A couple of weeks before the opening of a new Mexican restaurant, you might expect the developers to be busy screwing the last plastic cactus to the wall, supervising the arrival of the first batch of super-hot chillis and making sure that the waiters' comedy sombreros fit. At Niño Viejo in Barcelona, however, sombreros are not in evidence. In fact, the only headwear on show is the hard-hats being worn by men shifting a work-surface from one side of the kitchen to the other, while a worried-looking Albert Adrià looks on.
Adrià is the man who, along with his more famous brother, Ferran Adrià, helped make El Bulli the "official" best restaurant in the world. Since then, he has been building a small restaurant empire in the old theatre district of Barcelona, Paral.lel. He's done a cheaper, more accessible version of El Bulli (Tickets), he's done traditional Spanish (Bodega 1900), he's done impeccably modish Peruvian-Japanese (Pakta). Is the fact that he is about to "do" Mexican, in the form of taco bar Niño Viejo and Hoja Santa, a high-end restaurant next door, the latest sign that this misunderstood country's cuisine is about to be the next big thing?
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