Margarita Concept Garden

What Margarita Concept Garden is

Margarita Concept Garden is a vegetarian restaurant built inside a garden in San Miguel, Tepoztlán, about ninety minutes from Mexico City. The garden belonged to the country house of the Mexican writer Margarita Urueta Sierra, and the restaurant takes her name rather than a chef’s.

The order of things is the concept. The architect and landscape designer Santiago Camarena built it on the principle of first the garden, then the architecture, and has described the built elements as acupuncture inserted into a plant environment. It divides in two: an outdoor planting of low maintenance endemic species chosen to show the seasons changing, and a second garden inside a contemporary greenhouse. The house behind it dates from the 1930s.

The food follows the same logic. The menu is entirely vegetarian, changes with the seasons, and treats that as a proposition rather than an accommodation: there is no meat section missing from the card, because the card was never built around one.

How the menu works

Four sections, all vegetarian, with a long cocktail list running alongside. Several dishes are marked vegan outright and two more carry a vegan option on request.

• Para iniciar: pan hogaza at 50 MXN, a mix of four olives with garlic and lemon verbena oil at 160, padrón peppers in tempura with tofu tzatziki at 220, a cheese board from Huitzilac in Morelos and from Guanajuato at 200, mushroom carpaccio with oregano oil from their own garden at 200, black garlic hummus with cauliflower tabbouleh at 240, fried gorditas of hibiscus tinga with ayocote beans and quesillo at 250, and burrata with roast beetroot at 350.
• Para continuar: caramelised peach salad with white truffle balsamic and Boursin at 240, watermelon sashimi tostada with avocado and toasted nori at 210, confited tacos in the style of carnitas made with textured soy and a rice crackling at 220, and leek in almond white sauce at 270.
• Platos fuertes, all between 260 and 280: roast cabbage with miso butter, charred squash with spiced green mole and tortillas made to order, potato and carrot gratin with gruyère and provoleta, gnocchi in a sage cream with browned butter and a whiskey reduction, and fettuccine in squash sauce.
• Final feliz: a seasonal tart at 160, coconut and lemon verbena nicuatole at 170, and plantains flambéed with Licor 43 at 170.

What I ate

The dish that sells the whole argument is the watermelon sashimi tostada. It reads as tuna, and it is the clearest statement of what the kitchen is doing with vegetables. The fried gorditas do the same trick more quietly: nothing in them is meat, and nothing about them announces that.

The burrata with roast beetroot was the standout of the starters. The mushroom carpaccio surprised me in a different way, because it tastes closer to artichoke than to mushroom. The charred squash with green mole arrived looking like a piece of art rather than a plate of vegetables, and the plantain flambéed with Licor 43 closed it properly.

The food exceeded what I expected from a place people go to for the garden.

What it costs

Prices below are from the printed menu photographed on the visit, in Mexican pesos.

Item	Price
Pan hogaza	50 MXN
Starters, olives to mushroom carpaccio	160 to 250 MXN
Burrata with roast beetroot	350 MXN
Para continuar plates	210 to 270 MXN
Mains	260 to 280 MXN, about 14 to 15 USD
Desserts	160 to 170 MXN
Cocktails, classics	240 to 290 MXN
Cocktails, the top end: Old Fashioned, Boulevardier, Manhattan	360 to 380 MXN
Mocktails, four of them	180 MXN each
Digestivo, cacao and Nixta corn liqueur	180 MXN

A main and a cocktail is about 530 MXN. A starter shared, a main, a dessert and a cocktail is nearer 800 to 900. That is Mexico City pricing in a town where most kitchens charge less, and the garden is what you are paying the difference for.

The cocktail list

This is the part of the menu that shows the most intent, and it is organised in a way most restaurants do not attempt. Rather than grouping by spirit, the list runs chronologically.

The other half of it is where the drinks come from. Fruit, herbs and seasonal flowers are cut from the same garden you are sitting in, which Camarena has called garden to drink rather than garden to table. That is the thing to watch for at the bar, and it is the reason the mocktail list at 180 MXN is as long as it is.

• La Edad de Oro, nineteenth century to the 1920s: Adonis 250, Clover Club 290, Manhattan 360, Old Fashioned 380.
• Prohibición y Speakeasy, 1920 to 1933: Americano 240, Bee’s Knees 240, French 75 280, Sidecar 330.
• La Edad de Plata, 1930s to 1950s: Daiquiri Hemingway 250, the house margarita and the classic margarita at 240 each, Moscow Mule 240.
• Clásicos contemporáneos, 1980s to now: Naked and Famous 280, Penicillin 280, Italian Margarita 260, Paper Plane 320.
• Familia Negroni and Familia Martini, each dated by year, from the Negroni of 1901 to the White Negroni of 2007.
• De la casa: Sandía Tapatía 240, Paz y Flora 200 and Grand Spritz 270.
• Mocktails, all 180: Martini Virgen, Raíz y Flor, Santa Frizz and Gardenbaldi.

Mexican producers run through it, including Cascahuín tequila, Amarás mezcal, Nixta corn liqueur and agroforestry cacao from Chiapas in the digestivo.

How to book

Reservations, not walk-ins. The restaurant opens four days a week in a town that fills at weekends, so arriving without a booking is a poor plan.

• OpenTable: listed as Margarita Concept Garden, Tepoztlán.
• Instagram: @margarita.concept, and a direct message is how most people book. The account carries the line Tepoztlán RSVP Only.
• Hours: Thursday and Sunday 15:00 to 21:00, Friday and Saturday 16:00 to 23:00, closed Monday to Wednesday.
• Timing: the garden is the point, so book early enough to see it in daylight and stay into the evening rather than arriving after dark.

Getting there

• Address: De Buenavista 7C, San Miguel, 62520 Tepoztlán, Morelos.
• From Mexico City: about ninety minutes by car via the Cuernavaca highway, which makes it a day trip rather than a detour.
• In town: San Miguel is a short distance from the centre of Tepoztlán and its market, so the restaurant combines with a morning in town or a climb up the Tepozteco.
• The map pin is wrong. It drops you at a large brick wall. The entrance is up the staircase from there, with a doorbell to ring, and the property sits beside De Buenavista 3B.
• Parking: a small lot right in front, 100 pesos.
• Staying over: on Friday and Saturday the kitchen runs to 23:00, which is late for a drive back to Mexico City and an argument for a night in town.

Before you go

• The map pin does not work. It sends you to a brick wall. Go up the staircase and ring the doorbell, and park in the small lot in front for 100 pesos.
• It is vegetarian, all of it. Nobody at the table is ordering meat, so bring people who are fine with that rather than discovering it at the door.
• Check the day. Closed Monday to Wednesday, which is the single most common way to waste a trip here.
• Go while it is light. The garden and the greenhouse are the reason the place exists, and a table booked after dark sees a fraction of it.
• The cocktails are half the experience and half the bill. At 240 to 380 they are priced like a city bar, and the mocktails at 180 are a genuine list rather than a courtesy.
• Seasonal means seasonal. The menu changes through the year, so specific dishes named here may have rotated by the time you go.
• Pair it with the town. For the rest of the area, see the other Tepoztlán recommendations.
• 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 the garden and the plates. For the rest of the area, open my map or browse the Tepoztlán recommendations.