COME by Paco Méndez restaurant review

COME is a Mexican tasting menu restaurant in Barcelona, and has 1 Michelin star.

Oliva de Cantina. Olive sphere, but more spicy than the original El Bulli spheres. Peanut polvorón. Polvorón (from polvo, the Spanish word for powder, or dust) is a type of heavy, soft, and very crumbly Spanish shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk, and nuts. They were shaped like peanuts. Only two of the peanuts on the dish are polvorónes; they are served on a bed of real peanuts.

Parmesan Tree. A thin wafer made with parmesan. This came with many different dips and sauces, which I forgot to photograph.

Buñuelo de viento in the shape of the Michelin star

Tangerine, eucalyptus. Tangerine juice in a frozen tangerine. You suck the juice out through the eucalyptus root.

Cassava gordita with butifarra (Catalan sausage) filling. These exploded in your mouth like a Shanghai soup dumpling (xiaolongbao)

Wagyu tartar tostada. As expected, the wagyu was very rich and fatty

Cochinita pibil infladita. Cochinita pibil inflated into a puff, topped with fresh herbs including hoja santa. Clever and delicious.

The finest totopo in the world. Topped with guacamole and Siberian caviar. The guacamole goes very well with the caviar, functioning similarly to crème fraîche, the usual complement to caviar. Also, does it remind you of the Legend of Zelda Triforce?

Caesar salad. Caesar salad was actually invented in Tijuana! This was a deconstructed version with lettuce puree, anchovy, parmesan ice cream, all separated. Chicken with black mole bite. Black mole sauce on a small piece of chicken. It was suggested to alternate bites of the chicken with the salad, so I think the idea is to imagine it as a chicken Caesar salad.

Ceviche

Seafood tostada

Triple pork. Three different cuts of pork: neck, jowl, rind; rich and fatty. On a butter brioche.

Main course

For the main course, the table had to choose one dish from among this list:

Al Pastor Iberian pork
Avocado with black garlic mole
Lobster with pipian
Wagyu “taco ordenado”
Quail Wellington with mole

We chose the Quail Wellington with mole

The Wellington was perfectly cooked and the mole sauce was delicious

Dessert

Pan de muerto

Palanqueta (left). Cerdito (right). Rompope (bottom), an eggnog drink.

Fake cigar dessert. The inside was filled with a dark chocolate that was a very fruity variety, fantastic.

I visited the previous incarnation of the restaurant as Hoja Santa in 2018 and loved it. Hoja Santa closed in 2021 because of Covid, but COME is in the same location, with the same chef, so it seems like just a new name.

Summary

I loved my meal at COME; it’s in my top 5. I strongly prefer restaurants with a cohesive theme or identity rather than something nebulous like farm-to-table. All the dishes ranged from good to excellent, and the exotic flavors and ingredients from Mexico were novel and exciting.

I venture to say it’s probably the best Mexican restaurant outside of Mexico, although I haven’t been to KOL in London.

The €160 price for the “festival” menu was a bargain. They also have a shorter menu for €110.

Comparison

To give you an idea if your tastes are similar to mine, here are my favorite restaurants and the year I visited them:

1. Disfrutar, Barcelona, 2023
2. El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, 2018
3. Alinea, Chicago, 2013
4. COME by Paco Méndez, 2023
5. Gaggan, Bangkok, 2016
6. Noma, Copenhagen, 2023
7. Noor, Córdoba, 2022
8. Alchemist, Copenhagen, 2023
9. Quique Dacosta, Denía, 2014
10. Pakta, Barcelona, 2014

And here are some restaurants that I found disappointing, in no particular order:

• Fat Duck, 2020
• Enigma, 2018
• L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon Saint-Germain, 2014
• L’Astrance, 2013
• French Laundry, 2009

Other reviews of COME

• Observacion Gastronomica. July 2023. Note that many of the dishes are different from when I visited in December 2023.
• Ktchnrebel. March 2022