Chuí

What Chuí is

Chuí is a fully vegetarian restaurant at Orizaba 34 in Roma Norte, Mexico City, built inside a large hidden garden. There is no meat and no fish on the menu, a significant part of it is vegan, and the cooking runs on a wood-fired oven and open fire rather than on the usual vegetarian repertoire of grain bowls and salads.

The setting is the thing people notice first. The entrance is behind a graffitied wall on Orizaba, which gives no hint of what is behind it, and it opens into a garden with tables set into the planting and a dining room with a central bar off it. The garden has a retractable roof, and the gap it leaves frames the tower of the Parroquia de la Sagrada Familia directly across the street. Plaza Rio de Janeiro, with its replica of Michelangelo’s David, is a couple of minutes away.

Chuí began in Buenos Aires, where the original sits in Villa Crespo next to railway tracks in a semi-open warehouse with a rustic garden, and where it is listed in the Michelin Guide Buenos Aires. One thing to be precise about: that is a Michelin Guide listing for the Argentine restaurant, not a star, and I could not find the Mexico City branch in the Michelin Guide Mexico selection. The Michelin association you will see attached to Chuí online belongs to Buenos Aires.

Who cooks here

Chef Rodrigo Vazquez brought Chuí to Mexico City and runs the kitchen here. Rather than copying the Buenos Aires menu, he rebuilt it around Mexican produce and flavours, which is why the two restaurants read as siblings rather than as a chain. The Argentine original leans on wild mushrooms, and the Mexican one keeps that habit while adding local corn, chillies and cheese.

The kitchen makes everything in house, including ferments and pickles, and grows mushrooms in a dedicated chamber on the premises. That is unusual enough to be the clearest signal of how the place is run.

How the menu works

Chuí is an a la carte restaurant built for sharing, with the wood oven at the centre of it.

• From the oven: focaccia, artisanal pizzas, roasted vegetables and roasted cheese.
• Raw and cold: avocado with kimchi and tiger’s milk, ceviche-style vegetable plates, hummus.
• Mushrooms: the house speciality, grown on site, from pate to stuffed peppers to a creamy risotto.
• Mexican borrowings: corn ribs with green curry, fried yellow corn with aioli, chillies and local cheese.
• Sweet: a Basque cake with green tomato and jalapeno compote is the dessert that shows up most often in reviews.
• Drinks: natural wine, cocktails around 190 MXN, and a bar in the middle of the dining room.
• Weekend brunch: Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 to 14:00, with Mexican classics, international plates and South American dishes such as mbeju, and DJs from around midday.

What to order

If you only order two things, make one of them come out of the wood oven and the other a mushroom dish. The focaccia with mushroom pate and the four-cheese pizza with garlic honey are the two that appear in nearly every write-up, and the corn ribs with green curry are the plate that tells you the kitchen has adapted to Mexico rather than transplanted a menu. I went as someone who eats meat, and it did not feel like a compromise.

What it costs

Reported average spend is about 500 MXN a head. Prices below are 2025 and 2026 figures and they move.

Item	Price
Average spend, per person	About 500 MXN, roughly 27 USD
Carrot hummus	About 90 MXN
Courgette pizza	About 200 MXN
Cocktails	About 190 MXN each
Natural wine	By the glass and bottle, the line that moves the bill

For Roma Norte that is mid-range: more than a taqueria, less than the neighbourhood’s tasting menus, and reasonable for a garden this size. The cheapest version of Chuí is weekend brunch or a couple of oven dishes with a glass of wine. The most expensive is a long dinner with cocktails, which is easy to do because the garden encourages staying.

Do you need a reservation

Yes, in practice. The garden is the restaurant, it is popular, and weekends fill.

• OpenTable: search Chui, Ciudad de Mexico.
• Phone: 56 4912 2952 handles groups of more than ten.
• Instagram: @chui.cdmx.
• Seating: ask for the garden rather than the indoor room if the weather is good, and mention a dog if you are bringing one.
• Brunch: Saturday and Sunday only, 10:00 to 14:00, and it is a separate service from lunch.

Getting there

• Address: Calle Orizaba 34, Roma Norte, 06700 Cuauhtemoc, Mexico City.
• Landmark: directly opposite the Parroquia de la Sagrada Familia, and a short walk from Plaza Rio de Janeiro.
• The door: behind a graffitied wall, with no restaurant frontage. Look for the street number, not a sign.
• Metrobus: the Durango stop on Line 1, along Insurgentes, is the closest.
• Metro: Insurgentes on Line 1 is about a twelve minute walk.
• Driving: Roma Norte street parking is metered and busy in the evening. A taxi or ride app is easier.

Before you go

• Do not walk past it. The entrance is a gap in a graffitied wall on Orizaba. The garden is entirely invisible from the street.
• It is vegetarian, all of it. No meat, no fish, and no separate carnivore menu. Plenty of the list is vegan.
• Book the garden. The roof retracts, which makes the outdoor tables workable in the rainy season, and they are the reason to come.
• Brunch is a weekend-only service. Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 to 14:00, with DJs later in the morning.
• Dogs are welcome. Rare for a restaurant of this kind in the neighbourhood.
• Pair it with the plaza. Plaza Rio de Janeiro and the Sagrada Familia church are both a couple of minutes away, and the whole block is a short walk from the rest of Roma Norte. For a bigger, louder Roma Norte dinner, see my URSO review.
• Check the hours before you go. The hours on this page come from the venue’s public listings, which drift, so confirm on Google Maps or the venue’s own channels before a special trip.

Watch the visit

The reel above is the walk in from the street and the garden itself, which is the part that does not come across in photographs. For everywhere else I have filmed in the city, open my map or browse the Mexico City recommendations.