Photo: El Lago

By THÉRÈSE MAGOLIS    

The upscale El Lago restaurant in Chapultepec Park has created a special Christmas holiday tasting menu that combines seasonal delights with traditional Mexican delicacies.

El Lago now offers a special house red wine bottled exclusively for the restaurant by the El Cielo winery. Photo: El Lago

The new seven-course includes a tuna tart in mango and balsamic vinegar reduction, a turkey hash with caramelized sesame seeds, a buttered cream of pumpkin chowder with morita chillies and hazelnut mousse, a red snapper fillet in smoke tomato sauce wrapped in hoja santa anise leaves with red berries and black peppercorns, duck raviolis in a red wine and huitlacoche mushroom sauce topped with cotija cheese and epazote, a coffee-crusted beef filet marinated in red wine with rustic potato purée and sautéed mushrooms, and, for dessert, a fresh mole brownie with handmade café de olla and guajillo chillie honey ice cream.

The entire menu, which will be available through January, costs 920 pesos per person (including IVA), and is served during both lunch and dinner.

El Lago is also now offering its own bottled-exclusively-for-the-restaurant red wine, a special blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Nebbiolo grapes from the El Cielo winery in the Valley of Guadalupe.

El Lago, which has been specializing in haute cuisine mexicaine and high-end international cuisine since 1964, has always strived to incorporate local ingredients from across the nation, both indigenous and assimilated, including nopal cactus, epazote, wild mushrooms and escamoles, along with a variety of artisan cheeses from Baja California and Querétaro.

The restaurant, which offers guests a spectacular view of Chapultepec’s Lago Mayor lake, also boasts a cellar of more than 300 labels of red, white and rosé wines, a full 33 percent of which are from Mexican estates.