Kike Casarrubias and Montserrat Estrada, Mexican chefs based in Paris for more than 20 years, are finalizing the details of their arrival in Barcelona with an ambitious project: Papalote, which will open its doors near Francesc Macià.
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The new venue will be an evolution of their restaurant Oxte, opened in Paris in 2018, which earned its first star in 2021 thanks to a very personal cuisine, where Mexican flavors and techniques dialogue with the French pantry. Oxte, with a capacity for barely 25 diners, has just reopened after a complete renovation while its chefs finalize the details of Papalote, a concept designed to be replicated in other cities.
“Papalote means butterfly in Nahuatl, and symbolizes that flight that does not lose its roots. A butterfly that flew from Mexico to Paris, and that upon leaving Oxte can free itself from ties. The next destination is Barcelona and… ellipsis,” says the chef. “Who knows what will happen next.”
Papalote will bet on a very careful aesthetic and a gastronomic proposal where Mediterranean and Mexican ingredients will dialogue, in a space designed to seduce both through the experience and the cuisine. “It will be more spectacular than Oxte, also more informal,” says the chef. And much bigger, since from the barely 25 diners at Oxte they will move to cooking for more than 80 distributed in several spaces.
After working at places like Akrame and hotels such as Four Seasons George V or Crillon, Casarrubias decided to embark on his own project alongside his partner, also a chef, Montserrat Estrada. “One fine day, in 2015, I quit my job. Overnight,” he explains. When he got home, he told Montserrat he was ready to open his own business because he felt the need to return to his roots and work again with Mexican ingredients. “To be myself, I suppose,” he says.
Estrada had worked in kitchens like Le Meurice, alongside Yannick Alléno and Philippe Mille, as well as Pershing Hall and La Tour d’Argent, and immediately saw in that project the possibility of pouring all that French training into a cuisine also crossed by her Acapulco roots.
Both share interchangeably the dining room and kitchen, and sign dishes that condense the mestizo spirit of the house: from a taco – one of the most emblematic creations on the menu – with octopus, homemade blood sausage, and recado negro to a turbot with green peas and ancho garlic chile, examples of how Mexican and French culinary traditions intertwine naturally in this small venue near the Arc de Triomphe.
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Corn in its different manifestations is a hallmark in Casarrubias and Estrada’s cuisine. At Oxte it is found both in a mini-torta served as a starter accompanied by caviar, as well as in the bread that accompanies the first part of the tasting menu or in the royal sea bream with carrots and chiletole. For the chef, the presence of this ingredient explains not only his cuisine but also his way of understanding luxury: “It’s simply about transforming a common product into an exceptional one.”
This and other usual ingredients in Oxte’s kitchen (from chiles to jalapeños, which are also found in the dessert, in the form of sorbet) will be present on Papalote’s menu. In Barcelona, the chefs will recreate what they call “memory cuisine,” using much local raw material, from carabineros to Galician blonde and Mediterranean garden produce. All this combined with numerous products they import from Mexico and that cross their cuisine, such as vanilla or cocoa (present, for example, in one of the desserts on Oxte’s new menu, the chocolate sando with timut and raw cream).
They insist, however, that Papalote will move away from “the rigidity that the Michelin star can imply on many levels.” The new venue, now under renovation, will thus bet on a more relaxed and scenic atmosphere than Oxte’s, less restrained and more designed to make the experience a central part of the place’s appeal.
The choice of Barcelona to develop a project that aspires to show “a magical Mexico, different from what is usually seen” responds to several factors. A recent four-hands – “we should say six hands, because we always cook together,” they joke – brought them closer to a city where, they say, “we can finally work in our language.” Also influential were the high quality of the raw material, the camaraderie they perceive in the sector, and a demanding but open audience to new experiences.
Papalote’s gastronomic proposal will be articulated in a tasting menu and a full menu, which will allow them “to work with Spanish products and add a Mexican touch, with our bet on acidity, bitterness, and smokiness.” The latter, present, for example, in some artisanal butters served with Thierry Breton’s corn bread, among other notable dishes.
Estrada and Covarrubias plan to split their time between Paris and Barcelona, always with the support of their right hand, executive chef Soon Ziren. Although Papalote does not yet exist, the chefs are clear about one thing: “we don’t want to make Oxte.” And another: “We’re not looking for another star. Stars are found only in Montserrat’s eyes and in our daughter’s,” Casarrubias concludes. Take that.
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