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.