El Pachuco — Restaurant in Barcelona

This wasn't what we expected when seeing the word "mezcalería" after going to many in México, but it wasn't bad.

We expected a mezcal bar with a large selection of excellent and maybe rare mezcals. Here, it is more of a restaurant it seems with some mezcal. More than a normal bar, but not like authentic mezcalerías. And the mezcal selection is not that grand. A lot of common brands. Not many independent or small batch bottles. One I tried said it was made in Spain? I don't know how they can call it real mezcal then. I will admit I was a bit drunk so perhaps they had more I just didn't see!

The food is good. Very tasty and filling and comes quickly even when they are very busy. The staff, especially the bartender, are very good too. The cocktails were not so good for me (too sweet and big).

But I was pleased to see they serve their mezcal with orange slices and Tajin. It is the closest to authentic I have seen so far in Europe. (Most places seem to serve with lime or lemon, but that is not the way in Mexico!) If they had grasshoppers it would be even better ;)

I liked the place, and I would go back again but just lower my expectations as it is not like so many mezcalerías in Mexico. But it is...

We ventured here on a bit of whim. I checked if they could accommodate 15 of us (a stag do). After initially saying yes they perhaps got a little hesitant. We came back in half an hour as requested and sure enough we managed to get in.

After some “assertive” caution on the staff’s part as to who would be responsible for the bill we managed to sit down.

You place your order and then pay via a Revolut link that gets sent to you.

You can’t simply pay by card. This caused a lot of confusion, quite unnecessarily, in our case but perhaps they’d had some runners in the past.

Anyway, once we had paid upfront the mood changed and we finally got on with it.

I only bring this up in case anyone reading has a large group of rowdy (but pleasant) brits with them. The mood is definitely couples.

Anyway, the food is great. The tacos are excellent. Margaritas are very good. The environment is very cool with at bar dining. The other patrons were also very cool, helping us out with translations - you’ll need some Spanish and/or Google translate to get by here - which was fine. We muddled our way through.

I would definitely go back, just with a smaller...

Food: Really good (as far as I can judge also authentic) Mexican food. Prices were fair and portions were well sized. Cocktails were really good as well! Definitely down to visit again!

Service: Place was very busy but food came out quickly and waiting times were rather short, so in contrast to other reviewers our experience was quite pleasant in that regard.staff was very friendly and understanding! :) The whole way of ordering, however, seems unnecessary complicated and makes it more difficult to re-order later on. Especially as staff does not really check-in if there are any further needs, which can be rather frustrating especially with a group of people. Just using a modern POS would improve the experience and probably reduce stress on the kitchen/service as well.

Ambience: Generally really enjoyed the ambience, open kitchen, good music, tasteful interior. However, and maybe this is normal in the area, there were 8(!!) cameras filming the room which made me rather uncomfortable. I understand that security measures are important but the amount of cameras still seemed a bit excessive.

Overall: Great experience, happy to recommend and...