"Cooking doesn’t have to have a flag,” said Elena Reygadas. The menu at Rosetta, her Mexico City restaurant, with choices ranging from gnocchi tonopales, proves her point: It doesn’t just cross boundaries between countries, but between sweet and savory. Chicozapote, a fruit that’s often a Mexican ice cream flavor, makes its way into a salad appetizer. A mole, typically served with pork, appears in a dessert. Explained Reygadas, 39, “I love the idea of breaking the rules.”

In 2001, long before Rosetta started showing up on best restaurant lists, Reygadas found herself cooking for different palates when her brother, Ariel Award winning filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, needed a caterer on a set. She had to come up with two menus; the European crew didn’t want corn and the Mexican crew didn’t want pasta.