Using the plate like a canvas, chef Martha Ortiz, daughter of the celebrated Mexican artist Martha Chapa, crafts vivid designs at her Mexico City restaurant Dulce Patria, adding brilliant strokes of color and delicate textures that reveal the rich layers of Mexican history and her own personal experiences. The garnishes atop vibrant tortilla soup and its squash blossom kin (below right) evoke magical-realist still lifes; a husk stretches like a plume from an inkwell in a bowl of nouvelle esquites, a street snack of corn sauteed in butter and aromatics. Each course spins a chapter in a fanciful Mesoamerican tale.