This is probably not the first time you’ve heard of Contramar, and it won’t be the last. This place has become legendary for its seafood-focused menu, and you should absolutely make a point to come here for the tuna tostadas and whole fish covered in red and green sauce. You want to be here for lunch—the kitchen closes at 6:30pm most nights (8pm Friday and Saturday), and the upbeat, busy restaurant is at its best during the day when the sprawling dining room becomes an all-out party.

Most of Marmota's produce comes from local farms and their meats are all farm-raised. You can also bet that pretty much everything you order (like the smashed baby potatoes with homemade hoja santa yogurt and caviar or the free-range chicken) will be wood-oven cooked, smokey, and incredibly delicious. Their cocktail menu is impressive, but we always go for one of the many hard cider options here. They go great with anything charred on the menu, which basically means everything.

Chicken is something that Mexico excels at, especially when you consider that it’s a key ingredient of enchiladas, mole, and chilaquiles. So a restaurant entirely focused on poultry is a welcome addition to CDMX. The options here are varied: you can get a Middle Eastern-inspired grilled flour tortilla sandwich slathered with labneh and shredded chicken, as well as the city’s most famous dish, tacos al pastor (with chicken subbed in for pork, of course).

You maybe already know that Orinoco has some of the best tacos in town, but we’re including it on this list anyway. Their tacos de chicharrón, featuring Monterrey-style fried pork rinds, are as hard to describe as they are to forget. You might be accustomed to crispy, potato chip-like slices of chicharron, but the Orinoco version involves a soft, melt-in-your-mouth interior and seared exterior so you get a mixture of textures—topped off with thin slices of avocado.

Noodles are the focus at this newish spot from a chef whose grandfather invented one of Mexico’s most coveted snacks, cacahuates Japoneses, or Japanese peanuts. Following in this family tradition, Fideo Gordo fuses traditional Mexican flavors with well-executed Asian dishes. The lamb obi udon, merging barbacoa with serrano chiles and handmade udon noodles, is a standout on the focused but flavorful menu. Don’t just stick to noodles though: the tuna and kampachi taquito appetizer is perfect.

Dooriban’s Korean home-cooking style took Mexico City’s Korean food scene by storm after the chef started making “Kimchi Mama Park” out of a ghost kitchen in colonia Juarez. The success of that kimchi was so notable that a freestanding restaurant was inevitable. The kimchi bokkeumbap, a bacon fried rice with that excellent fermented cabbage, is the main event, only eclipsed by the Korean fried chicken wings with a delightfully messy gochujang sauce.

Rosetta might be inside a townhouse in Roma, but it feels like it’s actually inside an Italian villa. It’s a beautiful restaurant where you get the sense that every design detail has been carefully considered. The menu is Italian with a Mexican twist, and is on the more expensive side, but our favorite time to be here is lunch, when the place is full of light, the prices are a little lower, and they serve things like al pastor steak tartare and tagliatelle with chile de árbol.

There might be more excellent tacos per square block in Mexico City than anywhere else in the known universe. And while most of them are filled with delicious meats and fish, there are no better vegan tacos than those found at Por Siempre Vegana. The taco de milanesa, served with avocado, is incredible, and worth the almost constant wait for a table here during peak hours. This spot is affordable, and sticks to mostly one thing: 90% of the menu is tacos.

Wine bars aren’t really a thing (yet) in CDMX, but if the popularity of this place is any indication, that’s going to change. Hugo feels like a Lower East Side transplant but with a Mexican twist, which we guess is what happens when two former New York residents relocate here and open a place. Their wines, of course, are a highlight—largely natural, many from Mexico’s wine region in Valle de Guadalupe, and they have one of the best varieties of orange wines in the city.

Máximo Bistrot is a restaurant that’s kind of French, kind of Mexican, and one of the best spots in town for a hot date or group dinner. It’s a fun atrium-like space with great cocktails made of out-there ingredients, and they do really delicious spins on dishes you’ve seen before, like a caesar salad with headcheese. They also have a great wine list, including some Mexican choices, and operate a breakfast/brunch spot called Lalo! that’s just a few blocks away.