Pitiona

Pitiona is the chef-driven contemporary-Mexican dining room of chef José Manuel Baños, a Oaxacan-born chef, trained at El Bulli under Ferran Adrià and at Arzak in San Sebastián under Juan Mari Arzak, opened in 2013 on Allende Street in the Centro Histórico. The restaurant occupies a converted 18th-century colonial palazzo with hand-carved limestone walls, an open kitchen at the back, and forty-eight covers across two rooms.

Baños's cooking is contemporary Mexican with strong El-Bulli technical influences. The seven-course tasting rotates seasonally; signatures include a hand-cut Oaxacan grasshopper tartlet; a slow-cooked Sierra Norte suckling pig with mole amarillo; a wood-fired Pacific-Mexican octopus with chichilo; a hand-rolled Oaxacan-mole tortelli; the famous 'mole negro Pitiona', Baños's contemporary-technical interpretation of the canonical Oaxacan mole negro.

The wine list runs to 300 references with deep Mexican Valle de Guadalupe coverage and a respectable Spanish section reflecting the chef's training. The mezcal programme runs to thirty-plus bottlings.

Service is precision, Baños himself runs the open kitchen and walks the room before the cheese course; the captains rotate from a year-round seasonal pool.

Pitiona is the birthday-night room in Oaxaca when the brief is contemporary technical accomplishment. The El-Bulli-Arzak pedigree settles the credibility question; the Centro Histórico colonial palazzo is the conversation; the seven-course tasting menu is the right length for an evening occasion. Book the corner four-top.