Taste Your Way Through Mexico at One Trendy Restaurant

Of the hot tables on Mexico City's emerging culinary scene, Azul Histórico is among the hottest—not least of because it's adjacent to Downtown Mexico, the city's trendiest new hotel, in the Centro Histórico. The unassumingly classy courtyard space, adorned with rustic brick, set beneath a canopy of trees, and surrounded by balconies, draws businessmen, bureaucrats, and celebrities, along with the neighborhood's new creative class. As such, breakfasts are popular affairs, trading basic chorizo-egg scrambles for squash blossom quesadillas and hibiscus flower enchiladas in a tomato-chipotle sauce.

Regional specialties mark the rest of the menu, which rotates through dishes from different parts of Mexico on a monthly basis. Recent highlights include Caldo de Piedra, a Oaxacan shrimp soup cooked pre-Hispanic style by placing hot stones in the broth, and two jarocho dishes from the gulf-coast state of Veracruz: venison with a spiced yellow mole sauce and beef with blackened chilies. Shots of smoky and earthy mezcal liquor—try a tobala variety, made from wild maguey plants—finish the meal.