In the past year, Barcelona has joined Chicago and Los Angeles as one of the most satisfying places in the world to eat Mexican food outside of Mexico. Unlike other parts of Spain, notably the Basque Country, Barcelona has no deep, direct historical connection with Mexico (aside from an expat refugee community that lived there during the Spanish Civil War, and some modest recent immigration), and the traditional Catalan palate is quieter than Mexico’s. But three new restaurants in the capital — Hoja Santa, Niño Viejo and Oaxaca — reflect the city’s growing culinary curiosity, and just how gastronomically cosmopolitan it has become during the last few years.

“I love Mexico — the people, the culture and the food,” says Albert Adrià, who’s become such a successful restaurateur in Barcelona that it’s no longer necessary to identify him as the brother of Ferran, the chef whose now closed El Bulli was the most famous and influential restaurant in Spain in a generation. “The Mexican kitchen is brilliant in its regional diversity and the way it creates complex layers of taste and contrasting textures. So I wanted to rescue its reputation from the blight of the Tex-Mex cooking that’s better known in Europe by creating a pair of restaurants that showcase how good it is: Niño Viejo, a traditional good-times taquería that serves street food and the kind of casual cooking found in urban Mexico, and the other, Hoja Santa, a place that would offer a modern take on Mexican cooking.”