Mexico has experienced many post-colonial revolutions. Today, two centuries after Independence, there’s another one, spurred on by innovative local chefs, hoteliers, architects, designers, eco-vintners and craft distillers who are redefining Mexican identity – many, like those national figureheads Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, reclaiming their indigenous roots.

For more on the innovators redefining the country's luxury-travel sector, see our feature on the revival of magnificent Mexico. And if you're inspired to visit, the five restaurants below are sure to provide a superlative, and authentically Mexican, dining experience.

Pujol, Mexico City

Ferran Adrià once said, “There was Mexican food before Enrique Olvera and Mexican food after Enrique Olvera.” The super-chef opened Pujol 16 years ago as a 24-year-old prodigy with a belief in the cultural and ecological powers of new Mexican cuisine.

It was the firecracker that set off a chain of explosive Mexico City restaurant openings. As the buzz outside its sacred door in Polanco attests, Pujol is still the city's most lauded haute-dining experience – more difficult to get into than the Virgin of Guadalupe’s boudoir. His fusion of pre-Hispanic ingredients and cutting-edge techniques invents sensational new flavours: from huitlacoche (inky black corn fungus) with molleja (gizzard) and chicken liver, to his mole, aged for 1,000 days.