PRICE:
Frommer's Exceptional

One can ask little more of a restaurant -- delicious and attractive dishes, a large menu, good service, well-spaced tables, and a choice between dining in an elegant plant-filled courtyard and a large dining room, which in cool weather holds a roaring fire. Señora Arteaga offers a delicious variation on chiles en nogada (stuffed poblano chile with walnut cream sauce) -- she marinates the pepper and serves it cold, not fried in batter. The chiles en nogada have been the object of many innovations, but most fail because they don't preserve the essence of this baroque dish, which balances opposites like the point and counterpoint of a fugue. Too spicy or too sweet, too strong a taste of meat or onions, and the magic is lost. Something simpler, perhaps? Start with the caldo Xochitl (the perfect soup for an irritable stomach), followed by traditional enchiladas del portal cooked in chile ancho sauce.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Mexico 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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