Mexico City

TO the casual observer, and even to a slightly more diligent one, the two women have more in common than not. They are roughly the same age (let’s say over 50), their roots are in Veracruz — their food shows it — and they learned to cook at home from their mothers and grandmothers. After leaving home, they were essentially self-taught, came to the restaurant business more or less by accident and became symbols of strong, independent women in an industry long dominated by men.

Most important, they run two of the best and most distinctive restaurants in Mexico City. Which is another way of saying they run two of the best and most distinctive Mexican restaurants in the world.

They are Carmen (Titita) Ramírez Degollado and Patricia Quintana, and after three visits to each of their restaurants over the last few years I was surprised to find myself concluding that despite their similarities, the food they cook is as different as food from the same region and genre can be.

Image Carmen Ramírez Degollado's banana-stuffed empanadas. Credit... Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

Ms. Quintana’s, as served at Izote, her restaurant in the swank Polanco neighborhood, is refined, sometimes bordering on experimental. She remains true to the origins of Mexican cooking, but this allegiance includes bringing in the Spanish influences that launched it as one of the world’s original fusion cuisines. She argues quite persuasively, for example, that olive oil is an integral, or at least sensible, part of the Mexican larder.