Eduardo de San Angel

Unless you know someone who attended a Mexican culinary school and graduate with honors, or you've dined in a five-star Mexican restaurant in Kukulkan Boulevard, Cancun, you've most likely never tasted such exquisite Mexican food. Once inside, amid the terra-cotta walls, you're in another world, a world hardly available elsewhere. Eduardo de San Angel is the epitome of upscale, splendorous Mexican cuisine with a pinch of American and European infusions for extra flavor. Thinking way "outside the bun, " the chef here, renown Eduardo Pria, offers up exotic fare, including crab cakes with jalapeno sauce, beef tenderloin tips sautéed with Portobello mushrooms and onions with a chipotle chili sauce, and las crepas de cuitlacoche -- ancho chili-flavored crepes stuffed with cuitlacoche (a dark-hued corn fungus that tastes like mushrooms), Serrano chilies and onions. Forget about going south of the border; a meal at Eduardo de San Angel is like the culinary version of traveling first class in the Orient Express.