Pujol is the best restaurant in North America
The menu in Pujol restaurant is based on purely Mexican dishes: beans and quelites tlayuda, huitlacoche, black truffle, quintoniles open papadzul.
"Enrique Olvera is accredited with the proof that Mexican rustic flavors deserve as much attention as any other haute cuisine in the world, and Pujol has been his pedestal to highlight that point," says The World's 50 Best Restaurants.
Enrique Olvera opened Pujol in Mexico City in the year 2000. "His kitchen is always changing, he picks up ideas from here and there, he reinterprets and evolves, but he has roots in the ingredients and the Mexican techniques of all times", points to his website.
As it has been underlined, its menu is based on purely Mexican dishes: beans and quelites tlayuda, huitlacoche, black truffle, quintoniles open papadzul, quail egg, chiltomate, sweet potato, mole de piñón, mole mother, a new mole, tamale de coffee, ginger ice cream, honeycomb, among others.
Quintonil endorses success
At The World's 50 Best Restaurants there is also another Mexican restaurant: Quintonil, founded in 2012. Also located in Polanco, Quintonil is a gastronomic project directed by Alejandra Flores and Jorge Vallejo, whose purpose is to express the flavors of the ingredients of the Mexican territory in their menu under a personal gaze. Since 2015, Quintonil has been on the select list of 50 Best World's Restaurants, this time at position 24.
Top 10
The restaurant of the French Riviera Mirazur, of the Argentine Mauro Colagreco, won the first place in the influential list of the 50 best in the world promoted by Restaurant magazine, while the Danish Noma de René Redzepi, who has won four times, returns to the list in the second position.
The third place is occupied by Basque Asador Etxebarri of Bittor Arguinzoniz, while Central de Lima, by Peruvian chef Virgilio Martínez, repeats the sixth place of the previous edition. Among the top ten of the coveted list is Mugaritz from Basque Andoni Luis Aduriz, who climbs from 9 to 7, and Barcelona enjoys Eduard Xatruch, Oriol Castro, and Mateu Casañas, ex-chef of elBulli, which is placed in ninth position and up to nine places.
The Lima Maido, where chef Mitsuharu Tsumura fuses Peruvian and Japanese cuisine, drops three positions to tenth place. In the solitary representation of Asia in the "top 10", Gaggan in Bangkok, Indian Gaggan Anand, three years in a row best restaurant in Asia and in 2018 ranked fifth, won the fourth place.
The best of the best
Those responsible for the famous list, promoted by the British magazine Restaurant since 2002, decided this year to change the rules quite controversially and no restaurant that has been crowned previously as the best in the world may be included, which seeks to make room for new names.
This ruled out last year's winner, Italian Osteria Franciscana, from chef Massimo Bottura; to the Spanish El Celler de Can Roca (winner in 2013 and 2015), which in the previous edition was placed in the second position, and the New Yorker Eleven Madison Park, winner in 2017 and fourth in 2018.
These three restaurants are part of a new category: "The best of the best", which also includes the mythical elBulli by Ferrán Adrià, who crowned the list for a total of six years, and the rest of the restaurants that have won at some time. The ranking is made from the votes of one thousand 40 chefs, critics, and gourmet travelers chosen by Restaurant magazine and this year have another novelty: for the first time, the voting panel consisted of the same number of men and women.
