobamo, 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 the country’s street food.

But Pujol 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 per head). Are there other places like Pujol, I ask chef-owner Enrique Olvera, who reinvents classic dished 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 popular 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 mouth to feed – and all their food will come through the vast central market of Abasto.

I’ve never seen anything like it – 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 haberno 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 jicama, 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, 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.

Much has been written about mole. ‘Most people think it’s just a chocolate sauce but that’s just one ingredient you might add – the colour is actually down to dried red chillies,’ explains Alicia. Mole is made throughout Mexico but the most famous is Mole Poblano from Puebla, 120km to the south of Mexico City, one of the country’s oldest colonial cities, surrounded by volcanoes and snow-capped mountains, where we will soon be heading.

We walk off lunch getting to artist Frida Kahlo’s house, now a museum, wandering though the quiet, leafy streets and passing houses painted in bright pinks and blues, before settling for a beer at atmospheric Café Tacuba back in the centre of town. Alicia recommended we try their tamales – coarse-ground corn dough wrapped like fat cigars in corn husks, here stuffed with chicken mole Poblano. We ate them to the accompaniment of a mariachi charro suits and wide-brimmed hats.

The next day we go to Puebla, but we don’t make it to a restaurant to eat mole Poblano. Instead, we’re lured by the smell of sizzling meat on the street stalls on the Plaza Paseo Bravo, where we succumb to our first taco – grilled strips of cactus, onions and beef on freshly cooked corn tortilla, smothered with a spicy red sauce – all for under a £1.

For pud, we wander the well-kept streets, craning our heads to marvel at the architecture, before arriving at Calle 6 Oriente, which is lined with sweet shops specialising in camotes – candies made of sweet potatoes by local nuns.

Craving something a tad lighter after our street-food blowout earlier in the day, we return to Mexico City for an early supper at Contramar. When chef-owner Gabriela Cámara Bargellini opened it ten years ago, it was the first smart fish restaurant in the capital (Mexicans don’t really do fish). And it’s still vowing the critics with its tuna tostados – thin slivers of Gulf of Mexico tuna on tiny pan-fried tortillas topped with ribbons of deep-fried leeks, and bream ‘rubbed’ with two salsa, one tomato and chilli, the other parsley and garlic.

Blue skies, palm trees and a blast of warm air greet us as we touch down next day in tropical Mérida, the state capital of Yucatán, whiffs of cinnamon and jasmine replacing the belching buses and yellow smog of Mexico City. It’s a charming place, where all life passes through the main square – and it’s in the middle of celebrating Yucatán’s ‘independence’ when we arrive. Bands play on each corner and young and old jig along to the infectious beats.

Once again, we get our bearings in the market. The food here has a unique style, influenced by the local Mayan culture, but also by the Caribbean, Europe and even the Middle East (think spice routes). The regional specialities are among Mexico’s most unusual, from my new favourite dish, cochinta pibil (pork cooked in banana leaves and dyed brick-red by achiote seeds, which look like horse chestnuts) to papaduzules (egg-stuffed corn tortillas in a pumpkin-seed sauce).

This time we enlist the help of American chef David Sterling tagging on to one of the cookery classes he runs from his colonial mansion in downtown Mérida. Los Dos welcomes students from all over the world - some, like us just passing through, others who stay for a few days to immerse themselves in Yucatán cuisine. After an entertaining talk on the history of the region, (‘Chris, honey, that ain’t no peppercorn,’ quips Sterling, as he explains Columbus’s confusion over allspice), we tour the market, where he points out local ingredients, including what he looks like a lump of tar. ‘That’s recardo negro,’he tells us. ‘We take chillies, burn them to a crisp, then grind them down – it’s a flavour that is unique to Yucatán.’

We try scorching haberno chillies late in his kitchen, before chopping the flesh and mixing it with orange juice and a pinch of salt for a popular but lip-numbing salsa. ‘Haberno’ is the heart and soul of Yucatán,’ declares Sterling – a believer in its mood-enhancing qualities and ability to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure. And maybe it’s true – the elderly residents of Mérida certainly seem to have a spring in their step as they stroll purposefully about, the ladies in white cotton shifts embroidered at the neck and hem, the men in flat caps and neatly pressed short-sleeved guyabera shirts.

Yucatán has always been a smart sort of place. The grand villas on Paseo Montejo are handsome evidence of its past wealth, but going back further still, to 800 AD, the monumental Mayan ruin of Chichén Itzá, just an hour and a half from Mérida, is where 100,000 people one lived in the brightly painted palaces.

A visit to Yucatán hacienda is a must. Built by the Spanish in the 16th century, they became symbols of wealth and culture, their fortunes built on rope produced from henequen, a variety of agave cactus. Many have now been turned into luxury hotels and restaurants, such as Hacienda Xcanatún on the outskirts of Mérida, where you can eat traditional xcatic chilli (a long, skinny, mild green pepper) stuffed with cochinita pibil, or chef Alejandro Martinez de la Torre’s more contemporary dishes and stay over dinner in one of the 18 beautifully appointed bedrooms.

Belgian chocolatier Mathieu Brees set up shop in Mérida in 2003. You can tour his little chocolate factory, watch him while he tips a Hessian sack of Chiapas beans into the roaster, then enjoy a mug of chocolate Mayan style, sweetened with a little local honey. Heaven.

We end the trip on a lighter note – a meal at Néctar, Mérida’s most cutting-edge eatery, opened five years ago by Chef Roberto Solis, who puts a modern spin on his grandmother’s dishes, using techniques learnt from his stints with Nordic star René Redzepi and our very own Heston Blumenthal.

‘There’s still a strong culture in Mexico of handing down recipes from generation to generation,’ explain Solis, who gave up a career in the military to follow his passion for cooking. He stuffs ravioli with cochinita pibil, while lobster is grilled with a slick of achiote – and it works. We wash it down with an elegant Grenache blend from the state of Baja California. Yup, the country makes some decent wines too.

‘It’s really starting to happen here in Mexico,’ says Solis.

I’ll drink to that.