Xuna (Casa Izel)

What Xuna is

Xuna is a contemporary Mexican tasting-menu restaurant inside Hotel Casa Izel at Valladolid 96, Colonia Roma Norte, Mexico City. It opened in late 2025 and appears as a listed, recommended entry in the Michelin Guide Mexico 2026.

The setting is a restored nineteenth-century mansion. You are met at the hotel lobby bar and walked through to a tall garden dining room under a glass-panelled ceiling, built in wood and concrete with a green bar along one side and plants everywhere. The room is quiet, the tables are spaced and nothing in it competes with the plates, which is part of why the plating reads the way it does.

The name means great lady. The restaurant uses it as a tribute to the generations of women whose home recipes underpin Mexican cooking, and the menus are built as a modern reading of those dishes rather than a break from them. Three formats run alongside a short à la carte list: a six-course menu called Nuestra Tradición and two longer menus called Evolución, at fourteen and sixteen courses.

Who cooks here

Culinary direction comes from Jonatán Gómez Luna, the chef behind Le Chique in Puerto Morelos on the Riviera Maya, which has held one Michelin star in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Mexico selections. In 2025 the Michelin Guide Mexico gave him its Chef Mentor Award, which recognises chefs who train other chefs. Xuna is his Mexico City project, and the star stays with Le Chique.

The kitchen is run day to day by executive chef Efrén Chan, who is from Campeche and trained at Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée in Paris before working at Pujol in Mexico City. His job at Xuna is to execute Gómez Luna’s concept in a much smaller room than Le Chique, on a menu that changes with the season.

Awards and press

• Michelin Guide Mexico 2026: listed as a recommended, Selected restaurant. No star.
• Jonatán Gómez Luna: Michelin Chef Mentor Award, Michelin Guide Mexico 2025.
• Le Chique, Gómez Luna’s Riviera Maya restaurant: One Michelin Star in the 2024, 2025 and 2026 selections.
• Covered as one of Roma Norte’s significant 2025 to 2026 openings by Gourmet de México and Gourmetique.

How the menu works

You choose a format when you book. All three menus open the same way, with three welcome bites, and then diverge in length.

• Nuestra Tradición, six courses: the short format, and the one most people take. It opens with three seasonal bites that everyone is served, then you choose an appetizer from five options, a main from five and a dessert from three.
• Evolución, fourteen courses: the longer set menu, no choices, driven by the kitchen.
• Evolución, sixteen courses: the longest format.
• À la carte: a limited list, starters at 250 to 420 MXN and mains at 590 to 620 MXN.
• Wine pairing: offered with each menu, priced at roughly the menu’s own price.
• The rest of the drinks: a long cocktail and wine list, and a mocktail section that is unusually large for a room like this, including versions made without sugar.

Signature plates named by the restaurant and the press include roasted bone marrow with a chilli broth, a crab tostada, beef tongue with plantain and mole negro, a Yucatecan marquesita, and a cacao and vanilla dessert called No Todo lo que Brilla es Oro.

What I ate in August

The six-course menu opened with a trio of bites that the restaurant serves to everyone. A floral sphere that bursts with citrus in the mouth, set on a cushion of white flowers. A silky hamachi tartare in a small basket resting on green sea moss. And corn crisps on a bed of coals, topped with bright red slices. Three stages, presented as heaven, earth and hell.

After that came the choices. From the five appetizers, a crab tostada with radish, scattered with pink radish flowers, and a salad of Oaxacan tomatoes with a smoked broth and burrata. From the five mains, beef tongue with roasted plantain and black mole on a wide white plate, served with tortillas printed with green leaves, and lamb barbacoa, two small ribs, with a chickpea purée. From the three desserts, one came under a thin lace of chocolate that you break, with gold underneath, and the other was a sugar glass ball with cream inside and cotton candy around it, which was sweeter than I wanted. Both were set up by pouring liquid nitrogen over flowers at the table.

Six courses came to 1,500 pesos a head, which is what I paid. The drinks list is worth reading even if you are not drinking: the mocktails run long and include no-sugar options, and the one named for the ajolote is lychee, hibiscus and cranberry. The plating is theatrical and the balance is precise; what you do not get is a chef coming out to talk you through it.

What it costs

Prices are in Mexican pesos, observed in August 2026, and they move.

Item	Price
Nuestra Tradición, six courses	1,500 MXN, about 86 USD
Evolución, fourteen courses	2,800 MXN, about 165 USD
Evolución, sixteen courses	3,200 MXN, about 189 USD
Wine pairing	Roughly the price of the menu it accompanies
À la carte starters	250 to 420 MXN, about 14 to 22 USD
À la carte mains	590 to 620 MXN, about 31 to 33 USD

For a Michelin Guide listed tasting menu in a capital city, the six-course price is low, which is the main reason Xuna gets written about. Service and drinks are extra, so a couple taking the six-course menu with a bottle of wine should plan on a bill closer to 4,500 MXN than 3,000.

How to book

Reservations are expected. The room is small and the long menus need kitchen notice.

• OpenTable: search for Xuna, Ciudad de México.
• Restaurant website: xunarestaurante.com.mx.
• Phone: +52 55 9459 5020.
• Instagram: @xuna.rest.

A week ahead is usually sufficient, more for a Friday or Saturday evening. Say which menu you want when you book, and flag allergies or a vegetarian request at that point rather than on arrival.

Getting there

• Address: Valladolid 96, Colonia Roma Norte, Cuauhtémoc, Mexico City 06700, inside Hotel Casa Izel.
• Metro: Sevilla on Line 1 is the nearest, roughly 800 metres. Insurgentes on Line 1 is about a ten minute walk.
• Metrobús: the Avenida Insurgentes corridor is within walking distance.
• On foot: a short walk from the Álvaro Obregón restaurant strip and the centre of Roma Norte.
• Parking: street parking in Roma Norte is difficult in the evening. Ask the hotel about valet, or take a taxi.
• Finding the door: the entrance is the hotel’s, not a separate restaurant front. Walk into Casa Izel and the garden dining room is at the back.

Before you go

• Pick your menu at booking. Six, fourteen or sixteen courses are three different evenings and three different lengths.
• Go early in the service window. Service ends at 21:00, so a long menu needs an early sitting.
• Dress smart casual. It is a hotel garden dining room in Roma Norte, so no shorts, but no jacket requirement either.
• Expect a quiet room. The service is precise and restrained rather than chatty. If you want a chef interaction, this is not that restaurant.
• Allow two to three hours for the six-course menu, longer for the Evolución menus.
• The non-alcoholic list is not an afterthought. The mocktail section is long and has no-sugar options, which is rare at this level, so a table that is not drinking is properly looked after.
• Pair it with a drink nearby. Provocateur is a walkable Roma Norte wine bar for afterwards, and Somma Rooftop is the view option in the same neighbourhood.
• 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 these six courses, plate by plate. For the rest of the city, open my map or browse the Mexico City recommendations.