Pujol, the Mexico City establishment that put Mexican fine dining on the map, turned 25 this year. To celebrate, chef and owner Enrique Olvera gathered a few hundred of his closest friends for an evening of dining and dancing on Saturday.
Among the crowd sipping Champagne Telmont and a special anniversary batch of Casa Dragones tequila at a newly renovated Pujol were Diego Klein, Joaquín López-Dóriga, and Gabriela Cámara, of the beloved Mexico City icon Contramar. Top chefs from near and far also included Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin (Three MICHELIN Stars), Lucho Martínez of Em (One MICHELIN Star), Gerardo Vázquez Lugo of Nicos, Edo López of Rokai, and Alexis Ayala of Pargot (Bib Gourmand).
A seated dinner included wild mussel birria with white beans and chervil, Aztec pie with chayote, full-blood wagyu short rib, and Zarandeado-style fish with a quelites salad. There was also, of course, a serving of mole madre, the restaurant’s legendary dish that has been reheating and metamorphosing over 3,700 days, paired with a younger pipián.
A brief closure earlier this year allowed Pujol time to remodel, melding the Polanco property’s interiors and exteriors in a more seamless fashion. A new volcanic stone bar in the entrance is meant to make the space feel more like a home.
The service was also remastered, shifting from a tasting menu to a prix fixe list where guests can choose from dishes that, in the current season, draw from Mexico’s central Pacific region, including the states of Colima, Nayarit, Jalisco, Guerrero, and Sinaloa.
“Our path is to become a very classic restaurant,” Olvera told us last year in an interview. “I like the idea of being a gentleman.”
After the dinner on Saturday, guests moved to Covadonga in Roma Norte, a handsome Spanish cantina with a dining room as large as a high school cafeteria. (A disco ball that descended from the ceiling helped set the mood.) As is tradition, at the end of the night, Olvera wound up with a fist-full of cake smashed onto his face.
All images courtesy of Alejandro Zaras
