JIRIBILLA
Gerard Bellver spent roughly two decades cooking in Mexico before opening this room on Comte Borrell, and it shows in the least fashionable way possible: nothing here is doing an impression. Jiribilla serves Mexican food built on Catalan and Mediterranean product — aguachile that snaps, a turbot swimming in green mole, poc chuc made with Iberian lagarto, a corn tortilla soufflé filled with crab — and the result reads as translation rather than costume. That distinction matters in a city where “Mexican” too often means a tequila list and a wall of skulls. The room seats twenty-five at the bar and forty-five in back, and the bar is where the cooking makes most sense, close to the pans and the pace. Not everything lands with the same authority: the moles and the raw preparations are the house’s strongest suit, while a couple of the larger proteins can arrive under-seasoned or under-rested, and the wine pairings are still finding their register. But the price is honest for what arrives, and the point of view is unmistakably somebody’s rather than a market’s. Barcelona has a lot of Mexican restaurants. This is one of the few cooking Mexican food.
