Flavour of the month

Hope you like Mexican food because we've assembled a star-worthy gourmet getaway in Tulum: five nights, homemade breakfasts, a bayside ceviche lunch, two cookery classes (from the superstar chefs from nearby destination restaurants, Hartwood and Restaurant Ceti), three indulgent dinners (at said restaurants, and back at Casa de las Olas) and a whole lot more besides… 

Michelin-starred chef Andrea Berton oversees the beautiful Ristorante Berton Al Lago in a prime lakeside spot. It serves local, seasonal dishes inspired by the surrounding regions, including the lake’s fresh fish and nearby Valtellina's cheese, meat and wine. Plus, if you book a stay of three nights or more by 28 February, Smith members get an exclusive seven-course dinner. Buon appetito!

Alain Ducasse-tutored chef Rodrigo Pacheco has wowed punters at Sketch in London and Le Palme d’Or in Cannes. His new-Ecuadorian cuisine is plucked straight from the source: forest-scavenged fruits, fish and crustacea straight from the nets (often Pacheco’s own) and kitchen-garden goodies that showcase the Manabí Province in full flower. Standout dishes include carita-fish fillets with curried-artichoke salad, or fig parfait with sea-salt sables and coffee ice-cream. The thatched restaurant is coolly casual with sun-saluting views. Lunch is served here, and a generous buffet – with must-try home-made dulce de leche – is laid out in the breakfast room.

Take your pick: El Jardín is the hotel's rustic mainstay, where fish is a star of the show. In Kabuki Raw, which has just earned a Michelin star, watch chef Luis Olarra combine Japanese traditions with Mediterranean ingredients to form fabulous evening meals. The Club House is open for breakfast or a casual lunch, where there are international and local favourites; you won’t go hungry at the beach club, either, where there's a moreish Med menu on offer. 

Relaxed and understatedly sophisticated, Zero Restaurant and Bar is a guests-only breakfast spot by morning (fresh fruit, pastries, cappuccinos and the like), a sultry wine bar by 5pm (when it opens for free, guests-only wine and cheese daily) and a locally supplied haute cuisine restaurant by 6pm Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Dinner sees the likes of braised swordfish with fingerling potatoes and pickled shallots or house-cured duck confit with butternut squash risotto. If you book a cooking class, it also includes a three-course meal with wine pairings.

The chef cut his teeth at Japanese restaurants in Tokyo and New York, before returning to Hokkaido to helm the kitchen at Zaborin. Using ingredients from the forest and nearby lake that he’s picked and caught himself, a traditional kita kaiseki meal is served nightly – essentially a set menu, 11 courses long and changing with the local harvest. Breakfast is a similar affair, with vegetables picked that morning, fresh eggs and grilled fish. Book the fine-dining package before 19 March and you'll get breakfast and dinner included (and we'll throw in some local sake, too).

The Mercer Kitchen is where world-renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten serves up delicious contemporary French cuisine with an Asian twist – steak in a caramelised soy sauce, steamed shrimp salad – in an exposed-brickwork space before a bustling open kitchen and purple-backlit steel bar. The tables situated right underneath SoHo’s iconic iron-and-glass sidewalks are particularly cool – to sit there and eat is like being part of a MOMA light installation.

An old-town Palma nunnery turned pared back escape with a Michelin-starred restaurant helmed by Marc Fosh and Toni Martorell. Simply Fosh is all about internationally-inspired and elaborate Mediterranean dishes – the menu changes weekly, though, so try to sample as many mesmerisingly good morsels as you physically can. 

La Merienda looks and tastes the part of a New Mexican farmhouse. Open only to inn guests (exceptions are made by arrangement), the restaurant serves farm-fresh breakfasts and dinners featuring home-grown produce. Breakfast eggs come with local ham and sautéed farm vegetables. At dinner, ‘Hen & Egg’ is a specialty, topping a chilli-chicken patty with a poached egg. And if you want to learn to replicate such things when you get back home, there are regular cookery classes, too. 

The chandeliered, portrait-lined André Garrett at Cliveden restaurant is overseen by the eponymous, Michelin-starred chef. Lunch and dinner menus, and the evening tasting menu, are well suited to the refined surrounds including well-heeled – and locally sourced – dishes such as wild sea trout with Cornish mussels and St George mushrooms, braised belly of lamb with merguez sausages and fallow deer with salt-baked celeriac. Brunch and afternoon tea, and a less-formal gastropub-style menu is overseen by the renowned chef in the Astor Grill – a more casual yet cosmopolitan eatery.

The grand main dining room, overlooking the gardens, is the spiritual heart of Bells at Killcare but we'd be happy eating this food anywhere – robust duck and pork ragus, pan-fried veal, home-made gelati and antipasto plates that would feed a family. Italian heritage is overlaid with rigorous local and organic product sourcing, such as Hawkesbury River oysters. The generous breakfasts are also delivered with gastronomic aplomb. 

The buzz around the mirrored bar at one end of the Norman Restaurant spills over into the dining room with uncrowded, white-clothed tables. The menu is informed by Niçoise cuisine, but there’s a multitude of Med influences. With the sea so close, fish is a speciality, but the 45-day-aged sirloin is a sumptuous substitute. Minimalist in style, Dinings has delicate, Izakaya-style Japanese tapas, and a bar for admiring the sushi chefs’ sleight-of-hand. Light(ish) lunches are served in the Library Bar; in the morning, try the typical Israeli breakfast with labane (yoghurt), tomato salad and eggs.