Want to get into Pujol, Handshake Speakeasy, or the Frida Kahlo Museum when you visit Mexico City? Don’t show up without planning ahead. Here are our tips for getting reservations and tickets for Mexico City’s top places.
🍴Restaurants
Pujol
Pujol and Quintonil (below) are widely considered two of the top restaurants in all of Mexico. They are the only restaurants in all of Mexico with two Michelin stars.
If you want to dine at Pujol, you have two options:
A six-course meal in the restaurant: Seatings at 1 pm, 3:30 pm, 6 pm, and 9:30 pm
A nine-course omakase meal at the bar: Seatings at 1:30 pm, 4 pm, 6:30 pm, and 9 pm.
📅When and how to book
Pujol takes reservations three months in advance, so set a reminder on your calendar to make your reservation.
If you’re open to less-popular days and times, it’s not as hard to get into Pujol as you might think. During one search, I found restaurant tables for two available on weekdays within a week, at 1 pm or 9:30 pm. I had to look two months out to find availability on a Friday or Saturday night at 6:30.
We’ve also had luck messaging Pujol on WhatsApp with a two-week block of dates and asking if they had any availability in that timeframe. We did this about four months in advance.
Things to know
You’ll need a credit card to make a reservation, but it won’t be charged at the time.
You can book a table for up to 8 in Pujol’s dining room and for larger groups in a private room.
You can request to be added to the wait list if there aren’t any available reservations.
Pujol uses corn, tomato, onion, garlic, chili peppers, and cilantro in all their base preparations and sauces, so you can’t request food without them, even if you’re allergic.
Quintonil
Like, Pujol, Quintonil also offers two dining options:
Bar—Kitchen counter experience: For one to three people, where you sit facing into the kitchen and can watch the chefs prepared their dishes
Main dining room: For two to six people
📅When and how to book
You may find it harder to get a table at Quintonil than at Pujol. When I checked, the first available tables of any type were more than a month out, and they only book reservations two months in advance.
Things to know
There’s a $2,500 MXN ($125 USD) per person deposit that gets credited to your bill, but it’s non-refundable if your plans change.
If you can’t find a timeslot, you can choose “Notify” in the reservation system and select multiple dates. You’ll get a message if a table becomes available.
Maximo
Maximo is the place some of our Mexican friends consider a top fine-dining experience in the city.
At Maximo, you can choose a tasting menu like Pujol and Quintonil, or you can select what you want, a la carte, from a traditional menu. You can make your decision at the restaurant—you don’t need to pick one when you make your reservation.
📅When and how to book
You’ll want to make a reservation at Maximo at least a month in advance, and longer if you’re hoping for a weekend dinner. You can book about three months in advance.
Things to know
You have to enter a credit card number to hold the reservation. If you need to cancel, do so more than 1 day in advance, or you’ll pay $500 MXN ($25 USD) per person.
Rosetta
Rosetta is Rosetta is housed in a former mansion with some beautiful spaces. At Rosetta, you can choose what you like from a traditional menu that’s focused on Mexican and Italian ingredients and dishes.
📅When and how to book
Rosetta isn’t as difficult to get into as some of the other big-name restaurants in Mexico City. I saw same-day options available for lunchtime, and there were dinner options at reasonable times (not 5 pm or 10 pm) within two weeks.
You can book a table at Rosetta up to three months in advance.
Things to know
You can choose from indoor or outdoor seating at Rosetta. I’d suggest indoor, because the setting is so stunning. (Outdoor is nice too, but Mexico City is full of places where you can eat outside.)
You need to contact Rosetta directly for a group of 5 or more: reservaciones@rosetta.com.mx or Whatsapp (+52 55 3931 4702). You need to leave a credit card number to make a reservation for a group of this size.
Rosetta also accepts walk-ins when tables are available, so you might get lucky.
Other options
These restaurants might not have the same level of name recognition, but we think they’re worth considering for a fine-dining experience in Mexico City.
You have a good chance of getting a table at these places the same day, even if you’re looking for a popular time on a weekend evening. They’re nice options if you want to have a nice restaurant experience in Mexico City without planning your whole trip around that meal.
Sud 777
Sud 777 earned a Michelin star, and it has a nice prix fixe menu with a feature we’ve never seen anyplace else—you can add another meat, fish, or vegetable course at no extra cost.
We’ve visited twice. We loved it on the first visit; we thought creativity and presentation were getting more attention than flavor in some dishes on the second.
You’ll need to travel a bit to get to Sud 777. It’s is about 30 minutes south of the city center by car, which may be part of the reason it’s easier to get in.
Baldio
Baldio is a zero-waste, farm-focused, sustainable restaurant with a creative menu. They’ve earned a Michelin green star for their eco-friendly focus.
They offer the “Baldio experience” if you want to try a prix fixe meal, or you can choose what you like from their traditional menu. We’ve been to Baldo twice and had great meals both times.
AlmaMia
AlmaMia opened in November 2024, and it offers a high-end dining experience centered around traditional Mexican ingredients and preparations.
The space is gorgeous, and they include nice touches, like a complimentary shot of mezcal poured from an enormous jug resting on a server’s shoulder.
🍸Cocktail bars
These top-rated Mexico City cocktail bars all use Open Table for their reservations, and on that site you can usually make reservations about three months in advance.
Open Table tip: The site won’t let you make multiple reservations within two hours. So, if you want to make a cocktail bar reservation for drinks before dinner and then a dinner reservation in an hour or an hour and a half, have someone else make one of the reservations with their account.
Informally surveying Mexico City bartenders, which we like to do, most of them name Bijou, Hanky Panky, and Handshake Speakeasy as the best bars in the city.
Baltra Bar
Baltra is our favorite of the “big-name” Mexico City cocktail bars. It feels comfortable, where some of the other well-known bars feel pretentious. You might be able to get a same-day reservation, or even walk in.
Bijou
We’re fans of Bijou’s sister bar, Ruby, so we were cheering them on when they were nominated for North America’s Best Bars and celebrating when they made the list.
Hanky Panky
We’re getting a little tired of the whole speakeasy concept. (“Are we at the right place?” “What’s the street number"?” “Should we just ask someone?”) But we’ll make an exception for Hanky Panky, since they are now the longest-running speakeasy in the city. Plus, it’s terrific.
Reserve a spot at Hanky Panky.
Handshake Speakeasy
You have to plan ahead to get into Handshake. It was on the top of the list for The World’s 50 Best Bars in 2024 and North America’s Best Bars in 2024 and 2025, and everybody wants to see what it’s all about.
Reserve a spot at Handshake Speakeasy. (Up to two weeks in advance.)
Licoreria Limantour
When you go to some of Mexico City’s up-and-coming cocktail bars and talk to the people working there about where they worked before, you hear Limantour’s name come up a lot. It’s a popular place, but you still might get lucky and walk in and get a table or a seat at the bar.
Reserve a spot at Licoreria Limantour. (Two locations, Polanco and Roma Norte.)
🎨Sights
Museo Frida Kahlo
The Frida Kahlo museum is located in her former house and dedicated to her life and her art.
It’s not that difficult to get tickets to the Frida Kahlo Museum. But it seems like many people don’t realize they need to buy tickets ahead of time, so they show up at the door and get shut out.
The website offers tickets for about six weeks out, and you can probably find some available within 10 to 14 days.
Tip: If you can’t get tickets on your own, you can check online tour groups. We’re not adding any links here, because some of these sites just buy up tickets and sell them at a big markup without adding any value. But if you really want to go, you should know this is an option.
Buy tickets for Museo Frida Kahlo.
Also consider: Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. This underrated gem contains lots of examples of artwork from Kahlo and Rivera in their former studio space.
Honestly, it’s not clear to us why this place flies under the radar compared to Kahlo’s former home. We’ve visited this studio museum couple of times and walked right in to get tickets.
Lucha Libre
Lucha Libre is an iconic Mexican sport that’s part wrestling, part choreography, part spectacle and 100% fun.
It’s fairly straightforward to get tickets to Lucha Libre but you want to pick your event, especially if you’re only in Mexico for a few days.
At the main arena, Arena Mexico, they host events on Tuesday nights, Friday nights (the main event) and Sunday afternoons (for families, although plenty of families go on Fridays).
If you know you want to go to Lucha Libre—you definitely should see it—you might as well buy your tickets early and get the best possible seats.
Buy tickets for Lucha Libre. (“Boletos” means tickets and you can switch to English once it takes you to the Ticketmaster site.)
Teotihuacan hot-air balloon ride
If you search for “Balloon rides” online, you’ll find third-party resellers and you won’t know which balloon company you’re booking with. Plus, you’ll pay about 25% more, and these balloon rides aren’t cheap to begin with. (Totally worth it, though.)
We recommend searching on Google Maps. First, search for “Teotihuacan.” That’s the area northeast of Mexico City where the balloon rides start. Zoom in on that area, and search for “Balloon rides.” You’ll zero in on the companies that offer them and you can compare packages and ratings.
We like Flying Pictures. We’ve taken friends and family members on balloon rides several times. We ended up with Flying Pictures at random the first time, and we were so happy with the experience, we’ve booked directly with them ever since.
Buy tickets for a balloon ride with Flying Pictures.
You’ll find lots more content like this in our downloadable book, Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City, which is designed to work seamlessly on your phone, e-reader, tablet, or computer. Use it to plan your itinerary, and refer to it any time you need to when you’re in Mexico City.
This article is gold, thank you!
Did you ever do a write-up about the floating gardens of xochmilco?