Best in Mexico 6 Best Restaurants in Mexico City (2026 Guide)
As of September 2026, Mexico City's top table is split between two two-star Michelin restaurants, Quintonil and Pujol, both in Polanco, and a handful of one-star and Bib Gourmand spots covering seafood, Mexican-Italian, and street tacos. This list ranks six restaurants using Michelin recognition, global rankings, and menu format, with picks for every budget.
6 Best Restaurants in Mexico City (2026 Guide), ranked
Quintonil
Quintonil holds two Michelin stars from the 2024 guide and reached No. 3 on The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025, the top spot for North America. Chef Jorge Vallejo's nine-course tasting menu changes seasonally across 42 seats in Polanco. Latin America's 50 Best also named it Mexico's best restaurant on 26 November 2024.
Best for: Modern Mexican tasting menu
Official website See full factsPujol
Pujol shares Mexico's top Michelin rating of two stars with Quintonil and placed No. 33 on the 2024 World's 50 Best Restaurants list. Chef Enrique Olvera's mole madre has been reheated and remixed for more than two decades, cited by Michelin as one of the guide's defining dishes. Two tasting menus, including a 12-course Taco Omakase, run out of a single Polanco address opened in 2000.
Best for: Iconic mole tasting menu
Official website See full factsRosetta
Rosetta earned one Michelin star in the 2024 guide and is led by chef Elena Reygadas, named the World's Best Female Chef in 2023. The restaurant runs a la carte in a converted early-20th-century Roma Norte mansion, built for sharing plates like cabbage tacos with pistachio puree. Michelin rates it a moderate '$$' on price, well below the tasting-menu restaurants above it on this list.
Best for: Mexican-Italian sharing plates
Official website See full factsSud 777
Sud 777 holds one Michelin star from the 2024 guide, awarded to chef Edgar Nunez, a member of the Academie Culinaire de France. The Jardines del Pedregal restaurant runs a 12-course tasting menu alongside an a la carte option, set in a modern dining room with lofted ceilings. It has operated since 2008, longer than most other Michelin-recognized restaurants on this list.
Best for: French-Mexican tasting menu
Official website See full factsContramar
Contramar carries a Michelin Bib Gourmand distinction for good cooking at moderate prices and has run in Roma Norte since 14 August 1998. Owner Gabriela Camara built the menu around pescado a la talla and tuna tostadas, a formula successful enough that a Las Vegas spinoff, Cantina Contramar, opened at the Fontainebleau. Reservations open on OpenTable about 30 days ahead of each date.
Best for: Seafood tostadas and pescado a la talla
Official website See full factsEl Califa de Leon
El Califa de Leon is a taco stand in Colonia San Rafael that has served tacos since 1968 and became the only Mexican street-food vendor awarded a Michelin star in the guide's 2024 debut. Its taco de gaonera anchors a short menu that also covers bistec, chuleta, and costilla tacos. Among roughly 11,000 registered taco stands in Mexico City, it is the single Michelin-starred option.
Best for: Michelin-starred street tacos
Official website See full factsWhat made 2024 a turning point for Mexico City dining?
The Michelin Guide added Mexico for the first time in 2024, and Mexico City took the largest share of the country's initial awards. The capital collected nine Michelin stars in that first edition, including two restaurants awarded two stars each, Pujol and Quintonil, both in the Polanco neighborhood. Sixteen restaurants nationwide received one star in 2024, and by 2025 five more Mexican restaurants had earned stars, bringing the national total to 23 star-holding restaurants.
Mexico City restaurants were already fixtures on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list before Michelin arrived. Quintonil has appeared on that global list every year since 2016, and Pujol has a similarly long run, giving the city two decades of overlapping recognition from both ranking systems by 2026.
How many Michelin-starred restaurants does Mexico City have?
In the Michelin Guide Mexico's debut year, Mexico City restaurants received two two-star ratings (Pujol and Quintonil) and five one-star ratings, going to El Califa de Leon, Esquina Comun, Em, Sud 777, and Rosetta. Contramar did not appear among the 2024 stars but was later listed as a Bib Gourmand restaurant, a category that denotes good cooking at moderate prices; by the 2026 guide, Mexico's national Bib Gourmand count had grown to 63 restaurants.
No Mexico City restaurant has yet received three Michelin stars. The two two-star restaurants, Pujol and Quintonil, remain the country's highest Michelin rating as of the 2026 guide.
How do reservations work at Mexico City's top-rated restaurants?
Most Michelin-recognized restaurants in Mexico City require advance booking through platforms like Tock or OpenTable rather than walk-in seating. Contramar releases new reservations on OpenTable roughly 30 days ahead of the date, and diners report that phone calls to the restaurant can also secure a table. Quintonil requires a deposit at the time of booking to hold a reservation, a policy the restaurant uses to manage demand after its repeated appearances in the Latin America's 50 Best and World's 50 Best rankings.
Tasting-menu restaurants such as Pujol and Sud 777 typically hold reservations for parties booking their full multi-course menus, while a la carte-focused spots like Rosetta and Contramar leave more room for same-week bookings, though weekend dinner slots still fill first.
Is there a Michelin-recognized option that isn't fine dining?
Yes. Taqueria El Califa de Leon, open in Colonia San Rafael since 1968, was the only traditional street-food vendor in Mexico to receive a Michelin star in the guide's 2024 debut. Mexico City has close to 11,000 registered taco stands, according to Michelin-focused tour operators tracking the category, which makes the single street-food star an outlier rather than a sign of a broader trend among taquerias.
The stand built its reputation on tacos de gaonera, made with thin-cut beef, alongside options like bistec, chuleta, and costilla. It remains one of the least expensive Michelin-recognized meals in the city, in contrast to the multi-course tasting menus at Pujol or Quintonil.
How do Mexico City restaurants rank on global lists?
Quintonil reached No. 7 on the 2024 edition of The World's 50 Best Restaurants, then climbed to No. 3 in 2025, when it was named the top restaurant in North America. Pujol placed No. 33 on the 2024 World's 50 Best list, making it the country's second-highest global finisher that year behind Quintonil.
On the regional list, Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants, announced on 26 November 2024, named Quintonil the best restaurant in Mexico and ranked it No. 9 across all of Latin America, ahead of every other Mexico City restaurant nominated that year.
How is this ranking computed?
- Michelin Guide recognition: 35%
- Global ranking (World's 50 Best / Latin America's 50 Best): 25%
- Signature dish distinctiveness: 20%
- Price accessibility: 10%
- Reservation availability: 10%
Entity references
Full factual profiles for each entity on this page:
Official sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pujol_(restaurant)
- https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/ciudad-de-mexico/miguel-hidalgo_1999281/restaurant/pujol
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintonil
- https://www.theworlds50best.com/the-list/quintonil.html
- https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/food-and-drink/2024/11/27/latin-americas-50-best-restaurants-2024-quintonil-es-nombrado-el-mejor-restaurante-de-mexico/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contramar
- https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/ciudad-de-mexico/cuauhtemoc_1995126/restaurant/contramar
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sud_777
- https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/ciudad-de-mexico/alvaro-obregon_2003790/restaurant/sud-777
- https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/ciudad-de-mexico/cuauhtemoc_1995126/restaurant/rosetta
- https://rosetta.com.mx/en
- https://travelmexicosolo.com/michelin-star-mexico-city-restaurants/
- https://saboresmexicofoodtours.com/are-there-any-michelin-star-restaurants-in-mexico/
- https://vitepresenta.com/pujol-mexico-city-worlds-best-restaurant-for-mexican-gastronomy-experience/
- https://realestatemarket.com.mx/noticias/turismo/45439-quintonil-brilla-en-the-world-s-best-restaurants-2024
- https://www.afar.com/hotels/cantina-contramar-is-opening-in-las-vegas-what-to-know
- https://theawkwardtraveller.com/michelin-restaurants-in-mexico-city/
- https://comabeba.com/mexico/rosetta-mexico-city-roma-norte/
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