Miguel Ángel López

Miguel’s first kitchen belonged to his grandmother; culinary school in Mexico City made it official before the peninsula pulled him west. He worked the cape’s hotel kitchens and ran the pass at a local restaurant before going private, and he carries the food historian Ricardo Muñoz Zurita as his north star — which tells you how seriously he takes the regional stuff.

A hundred and twenty-eight tables have left him written notes — nobody else here comes close — and the notes repeat themselves: the aguachile from the morning’s catch, the mole he narrates, the recipes he credits to his mother mid-course. When the table wants a change of flag he cooks Italy instead — handmade ravioli, burrata with pistachio pesto — with the same fussiness about ingredients.

Culinary school in Mexico City, then Villa del Palmar, the Solaz Luxury Collection and the pass at restaurante La Deriva.