Since pandemic restrictions eased, I’ve been visiting friends and old haunts in Mexico City more frequently. “My whole philosophy is, I guess, allowing simplicity to become complexity,” Reyes said. That day with Reyes, I learned that the core spirit behind elite dining temples like Pujol, at best, come literally from the ground up.

The short hours we spent with the farmer were a visceral reminder that Olvera’s commitment has never wavered for native ingredients and sustainable sourcing. He sends bounty like blueberries and tomatoes down to Pujol and Pujol sends goods back: ash from the ovens, which Reyes recycles by adding to planting soil, enriching it with boosts of calcium and potassium. Reyes is collecting rain water in an enormous, covered pool, for the ever drier dry season. The existential challenges of climate change and drought facing agriculture globally are just as present here. They looked delicious already, and I found myself imagining a diner having a pricey meal in the ritzy Polanco neighborhood back in the city, consuming this exact blossom, from this modest farm in the Mexican countryside, as surely someone would. Over a row of yellow squash, we knelt and plucked a few that were blossoming with yellow and green flowers, like pods with a shock of hair. We walked along rows of vegetables, berries and fruit, all organically and sustainably grown, Reyes said - no chemicals and only “ green manure” to encourage yields naturally and to replenish the soil. Reyes gave us a tour of the land, Alcachofas Pipiol, which he’s farmed with his family his entire life. We pulled into a pristine five-acre plot of land, set just over a hillside, in the community of Santa María Pipioltepec. The following day, I tagged along with two Pujol administrators for a check-in visit with a generational farmer named Orlando Reyes, who has been working with Olvera’s restaurant group for years. So I asked folks behind the restaurant if any of the small supplier farms that feed Pujol’s kitchen were in the area, for a potential visit.

Days earlier I had sat down for a meal that I’ll never forget, the taco omakase at Pujol’s bar, by chef de cuisine Jesús Durón, and was still reeling from it.

Earlier this year, I was down in central Mexico again, visiting friends who live near the lake community of Valle de Bravo in the lush, green hills of the state of Mexico.

Golden state farms