• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

Try reinvented classics at Pujol.   (Photo: Courtesy of Pujol)

Spring for the tasting menu (six courses, $55) at Pujol to sample the range of avant-garde, U.S.-trained chef Enrique Olvera. When his cookbook comes out in May 2010, you'll have already tasted his liquid quesadilla.

Guess what the 30 ingredients are in El Bajío's mole sauce, served over chicken or as a stew. Don a plastic bib before trying the carnitas, which have been braising since 3 a.m.

Eat organic, regional cuisine prepared by the author of the Encyclopedia of Mexican Gastronomy at the unpretentious Café Azul y Oro. Work off the meal with a walk through the adjacent year-old University Museum of Contemporary Art.

Take your taxi to the "drive-in" at El Borrego Viudo (Avenida Revolución 241; no phone), a tiny 41-year-old taquería with an enormous parking lot and carhops.

Published on Dec 3, 2009 as a web exclusive.