A taco-tasting tour of Mexico City

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I first met Jorge Toledo last year at a cooking event in Oaxaca. He is Mexico’s most respected restaurant reviewer so when, a few weeks ago, he suggested that he take me to his favourite cantina in Mexico City, I was delighted.

Fonda “El Refugio” was founded 56 years ago by the late Judith Martínez Ortega. A few months ago, the founder’s grandson, Claudio Hall Van Beuren, took over the reins. He trained at the Florida Culinary Institute and is in the vanguard of the raw food movement in Mexico City but with El Refugio his aims are a little more traditional. Although excited at the prospect of developing the menu, he doesn’t want to change its underlying principles: traditional Mexican cuisine, cooked using the freshest of ingredients.

But traditional Mexican food has never tasted like this. The first few nibbles that came to the table included deliciously salty and flavoursome chicharron (pork skin), rendered of all its fat and deep-fried until it was puffed up, crisp and light as a feather. It was served with pieces of queso fresco, a wonderfully fresh-tasting cow’s milk cheese, and a purée of avocado, sweet onions and fresh herbs in which the flavour of the delicate avocado sung out. Freshly made and toasted corn tortillas arrived to accompany this (and each subsequent course), made from white maize ground on site and turned into a nixtamal (a fresh maize/corn dough). The difference between this and bought maize flour is not only the taste (the ethereal flavour of a nixtamal tortilla is out of this world) but also the nutritional value: nixtamal is packed with minerals and vitamins, a veritable gluten-free superfood that kept this region fed long before the arrival of wheat.

Next we ate the season’s speciality, escamoles (ants’ eggs to you and me). Known as Mexican caviar, owing to their delicacy and expense, they are only in season for a brief six-week period over February and March and are incredibly hard to harvest. In El Refugio they are sautéed in shallots, garlic and epazote, a pungent, aromatic Mexican herb that we are trying to get grown in England for Wahaca, my restaurant in London.

Other memorable dishes were a plate of two cheeses, a cotija (like an aged pecorino) and a panela (fresh, almost goaty-tasting), deep fried and served with a vibrant green, citrusy-fresh tomatillo salsa (every restaurant in Mexico City serves their own version of this classic); a stunning mole verde, a green sauce made of puréed herbs, green leaves and pumpkin seeds served over tender pieces of chicken and steamed courgette; and rich, warming meatballs slow cooked in a smoky chipotle sauce. What struck me about the food here was that the simplicity of each dish and the quality of its ingredients allowed the pure flavours to shine out.

Simplicity is also the word to describe El Califa in the trendy Condesa district of Mexico City, although the food is of a different ilk. This sparsely decorated but cheerful cantina offers a variety of tacos that all involve different cuts of pork or beef. The signature taco, El Gaona, is wafer-thin slithers of fillet steak, flash-grilled and served on a soft corn tortilla, with or without grilled cheese on top.

The other treat here is the tacos “al pastor”, a recipe developed in Mexico City by Lebanese immigrants. Thin slices of neck and shoulder of pork are marinated in achiote, guajillo chillies and Mexican oregano, among other closely-guarded ingredients. After marinating, the meat is layered up on to large kebabs with a pineapple attached to the top. As the spit turns, the pineapple caramelises and drips its juice slowly over the meat. The result is mouthwatering and unforgettable, served shaved off into tacos with the simple garnish of white onion, lime and fresh coriander. However, the dish that keeps me coming back to this place is the consommé, a meaty, intensely flavoured broth that arrives with wedges of fresh lime and chopped coriander.

If tacos are your thing then you can go even more relaxed – and cheaper still – at Los Parados, a favourite Mexico City taqueria with no seating but plenty of choice. Al pastor are also on offer here, alongside every cut of meat imaginable, served every which way on both corn and flour tortillas. The place makes you feel like you are far from the tourist traps and eating like the best Defeño , or local.

By contrast Izote, in the super-snazzy Polanco district, is considered by many Mexicans as a restaurant specifically aimed at tourists, which is a shame because although the prices are high, the food never fails to please.

Patricia Quintana, the writer and chef behind the restaurant, plays with the full range of Mexican ingredients, beautifully serving boldly seasoned dishes for an international crowd. Her pipian, a mole of ground pumpkin seeds and spices, is served over lobster tacos and is smooth, subtle and creamy, with a light chilli kick at the end, a perfect foil for the sweet lobster. Her chile relleno is an ancho chilli filled with refried beans and topped with a sweet onion jam and is so good that we are thinking of putting it on our menu at Wahaca this summer; the side order of corn bread served with a rich, spiced, slightly sweet mole Poblano (with the requisite use of chocolate in the sauce) is also tempting to copy while the venison tostada is slow-cooked, shredded venison served as a cold, spiced salad on a crisp tortilla and was the inspiration behind the beef tostada I serve at Wahaca. Imitation is supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery. I can only hope Patricia will agree.