Marta

What Marta is

Marta is a contemporary fine dining restaurant at Río Lerma 297 in Colonia Cuauhtémoc, a few streets north of Paseo de la Reforma. It opened in December 2025 and is the first restaurant of chef Manuel Sánchez Camarena. The name is his mother’s, and the restaurant states plainly that the kind of hospitality it is chasing is hers.

The setting is a house rather than a purpose-built dining room. The first construction on the plot dates to 1890, when this was country land; by the 1940s the city had reached it and the owning family remodelled the property in a Californian style that is still the dominant character of the building. The restoration for Marta kept that domestic warmth and layered a more formal interior over it, which is why almost every write-up leads with how photogenic the place is.

The kitchen works from French technique and then pushes outward. Coverage describes an almost physicochemical interest in flavour, texture and fermentation rather than a menu of French classics. Portions are small, a sommelier handles the pairings, and the chef comes out to talk through dishes, many of which are tied to his own travels.

The room deserves its own description. There are two dining areas, both generous, with plants, big tables and real space between them, and the food arrives on beautiful artisanal ceramics glazed to look as though the pieces had been broken and put back together. The one thing the restoration did not solve is the light: a single flat overhead fitting rather than anything that builds an atmosphere after dark.

Marta holds no guide listing or award. Its Google rating sits at about 4.5 from roughly 120 reviews as of 2026, and most of the Mexican coverage since the opening has centred on the house and on the chef’s background.

Who cooks here

Manuel Sánchez Camarena trained at Le Cordon Bleu México and worked under Mikel Alonso, the Basque chef behind Biko, and Elena Reygadas of Rosetta, two of the more demanding kitchens in the city. He was 29 when Marta opened, making this an unusually early first restaurant, and he has said the point was not to open a French restaurant but to use the discipline of the French school as a frame for his own combinations.

The house style shows that training. Lamb rack is cooked sous vide at 53 degrees for five hours and then finished over fire; beets are salt baked; a crème brûlée is scented with pixtle, the seed of the mamey. The sommelier programme and the table-side explanation of each plate are part of the same intent.

How the menu works

Marta serves à la carte, not a fixed tasting menu. The list is deliberately short, which is why the staff invite questions about each dish.

• To start: oysters with hoja santa beurre blanc, foie gras with apple compote, salt-baked beets with pickled mustard, pine nuts and elderflower.
• Vegetables: aubergine with chocolate and miso and enoki mushrooms, a dish the chef traces to Korean temple cooking.
• Fish: bonito or hamachi grilled and served with saffron risotto perfumed with Papantla vanilla, and a sole brochette.
• Meat: the lamb rack, sous vide then grilled, with a mustard and tarragon reduction and celery purée.
• Dessert: pistachio sponge with lemon curd and salted caramel ganache, crème brûlée with pixtle.
• Drinks: a wine list with sommelier pairings plus a cocktail menu.

What I ate in July

I went for dinner in July 2026, about seven months after the opening. On that visit the house and the service were excellent and the cooking was not: of everything we ordered, only the salt-baked beetroot starter and the crème brûlée were good.

The octopus was overcooked, the kind that cannot be cut or chewed. I blamed the knife first and only then understood it was the octopus. The lamb rack arrived undercooked, went back to the kitchen, and returned scorched on one side and still raw on the other. What the menu called sourdough was dry, closer to old supermarket bread than to a house loaf, and the butter did not rescue it. The aubergine was fine on its own and turned bitter wherever it met the mole underneath.

The service was the opposite story. It was white-tablecloth service without the white tablecloth: the waiters were attentive, they understood quickly that the meal had gone wrong, they were visibly embarrassed by it, and they sent over a complimentary glass of champagne and a dessert. That was one evening in a kitchen seven months old, and kitchens do settle. Diners from the same months have reported better plates. Read current reviews before you book.

What it costs

Marta publishes its menu as a document rather than a price list, and no prices appear on its site or on the listing platforms.

Item	Price
Three courses with a drink, per person	Budget 1,000 to 1,800 MXN, about 55 to 100 USD
Wine pairing	Selected by the sommelier, priced on request
Published price list	None online as of September 2026

Time Out Mexico rates the restaurant $$$, the upper but not the top band for the city. Ask for the current menu when you reserve if the bill matters to your plan, and expect Cuauhtémoc fine dining pricing rather than neighbourhood pricing. Cards are accepted.

How to book

• Online: the reservation page at martarestaurante.com.mx.
• Phone: 55 7857 9567.
• Email: the address listed on the restaurant’s contact page.

Service runs Wednesday to Sunday. Doors open at 14:00, so a late lunch is a real option and usually the easier table to get. Weekend evenings are the ones to book in advance, since the dining room is a converted house and the seat count is modest.

Getting there

• Address: Calle Río Lerma 297, Colonia Cuauhtémoc, 06500 Mexico City.
• Neighbourhood: the Río streets north of Paseo de la Reforma, a quiet embassy-and-office grid that empties out at night.
• Landmarks: about a five to ten minute walk from the Ritz-Carlton on Reforma and from the Ángel de la Independencia.
• Metro: Chapultepec on Line 1 is the closest station, roughly ten minutes on foot. Insurgentes on Line 1 is a similar distance.
• Metrobús: Line 7 runs along Reforma, with a stop near the Ángel.
• Parking: street parking on Río Lerma is limited; ride apps drop at the door.

Before you go

• Book for lunch if you want an easier table. Service starts at 14:00 and the room is calmer then.
• The house and the service are the strong parts. The 1890 building with its 1940s Californian remodel, the two plant-filled dining areas and the attentive floor team are what held up on my visit.
• Ask about the dishes. The short menu is designed for it and the chef explains plates at the table.
• Dress up a little. No published dress code, but this is white tablecloths in a restored mansion, not a neighbourhood bistro.
• Check recent reviews first. The kitchen was seven months old when I filmed and reports from that period vary widely.
• Pair it with the neighbourhood. Niddo in Juárez is a short ride away for coffee the next morning, and La Pantera Asador in Roma Norte is the alternative if you want fire cooking instead of French technique.
• 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 short version of that July dinner, plate by plate. For every place I have filmed in the city, open my Mexico City map or browse the Mexico City recommendations.