Mexico City has more Spanish restaurants than any city in our directory outside London and Shanghai, and the reason is not mysterious. The connection between the two countries goes back centuries and got a large second wave after the Spanish Civil War, when exiles arrived and, among many other things, opened restaurants. Some of those rooms are still open.
Here is a weekend built out of four of them. It is arranged so each stop makes sense at the hour you arrive.
Saturday midday: vermut in Hipódromo
Start at La Cocina del Bizco on Calle Ometusco, in Hipódromo. It is a Spanish tavern working from the cooking of Madrid and Castile, and the room is dressed to look like a neighbourhood bar in Spain rather than a destination restaurant.
The menu is the giveaway: ensaladilla rusa, tortilla española and callos a la madrileña. Those three together are a specific statement. Anyone can do the first two; tripe on the menu means the kitchen is cooking for people who grew up with it. The place leans into vermouth culture, which makes midday the right time to be there. Order a vermut on ice, eat the Russian salad, do not plan anything demanding for the next two hours.
Saturday night: the cantina in Doctores
Bar El Sella on Dr. Balmis in Colonia Doctores has been running for more than 73 years. It is a Spanish kitchen inside a traditional Mexican cantina, which is a combination that only really exists in this city.
The Asturian side of the menu is the strong one: pulpo a la gallega, scallops, chorizo cooked in cider. The house dish is the chamorro, the pork knuckle, and it is finished with Mexican influences and local sauces rather than being kept hermetically Spanish. The wine list is Spanish. There is a second El Sella in Polanco if Doctores is too far from where you are staying, though the original is the one with the cantina atmosphere.
Sunday lunch: the wood oven downtown
Centro Castellano Histórico is on República de Uruguay in the Centro Histórico, a few minutes' walk from the Zócalo. It is a traditional Spanish restaurant with an artisan wood oven, which makes it an asador in the Castilian sense: the oven is the kitchen's centre, not a decorative pizza-style prop.
Castilian oven cooking means roast meat, and Sunday lunch is when Spaniards eat it. This is the stop that pairs best with a morning in the historic centre, and it is the most Spanish-feeling meal of the weekend in terms of timing rather than menu. If the late hours confuse you, we explained the logic in why Spaniards eat so late.
Sunday evening: the terrace in San Ángel
Finish at Vega on Avenida Revolución, part of the same Castellano group as the downtown asador but a different proposition: modern touches on Spanish tradition, and a terrace planted with greenery around a 200-year-old olive tree.
The menu has clams in albariño, arroz del señorito and Asturian fabada, with more than 80 Spanish wines and spirits behind the bar. Arroz del señorito is worth ordering if you have not had it: a rice dish with all the seafood peeled and shelled beforehand, so nobody at the table has to work for it. The name is a joke about that.
Practical notes
- The four stops are in four different parts of the city. Hipódromo to Doctores is short, the Centro to San Ángel is not. Build travel time into Sunday.
- Book the Sunday lunch. Sunday midday in the Centro Histórico is the busiest restaurant slot in the city.
- If you want Basque cooking instead of Castilian, swap in one of the Zeru rooms or the Polanco Basque restaurants; the Ciudad de México page lists them all.
Polanco holds the densest cluster of Spanish restaurants in the city if you would rather not move around at all. This route is built the other way, to show how differently the same cuisine sits in a decades-old cantina, a downtown asador and a garden terrace.
